“ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – Mitt Romney landed here Sunday with a simple message: Newt Gingrich is a failure and a fraud. And a disgrace. And a hapless showman.

Standing under a brilliant orange Florida sunset, Romney delivered his longest sustained critique of the South Carolina primary winner to date – ticking through a list as if he were reading off Gingrich’s Wikipedia page, and undercutting each item as he got to it.” — Politico.Com

“Eighty-four ethics charges were filed against Gingrich during his term as speaker, all by Democrats. Eighty-three of the charges were later dropped. After extensive investigation and negotiation by the House Ethics Committee, Gingrich was reprimanded and penalized $300,000 by a 395-28 House vote. It was the first time in the history of the House that a speaker was disciplined for an ethics violation.” — Wikipedia

Sometimes presidential candidates engage in hyperbole to make their point, but Romney is spot on in his assessment of Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House is a hapless buffoon, a fraud, and a disgrace to humankind.

Newt Gingrich may not have met the legal definition of a lobbyist, but nobody could convincingly argue that he wasn’t an influence peddler. Newt, with a straight face, claims that Freddie Mac paid him an obscene amount of money to serve as a historian for them.

Mitt Romney is finally realizing that when dealing with a bully you throw nuance out the window, and call a spade a spade. Romney should attack Gingrich on every front, he should attack the portly politician on his woeful ethics in the realms of politics and business.

In a speech in Florida Mitt hit Gingrich hard:

He was a leader for four years as speaker of the House. And at the end of four years, it was proven that he was a failed leader and he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know whether you knew that, he actually resigned after four years, in disgrace.

That’s the ticket, Romney needs to hit Gingrich again and again, until like the typical bully he cries: Uncle.

When facing a huge bully you don’t slap him on the face, that’s not going to knock him down. You pick up a two-by-four and hit him upside the head. Romney needs to pick up Gingrich’s heavy baggage and clobber him senseless.

On the stump, and especially in the debates, Romney must lay out his case against Newt Gingrich. The America public has a short memory, and Romney must remind the electorate that Gingrich is an ethically-challenged fraud.

Gingrich won the South Carolina primary because he bullied the debate moderators (Juan Williams and John King), and his fellow presidential hopefuls. Unlike Gingrich Romney is a gentleman, but if he doesn’t want to lose in Florida, he must go after Gingrich tooth and nail.

Rick Santorum and Ron Paul would be advised to do the same, hit Gingrich hard and often. It would be a disaster for the GOP and our democratic process if a thug like Gingrich wins the Republican nomination.

I’m very liberal, and it would be to my benefit if Gingrich won the Republican nomination, because President Obama would make mincemeat out of him. But as a patriot and a believer in the democratic process, I hope that sanity prevails and Mitt Romney wins. [ READ MORE ]

By Robert Paul Reyes
Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes

   By: DeWayne Wickham
The lead to a recent Associated Press story about the declining influence of black lawmakers in the South reads like something written by the late Lee Atwater, the race-baiting former Republican Party chairman and GOP spin-doctor.

“(An) overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party has left them (black lawmakers in the South) without power in increasingly GOP-controlled state legislatures,” the AP said, citing a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Racial politics

In the early 1980s, Atwater was a master manipulator of the news media and crafty manager of the GOP’s Southern Strategy, which uses racial fear to herd white Democrats into the Republican Party. He — like Richard Nixon before him — understood that a subtle appeal to racism would, over time, change the political landscape of the South.

This is what he said during a 1981 interview about how the Republican Party could marginalize blacks:

“You start out in 1954 by saying ‘—-, n—–, n—–.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n—-’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now (that) you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic … because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,‘ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘—–, n—–.‘”

The AP story, which was published by news media outlets across the country, left out this critical context. The constant is the allegiance of blacks to the Democratic Party. That isn’t news. It’s the impact on these black lawmakers of the mass migration of Southern whites to the GOP that is the news.

Joint Center report

David Bositis, a political scientist and the author of the Joint Center report, seemed to make just this point:

“In most Southern states, the 46-year transition from a multiracial Democratic (Party) political dominance to a white conservative Republican political dominance is almost complete.”

PLAYLIST: The Southern Strategy

Marginalized

But while this change has taken place over nearly half a century, it has moved at warp speed over the past two years. Before the 2010 election, 51 percent of black legislators in the South were a part of a state legislative majority. After elections that year and this year, the number dropped to just under 5 percent, according to Bositis.

