Newt Gingrich
Newt is an American politician who served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He represented Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. He is a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Born and raised near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gingrich attended Emory University and received his Ph.D. from Tulane University. In the 1970s he taught history and geography at West Georgia College. During this period he mounted several races for the United States House of Representatives, before winning the election of November 1978. He served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.
A co-author and architect of the Contract with America, Gingrich was in the forefront of Republican Party success in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year" for his role in ending 40 years of majority rule by the Democratic Party. During his four years as House speaker, Gingrich sometimes opposed President Bill Clinton, but he also worked closely with Clinton in 1996 to limit public welfare; in 1997 to pass a capital gains tax cut; and in 1998 to pass the first balanced budget since 1969. He was disciplined in January 1997 by the House of Representatives for ethics accusations, although a full hearing was avoided.
In the late 1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich launched the investigation of President Clinton for obstruction of justice in connection with his alleged affairs. Gingrich resigned from the House on November 5, 1998, three days after being elected to his 11th term. He had "been a lightning rod for controversy ever since he steered his party to the majority in 1994 and took control of the speaker's gavel".
Eighty-four ethics charges were filed against Speaker Gingrich during his term, including claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes. Following an investigation by the House Ethics Committee Gingrich was sanctioned US$300,000. Gingrich acknowledged in January 1997 that "In my name and over my signature, inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee". The House Ethics Committee concluded that inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules. Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. The full committee panel did not agree whether tax law had been violated and left that issue up to the IRS. In 1999, the IRS cleared the organizations connected with the "Renewing American Civilization" courses under investigation for possible tax violations.
In the summer of 1997 several House Republicans, who saw Gingrich's public image as a liability, attempted to replace him as Speaker. The attempted "coup" began July 9 with a meeting of Republican conference chairman John Boehner of Ohio and Republican leadership chairman Bill Paxon of New York. According to their plan, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Boehner and Paxon were to present Gingrich with an ultimatum: resign, or be voted out. However, Armey balked at the proposal to make Paxon the new Speaker, and told his chief of staff to warn Gingrich about the attempted coup.
On July 11, Gingrich met with senior Republican leadership to assess the situation. He explained that under no circumstance would he step down. If he was voted out, there would be a new election for Speaker, which would allow for the possibility that Democrats—along with dissenting Republicans—would vote in Dick Gephardt as Speaker. On July 16, Paxon offered to resign his post, feeling that he had not handled the situation correctly, as the only member of the leadership who had been appointed to his position—by Gingrich—instead of elected.
Republicans lost five seats in the House in the 1998 elections—the worst midterm performance in 64 years for a party that didn't hold the presidency. Polls showed that Gingrich and the Republican Party's attempt to remove President Clinton from office was deeply unpopular among voters. Gingrich suffered much of the blame for the election loss. Facing a rebellion in the Republican caucus, he announced on November 5, 1998 that he would not only stand down as Speaker, but would leave the House as well. Gingrich made this announcement only a day after being elected to an 11th term from his district. Commenting on his departure, Gingrich said, "I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is."
Between 2005 and 2007, Gingrich expressed interest in running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. On October 13, 2005, Gingrich suggested he was considering a run for president, saying, "There are circumstances where I will run", elaborating that those circumstances would be if no other candidate champions some of the platform ideas he advocates. On September 28, 2007, Gingrich announced that if his supporters pledged $30 million to his campaign (until October 21), he would seek the nomination.
However, insisting that he had "pretty strongly" considered running, on September 29 spokesman Rick Tyler said that Gingrich would not seek the presidency in 2008 because he could not continue to serve as chairman of American Solutions if he did so. Citing campaign finance law restrictions (the McCain-Feingold campaign law would have forced him to leave his American Solutions political organization if he declared his candidacy), Gingrich said, "I wasn't prepared to abandon American Solutions, even to explore whether a campaign was realistic."
During the 2009 special election in New York's 23rd congressional district, Gingrich endorsed moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava, rather than Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who had been endorsed by several nationally prominent Republicans. He was heavily criticized for this endorsement, with conservatives questioning his candidacy for President in 2012 and even comparing him to Benedict Arnold, a traitor during America's War of Independence. Gingrich has since regretted his decision.
Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26. Gingrich and Battley have two daughters from this marriage: Kathy Gingrich Lubbers is president of Gingrich Communications, and Jackie Gingrich Cushman is an author, conservative columnist, and political commentator whose books include 5 Principles for a Successful Life, co-authored with Newt Gingrich.[ In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther. In 1984, Battley told the Washington Post that the divorce was a "complete surprise" to her. According to Battley, in September 1980, Gingrich and their children visited her while she was in the hospital, recovering from surgery, and Gingrich wanted to discuss the terms of their divorce. Gingrich has disputed that account. In 2011, their daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, said that it was her mother who requested the divorce, that it happened prior to the hospital stay, and that Gingrich's visit was for the purpose of bringing the couple's children to see their mother, not to discuss the divorce.
According to L.H. Carter, his campaign treasurer, Gingrich said of Battley: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer." Gingrich has denied saying it. His supporters dismiss Carter as a disgruntled former aide who was miffed at not being asked to accompany Gingrich to Washington.
Six months after the divorce from Battley was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther in 1981. In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his alleged affairs. In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther. He and Callista currently live in McLean, Virginia. In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying, "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."
A Southern Baptist since graduate school, Gingrich converted to Catholicism, Bisek's faith, on March 29, 2009. He said "over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace." The moment when he decided to officially become a Catholic was when he saw Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to the United States in 2008: "Catching a glimpse of Pope Benedict that day, I was struck by the happiness and peacefulness he exuded. The joyful and radiating presence of the Holy Father was a moment of confirmation about the many things I had been thinking and experiencing for several years." Gingrich has stated that he has developed a greater appreciation for the role of faith in public life following his conversion, and believes that the United States has become too secular. At a 2011 appearance in Columbus, Ohio, he said, "In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich
Showing posts with label newt gingrich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newt gingrich. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Gingrich Leadership Helped Illegals
WHAT DID GINGRICH BOMBSHELL IN LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE MEAN?
Gingrich's Leadership in 1996 Helped Ensure that Illegal Aliens Could Sink Deeper Roots in the U.S.
The mainstream news media is filled with awe that Newt Gingrich showed some "compassion" for illegal aliens in last night's GOP presidential debate. A look at his record while in Congress shows this is nothing new.
In fact, Gingrich's leadership in Congress is one of the reasons we have so many illegal aliens today who have been able to stay in this country for 25 years.
That's the supreme irony of Gingrich's pro-amnesty remarks in last night's debate. The man who helped ensure that illegal aliens from the 1980s and 1990s are still here in 2011 asked voters last night to consider the inhumanity of making illegal aliens leave this country after they have sunk such long roots here.
If, while Speaker of the House in the 1990s, Gingrich had shown any leadership in stopping illegal immigration, there would be very few illegal aliens still here from the 1980s and 1990s because they wouldn't have been able to hold payroll jobs.
Nobody pushed him last night to take a pro-amnesty stand. He volunteered it! By focusing on long-term illegal aliens, he took a big risk that the media spotlight (or at least the internet and talk radio spotlight) would shine on his long-term record with those illegal aliens.
What the spotlight will find is that Gingrich worked with Big Business lobbyists to make sure that employers could continue to hire illegal workers, and thus sink roots that would be used by pro-amnesty politicians to justify legalizing them today.
We hear the same arguments from the National Council of La Raza, from the ACLU, from the National Immigration Forum -- all of them cite the lack of past enforcement (which they impeded at every turn) as having allowed illegal aliens to sink such long roots that it would be unjust to make them go home now.
Gingrich reaffirmed his support for some legalizations several times last night. Here is his first comment:
"If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out."
-- Newt Gingrich
He went on to indicate that he would give them permanent legal residency and permanent work permits, but not U.S. citizenship. He and his supporters in the media say it isn't amnesty if the illegal aliens don't get citizenship. I suppose that is supposed to make the unemployed American who is left without a job feel better.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WOULD NOT BE A TOPIC IN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES IF SPEAKER GINGRICH IN 1996 HAD TAKEN DIFFERENT IMMIGRATION POSITIONS
The political stars were in alignment in 1995-96 when the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (appointed by the Senate and the House, and chaired by Barbara Jordan) issued its recommendations to protect vulnerable American workers. The immigration subcommittees of both House and Senate quickly presented legislation to carry out the recommendations to cut legal immigration in half and to stop illegal immigration, primarily by removing the jobs magnet.