These changes have come in a political climate in which Republicans have craftily used the abstractions of “states’ rights” and calls for lower taxes to bring more white voters into the GOP fold.

2008′s impact

An even bigger missed story in the analysis of Bositis’ report might be the connection between the 2008 election of Barack Obama and the increased pace with which Southern Democrats lost control of state legislatures — and nearly all black legislators in the old Confederacy suddenly became members of the minority party.

Instead of ushering in the post-racial era, the election of this nation’s first black president has seemingly widened racial fault lines, most noticeably in the South. The Joint Center report is just the most recent evidence of this.

But just as the unchanged voting habits of black Southerners aren’t responsible for the loss of political influence for black legislators in that region, Obama’s election didn’t forestall the end of the Jim Crow era that Republicans made an integral part of this nation’s politics with their Southern Strategy — and which they continue to use as a political abstraction.

Somewhere, Atwater — who offered a suspect apology for his bad acts before his death in 1991 — must be smiling.

African Americans know exactly why and what they’re voting for when it comes time to go into the ballot box. For HOUSE-NEGRO Herman Cain to say they have been brainwashed into picking the democratic candidates is brainless psycho-talk — Ed Shultz, MSNBC Host.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Herman Cain & Allen West on ‘Brainwashed, Plantation’ African Americans

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here are a few reasons why African Americans choose to align with the Democrats and not Republicans:

1. Almost 17% of African Americans are unemployed. Democrats are in favor of extending unemployment benefits while Republicans say unemployment benefits just make people lazy [READ: THE BLACK PEOPLE WHO ARE TAKING "OUR WHITES ONLY" COUNTRY AWAY].

2. Democrats are in favor of affirmative action while Republicans call it reverse discrimination.

3. Republicans are actively working against the best interests of many African Americans, and they’re not hiding their agenda a bit. For instance, Florida governor Rick Scott cut funding to historically black colleges in his state while Mississippi governor Haley Barbour refused to condemn a license plate honoring a KKK leader and Paula Page, governor of Maine, told the NAACP to, “kiss my butt.”

Additionally, the wave of voter laws sweeping up Republican controlled states — is aimed squarely at black and other minority voters. Voter suppression is a preferred tool — which Republicans have used successfully since paranoid, anti-black racist — President Richard Nixon “invented” the Southern Strategy.

4. The racist ramblings of the chief Republican party radio mouth piece, Rush Limbaugh and his underlings are legendary. The Republican party has decided that aligning themselves with the issues that affect black people is no longer in their best interest [ READ: SOUTHERN STRATEGY ]. They have decided to embrace the buffoonery and insipid hatred spread by men like Rush Limbaugh, instead of standing up and speaking out against his ignorance. They have taken up to supporting crazy conservative ideals like baring arms, supporting the military-industrial complex, expanding incarceration of blacks [ READ: THE NEW JIM CROW ] and harsh anti-immigration reform. [ READ MORE ] [ REPUBLICANS & THE ART OF RACISM ]

5. The Republican Party aided by its extreme right faction — the tea party, has mastered tactics previously employed by fascists: use of ‘tea party‘ street mobs, hysterics and lies to distract and confuse the public. In doing so, their weapon of choice is race-baiting and filthy anti Obama theatrics.

Political Science Professor Dorian Warren Examines Herman Cain’s ‘Brain-Wash‘ Claims

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Janeane Garofalo discusses the racism behind the GOP’s fondness for Herman Cain

PLAYLIST: Republican | Tea-Party Racism

References:

1. Featured Attraction: ‘Uncle-Tom’ Herman Cain Pleasures, Fulfills ‘Jumping Jim Crow’ Fantasies of White Racists at CPAC

2. Why Blacks don’t vote Republican

3. Why Minorities Don’t Vote Republican — Minorities are not going to listen to Republicans on taxes, terrorism, or immigration when they give them so many reasons to believe their traditions, cultures, and identities are not valued.

4. Blacks & The Republican Party — The question has always been wrong. The question IS NOT how come the blacks only vote for Democrats? The REAL QUESTION continues to be what CHANGED in the Republican Party to completely ALIENATE blacks from the party they SWORE allegiance to? When Republicans ask the first question it is ONLY a subterfuge for avoiding the second question.