As Speaker of the House, Gingrich was in the pivotal position to help Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith push through the 1996 comprehensive bill that set up the verification program that eventually was named "E-Verify."
The Commission had found that illegal immigration was booming in the 10 years since the 1986 blanket amnesty because illegal aliens had found it was still easy to obtain and keep U.S. jobs.
What did Speaker Gingrich do?
Those of us involved in that fight know that we were constantly and desperately seeking support from Gingrich which didn't come.
Instead, Gingrich tried to kill the new job verification system entirely. Fortunately, the killer amendment he supported failed. No thanks to Gingrich, we have an E-Verify system today.
But the E-Verify system is entirely VOLUNTARY today because of another House vote which Gingrich won. That vote was to make sure that the verification system would NOT be MANDATORY for employers.
The nation's Big Business lobbies deemed it essential that employers maintain the ability to cheat the paper verification system and hire illegal workers. Speaker Gingrich saw to it that the ability continued.
I am heartsick every time I think of that lost opportunity in 1996. If Speaker Gingrich had thrown his considerable talents and power behind the bi-partisan recommendations and supported Lamar Smith, most of the illegal aliens who arrived since then would not have bothered. And most of the illegal aliens who arrived before 1996 -- with less than 10 years of roots in this country -- would have gone back home.
Illegal immigration would not be topic of the 2012 Presidential debates.
And we would not be in a nationwide fight right now to support Rep. Lamar Smith once again (this time as chair of the Judiciary Committee) in yet another attempt to pass a mandatory verification bill (H.R. 2885). Nor would we see states across the country passing their own immigration enforcement laws -- because the number of illegal aliens would be so small.
PREFERENCE FOR FOREIGN WORKERS OVER AMERICAN WORKERS NOTHING NEW -- GINGRICH EARNED IMMIGRATION GRADE OF 'D' WHILE IN CONGRESS
NumbersUSA is the nation's top source on records of Members of Congress on immigration since 1989.
Here's the link to our report card on Gingrich's activities on 10 areas of immigration issues:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/my/congress/217/reportcard
You will see that he got excellent grades on Border issues and on denying taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens.
But he was terrible on everything else.
On the issue of amnesty, Gingrich acknowledged last night that he voted for the 1986 blanket amnesty which he says was a failure.
But during the 1990s, he showed no signs of learning from the 1986 amnesty failure. Congress passed several more smaller amnesties during the 1990s, primarily hiding them in other bills. Although we find only one instance of Gingrich casting a vote on those amnesties (in favor), we find no sign of Gingrich ever working against them or using his Speakership to stop them.
Despite that record, NumbersUSA earlier upgraded Gingrich's Presidential Grade Card rating on amnesty from "Bad" to "Unhelpful" based on public statements this year. We have been prepared to improve his ratings further if he makes more specific promises.
Our Presidential ratings are not tied totally to past records. What we are most interested in are public promises made during the campaign. Hardly any candidates have totally clean hands on the immigration issue in the past. Nearly all of them have favored corporate lobbyists and foreign workers over American workers and taxpayers at some time. But some have made dramatic improvements in their stances.
GINGRICH LEGALIZATION EXAMPLE WAS VERY NARROW --
WHY DID HE BRING IT UP?
Gingrich appeared to taunt Primary voters with the idea that they would lack compassion if they didn't agree with giving some kind of legalization to long-term illegal aliens. It was a bold move on his part, given than he is well aware that Texas Gov. Rick Perry plummeted in the polls after a debate comment that people have no compassion if they don't agree with in-state tuition for young illegal aliens.
Perhaps Gingrich will retreat under attack and note that he was talking about a tiny sliver of the population. After all, how many illegal aliens with families have been here 25 years or more? Not many. Does this mean he wouldn't give his legalization to illegal aliens who have been here 15 years? Or 24 years? Where's the cut-off?
I hope Gingrich does retreat. But his reference to a Krieble Foundation proposal suggests that he is thinking about far more than just 25-year illegal aliens.
"The Krieble Foundation has a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don't get a pass to citizenship. And so there's a way to ultimately end up with a country where there's no more illegality, but you haven't automatically given amnesty to anyone."
-- Newt Gingrich
Krieble has been peddling this idea for years. You may remember conservative darling Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana who a few years ago proposed a type of amnesty that knocked him off his pedestal. That proposal came from Krieble.