5. Republicans and The Art of Racism

6. 41 Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican Today

7. Obama’s New Black Enemy — Conservative Mascot, Punk Ass, Uncle-Tom Herman Cain

Worst Persons (09/28/2011): REPUBLICANS Dick Morris, Sen. Rand Paul and CNN’s Dana Loesch

NOTES:

1. The Tea Party, Right-Wing Media, And The Dog That Didn’t Bark

This has been one of the most contentious weeks in American political history. We have witnessed Tea Party Republicans take this nation to the edge of financial chaos; President Obama abdicate his leadership role and beg the electorate to petition Congress, and Standards and Poor’s and Moody’s treat Congress and the President as unworthy supplicants.

Gabrielle Giffords returned to the floor of the House yesterday amidst this bi-partisan turmoil and obstinacy. Giffords said in a press release that she was “deeply disappointed” by the disagreements along party lines that had brought our great nation to the brink of an unprecedented default.

I share Giffords’ disgust at the Theatre of the Absurd that has prevailed in Washington the last few weeks. I’m a political junkie, but the last couple of weeks I’ve eschewed the cable news networks in favor of escapist entertainment.

Giffords’ courage in returning to the House just 7 months after she was shot demonstrated amazing courage, which was in sharp contrast to the childish and cowardly behavior of Congress and President Obama.

Giffords received a sustained standing ovation, tears flowed from Republicans and Democrats alike. For a few minutes everyone on the floor of the House, and everyone watching on TV was a proud American first, and a Republican, Democrat or Independent second.

I’d just about given up hope in the American political system, but Giffords’ return to the floor of the House to cast her vote on the debt ceiling bill gives me hope that perhaps we can revive our political process.

By Robert Paul Reyes

Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Returns To The House

The U.S. government is headed for a crisis if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by August 2.

What’s the debt ceiling, and why is everyone in Washington talking about it?

It is the legal limit on borrowing by the federal government. Before 1917, Congress had to approve borrowing each time it came up. In order to allow for more flexibility as the nation entered World War I, lawmakers agreed to give the federal government blanket approval for most types of borrowing — as long as the total was less than an established limit. [ MORE DETAILS (1) ] [ MORE DETAILS (2) ]

Instead of negotiating in good faith as has always been the case (debt ceiling was raised seven times under Bush) — Republicans predictably have opted to hold a gun to the president’s head.

Obama on the other hand is a hostage of Wall St. financial terrorists, says Max Keiser, a financial journalist based in Paris.

The president is between a rock and a hard place — Republican yokels who hate the idea of a black man in the White House on one side and the filthy rich (The Real Owners of America) who will not share their ill-gotten wealth with anybody else, on the other.

In between are Republican politicians — who are mere “Yo-Yos” — owned by wall street, lock, stock and barrel — but are answerable to the illiterate, racist yokels in the extreme right-wing of the ReTHUGliLOON party.

“The ‘NIGGER‘ must be defeated in 2012″ — is the GOP’s war cry!

Political satirist Jon Stewart sums the Republican situation best:

“It’s not, ‘Let’s all chip in a buy a keg for the party,’ it’s ‘Buy me a keg or I’ll burn your fucking house down.’” “The Republican insistence on making the debt ceiling their give as opposed to increased tax revenues is like a doctor who believes strictly in magic consulting with a patient.”

‘Debt Ceiling‘ Political Terrorism: What Are Shyster Republicans Afraid Of?

Default Lines: Republicans Treat Tax Cuts Like a Religion and ‘Will Not Sin’

Debt Limit: Ed Shultz Aks President Obama To Let Evil Mitch McConnell ‘Twist in The Wind’ (Part 1)

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The Lies and Mis-Representations on ‘Debt Ceiling’
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Fox’s Palin Advises GOP On Debt Talks: “Now Is Not The Time To Retreat – It’s the Time To Reload“

“Bony Ass” Ann Coulter Invokes Hitler To Defend Paul Ryan’s Controversial Budget Plan

While Accusing Obama Of Fearmongering On Debt, Anti-Immigrant Bigot Lou Dobbs Warns That Pushing Through A Deal Will “Screw Up The Markets“

Fox’s Napolitano Demands That Boehner “Tell The President Not A Penny More”

Mr. Syphilis Sean Hannity Cites Myth That The Stimulus Failed To Bash Obama Over Debt Negotiations

Right-Wing Media Downplay Default Risks By Accusing Obama Of “Threatening” Social Security Benefits

Fox Continues Ignoring Economists To Downplay Debt Ceiling Consequences