Basically, Krieble believes the country has huge labor shortage issues and that the reason we have so many illegal aliens is that we don't provide enough legal ways for foreign workers to get here.
Krieble would allow most illegal aliens to get work visas with various rules, but not citizenship that would allow them to vote for Democrats.
Here's the promotional page for the red cards:
http://www.krieble.org/frequently-asked-questions
Michelle Bachmann in the debate kept calling Gingrich's proposal an amnesty for most of the 11 million illegal aliens. Gingrich kept protesting that he wasn't talking about everybody. But his reference to Krieble raises big doubts.
The CNN moderator pressed Mitt Romney more than once to acknowledge that Gingrich was right to show compassion to his narrowly defined group of church-going illegal aliens.
Romney maintained a consistency he has shown through all the debates of rejecting any talk of amnesty now.
"Look, amnesty is a magnet. What when we have had in the past, programs that have said that if people who come here illegally are going to get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, that's going to only encourage more people to come here illegally."
-- Mitt Romney
Pressed further if he was saying that Gingrich's compassion is really about amnesty, Romney responded:
"There's no question. But to say that we're going to say to the people who have come here illegally that now you're all going to get to stay or some large number are going to get to stay and become permanent residents of the United States, that will only encourage more people to do the same thing. People respond to incentives. And if you can become a permanent resident of the United States by coming here illegally, you'll do so."
-- Romney
But wouldn't you let the family-loving, church-going illegal aliens who have been here 25 years stay, Romney was asked again.
"I'm not going to start drawing lines here about who gets to stay and who gets to go. The principle is that we are not going to have an amnesty system that says that people who come here illegally get to stay for the rest of their life in this country legally."
-- Romney
Romney went on to say that it was inappropriate in a debate to be sending signals to illegal aliens that certain of them should be rewarded for breaking the law.
Nonetheless, Romney and all the rest of the candidates failed to make the point that the reason illegal immigration must be reversed is to protect American workers and taxpayers.
That void led to a bunch of careless comments by Romney, Santorum and Gingrich about the country's need for highly-skilled immigrants -- indicating that they haven't looked at the unemployment rates for under-30 college grads, or that they don't care.
And that leads to the worst part of Gingrich's attempt to distinguish himself from the other candidates last night. He has rarely acknowledged that immigration policy has any effect on American workers.
To be fair, Gingrich has a mixed record on illegal immigration (despite the terrible blot on his E-Verify record described above). Dr. James Edwards, who wrote a book on the 1996 legislative battle, agrees with my assessment of Gingrich on matters of workplace verification. However, Edwards says that in the Conference Committee where Gingrich was wrestling with the White House, he stood his ground and kept the Clinton Administration from stripping out a number of non-workplace-related enforcement measures against illegal immigration.
In fact, Gingrich earlier this year came out in support of mandatory E-Verify. We have changed his Presidential E-Verify rating from "Abysmal" to "Excellent."
But if Gingrich is going to use some Krieble-type legalization to give most current illegal aliens work permits -- and if he is going to greatly expand guestworker programs for even more foreign workers -- mandatory E-Verify would not end up protecting many jobs for Americans.
During the 1990s on immigration issues, Gingrich represented the interests of the national Republican Establishment. That Establishment was fully behind the Bush amnesty attempts in 2006 and 2007. And that Republican Establishment is advising Republican congressional leaders and candidates today to stay away from anything that would like the bi-partisan immigration legislation of 1996 that would make immigration policy serve the needs and interests of Americans -- especially the most vulnerable of Americans.
Gingrich's salvo last night looks like an appeal for the Republican Establishment's support with hopes that the grassroots won't punish him.
----------------
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA, a non-partisan, non-ideological, immigration-reduction organization
Gingrich's Leadership in 1996 Helped Ensure that Illegal Aliens Could Sink Deeper Roots in the U.S.
The mainstream news media is filled with awe that Newt Gingrich showed some "compassion" for illegal aliens in last night's GOP presidential debate. A look at his record while in Congress shows this is nothing new.
In fact, Gingrich's leadership in Congress is one of the reasons we have so many illegal aliens today who have been able to stay in this country for 25 years.
That's the supreme irony of Gingrich's pro-amnesty remarks in last night's debate. The man who helped ensure that illegal aliens from the 1980s and 1990s are still here in 2011 asked voters last night to consider the inhumanity of making illegal aliens leave this country after they have sunk such long roots here.
If, while Speaker of the House in the 1990s, Gingrich had shown any leadership in stopping illegal immigration, there would be very few illegal aliens still here from the 1980s and 1990s because they wouldn't have been able to hold payroll jobs.
Nobody pushed him last night to take a pro-amnesty stand. He volunteered it! By focusing on long-term illegal aliens, he took a big risk that the media spotlight (or at least the internet and talk radio spotlight) would shine on his long-term record with those illegal aliens.
What the spotlight will find is that Gingrich worked with Big Business lobbyists to make sure that employers could continue to hire illegal workers, and thus sink roots that would be used by pro-amnesty politicians to justify legalizing them today.
We hear the same arguments from the National Council of La Raza, from the ACLU, from the National Immigration Forum -- all of them cite the lack of past enforcement (which they impeded at every turn) as having allowed illegal aliens to sink such long roots that it would be unjust to make them go home now.
Gingrich reaffirmed his support for some legalizations several times last night. Here is his first comment:
"If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out."
-- Newt Gingrich
He went on to indicate that he would give them permanent legal residency and permanent work permits, but not U.S. citizenship. He and his supporters in the media say it isn't amnesty if the illegal aliens don't get citizenship. I suppose that is supposed to make the unemployed American who is left without a job feel better.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WOULD NOT BE A TOPIC IN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES IF SPEAKER GINGRICH IN 1996 HAD TAKEN DIFFERENT IMMIGRATION POSITIONS
The political stars were in alignment in 1995-96 when the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (appointed by the Senate and the House, and chaired by Barbara Jordan) issued its recommendations to protect vulnerable American workers. The immigration subcommittees of both House and Senate quickly presented legislation to carry out the recommendations to cut legal immigration in half and to stop illegal immigration, primarily by removing the jobs magnet.
As Speaker of the House, Gingrich was in the pivotal position to help Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith push through the 1996 comprehensive bill that set up the verification program that eventually was named "E-Verify."
The Commission had found that illegal immigration was booming in the 10 years since the 1986 blanket amnesty because illegal aliens had found it was still easy to obtain and keep U.S. jobs.
What did Speaker Gingrich do?
Those of us involved in that fight know that we were constantly and desperately seeking support from Gingrich which didn't come.
Instead, Gingrich tried to kill the new job verification system entirely. Fortunately, the killer amendment he supported failed. No thanks to Gingrich, we have an E-Verify system today.
But the E-Verify system is entirely VOLUNTARY today because of another House vote which Gingrich won. That vote was to make sure that the verification system would NOT be MANDATORY for employers.
The nation's Big Business lobbies deemed it essential that employers maintain the ability to cheat the paper verification system and hire illegal workers. Speaker Gingrich saw to it that the ability continued.
I am heartsick every time I think of that lost opportunity in 1996. If Speaker Gingrich had thrown his considerable talents and power behind the bi-partisan recommendations and supported Lamar Smith, most of the illegal aliens who arrived since then would not have bothered. And most of the illegal aliens who arrived before 1996 -- with less than 10 years of roots in this country -- would have gone back home.
Illegal immigration would not be topic of the 2012 Presidential debates.
And we would not be in a nationwide fight right now to support Rep. Lamar Smith once again (this time as chair of the Judiciary Committee) in yet another attempt to pass a mandatory verification bill (H.R. 2885). Nor would we see states across the country passing their own immigration enforcement laws -- because the number of illegal aliens would be so small.
PREFERENCE FOR FOREIGN WORKERS OVER AMERICAN WORKERS NOTHING NEW -- GINGRICH EARNED IMMIGRATION GRADE OF 'D' WHILE IN CONGRESS
NumbersUSA is the nation's top source on records of Members of Congress on immigration since 1989.
Here's the link to our report card on Gingrich's activities on 10 areas of immigration issues:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/my/congress/217/reportcard
You will see that he got excellent grades on Border issues and on denying taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens.
But he was terrible on everything else.
On the issue of amnesty, Gingrich acknowledged last night that he voted for the 1986 blanket amnesty which he says was a failure.
But during the 1990s, he showed no signs of learning from the 1986 amnesty failure. Congress passed several more smaller amnesties during the 1990s, primarily hiding them in other bills. Although we find only one instance of Gingrich casting a vote on those amnesties (in favor), we find no sign of Gingrich ever working against them or using his Speakership to stop them.
Despite that record, NumbersUSA earlier upgraded Gingrich's Presidential Grade Card rating on amnesty from "Bad" to "Unhelpful" based on public statements this year. We have been prepared to improve his ratings further if he makes more specific promises.
Our Presidential ratings are not tied totally to past records. What we are most interested in are public promises made during the campaign. Hardly any candidates have totally clean hands on the immigration issue in the past. Nearly all of them have favored corporate lobbyists and foreign workers over American workers and taxpayers at some time. But some have made dramatic improvements in their stances.
GINGRICH LEGALIZATION EXAMPLE WAS VERY NARROW --
WHY DID HE BRING IT UP?
Gingrich appeared to taunt Primary voters with the idea that they would lack compassion if they didn't agree with giving some kind of legalization to long-term illegal aliens. It was a bold move on his part, given than he is well aware that Texas Gov. Rick Perry plummeted in the polls after a debate comment that people have no compassion if they don't agree with in-state tuition for young illegal aliens.
Perhaps Gingrich will retreat under attack and note that he was talking about a tiny sliver of the population. After all, how many illegal aliens with families have been here 25 years or more? Not many. Does this mean he wouldn't give his legalization to illegal aliens who have been here 15 years? Or 24 years? Where's the cut-off?
I hope Gingrich does retreat. But his reference to a Krieble Foundation proposal suggests that he is thinking about far more than just 25-year illegal aliens.
"The Krieble Foundation has a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don't get a pass to citizenship. And so there's a way to ultimately end up with a country where there's no more illegality, but you haven't automatically given amnesty to anyone."
-- Newt Gingrich
Krieble has been peddling this idea for years. You may remember conservative darling Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana who a few years ago proposed a type of amnesty that knocked him off his pedestal. That proposal came from Krieble.
Basically, Krieble believes the country has huge labor shortage issues and that the reason we have so many illegal aliens is that we don't provide enough legal ways for foreign workers to get here.
Krieble would allow most illegal aliens to get work visas with various rules, but not citizenship that would allow them to vote for Democrats.
Here's the promotional page for the red cards:
http://www.krieble.org/frequently-asked-questions
Michelle Bachmann in the debate kept calling Gingrich's proposal an amnesty for most of the 11 million illegal aliens. Gingrich kept protesting that he wasn't talking about everybody. But his reference to Krieble raises big doubts.
The CNN moderator pressed Mitt Romney more than once to acknowledge that Gingrich was right to show compassion to his narrowly defined group of church-going illegal aliens.
Romney maintained a consistency he has shown through all the debates of rejecting any talk of amnesty now.
"Look, amnesty is a magnet. What when we have had in the past, programs that have said that if people who come here illegally are going to get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, that's going to only encourage more people to come here illegally."
-- Mitt Romney
Pressed further if he was saying that Gingrich's compassion is really about amnesty, Romney responded:
"There's no question. But to say that we're going to say to the people who have come here illegally that now you're all going to get to stay or some large number are going to get to stay and become permanent residents of the United States, that will only encourage more people to do the same thing. People respond to incentives. And if you can become a permanent resident of the United States by coming here illegally, you'll do so."
-- Romney
But wouldn't you let the family-loving, church-going illegal aliens who have been here 25 years stay, Romney was asked again.
"I'm not going to start drawing lines here about who gets to stay and who gets to go. The principle is that we are not going to have an amnesty system that says that people who come here illegally get to stay for the rest of their life in this country legally."
-- Romney
Romney went on to say that it was inappropriate in a debate to be sending signals to illegal aliens that certain of them should be rewarded for breaking the law.
Nonetheless, Romney and all the rest of the candidates failed to make the point that the reason illegal immigration must be reversed is to protect American workers and taxpayers.
That void led to a bunch of careless comments by Romney, Santorum and Gingrich about the country's need for highly-skilled immigrants -- indicating that they haven't looked at the unemployment rates for under-30 college grads, or that they don't care.
And that leads to the worst part of Gingrich's attempt to distinguish himself from the other candidates last night. He has rarely acknowledged that immigration policy has any effect on American workers.
To be fair, Gingrich has a mixed record on illegal immigration (despite the terrible blot on his E-Verify record described above). Dr. James Edwards, who wrote a book on the 1996 legislative battle, agrees with my assessment of Gingrich on matters of workplace verification. However, Edwards says that in the Conference Committee where Gingrich was wrestling with the White House, he stood his ground and kept the Clinton Administration from stripping out a number of non-workplace-related enforcement measures against illegal immigration.
In fact, Gingrich earlier this year came out in support of mandatory E-Verify. We have changed his Presidential E-Verify rating from "Abysmal" to "Excellent."
But if Gingrich is going to use some Krieble-type legalization to give most current illegal aliens work permits -- and if he is going to greatly expand guestworker programs for even more foreign workers -- mandatory E-Verify would not end up protecting many jobs for Americans.
During the 1990s on immigration issues, Gingrich represented the interests of the national Republican Establishment. That Establishment was fully behind the Bush amnesty attempts in 2006 and 2007. And that Republican Establishment is advising Republican congressional leaders and candidates today to stay away from anything that would like the bi-partisan immigration legislation of 1996 that would make immigration policy serve the needs and interests of Americans -- especially the most vulnerable of Americans.
Gingrich's salvo last night looks like an appeal for the Republican Establishment's support with hopes that the grassroots won't punish him.
----------------
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA, a non-partisan, non-ideological, immigration-reduction organization
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Newt Gingrich: In Case You Forgot
House Banking Scandal: Newt Bounced 22 Checks
Remember the House Banking scandal, where so many congressmen wrote rubber checks on government money? Newt hopes you don't, because he bounced 22 himself, which almost cost him reelection in 1992. His vote for the secret House pay raise, and the chauffeur who drove him around Washington in a Lincoln Town Car, didn't help.
Family Values? Pressing Wife for Divorce in the Hospital:
"He walked out in the spring of 1980.... By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said, "Daddy is downstairs. Could he come up?" When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from my surgery." - Jackie, his first wife.
Draft Dodger:
Though he relentlessly pushes military spending and talks like a bigtime hawk, Gingrich avoided the Vietnam War through a combination of student and family deferments. (He married one of his teachers at age 19.)
Read Much More Here:
GINGRICH EXPOSED, AGAIN
One Of His Latest Scandals ...
Did Newt Gingrich Play a Part in Freddie Mac's Fundraising Scandal?
NOV 17 2011, 11:03 AM ET 8
The beginning of his consulting relationship with the company coincided with its decision to illegally funnel money to Republicans
The Bloomberg Businessweek article about Newt Gingrich's $1.6 million Freddie Mac payday notes that he first interacted with the company in 1999, when his primary contact was Robert Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac's chief lobbyist, and that "he was paid a self-renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000."
That gig lasted until 2002.
Interestingly, that was a time of scandal at Freddie Mac.
Let's go to the Associated Press archives:
Was it?
Whether or not Gingrich bore partial responsibility for the illegal strategy, is it credible that he was unaware that the organization paying him so handsomely was also holding dozens of fundraisers and funneling big money to his recent colleagues? As Gingrich said Wednesday, in the course of defending himself, "It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington. We just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well. So, having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing." Did Gingrich know Washington well enough to see that his main contact at Freddie Mac was pursuing an illegal strategy?
Remember the House Banking scandal, where so many congressmen wrote rubber checks on government money? Newt hopes you don't, because he bounced 22 himself, which almost cost him reelection in 1992. His vote for the secret House pay raise, and the chauffeur who drove him around Washington in a Lincoln Town Car, didn't help.
Family Values? Pressing Wife for Divorce in the Hospital:
"He walked out in the spring of 1980.... By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said, "Daddy is downstairs. Could he come up?" When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from my surgery." - Jackie, his first wife.
Draft Dodger:
Though he relentlessly pushes military spending and talks like a bigtime hawk, Gingrich avoided the Vietnam War through a combination of student and family deferments. (He married one of his teachers at age 19.)
Read Much More Here:
GINGRICH EXPOSED, AGAIN
One Of His Latest Scandals ...
Did Newt Gingrich Play a Part in Freddie Mac's Fundraising Scandal?
NOV 17 2011, 11:03 AM ET 8
The beginning of his consulting relationship with the company coincided with its decision to illegally funnel money to Republicans
The Bloomberg Businessweek article about Newt Gingrich's $1.6 million Freddie Mac payday notes that he first interacted with the company in 1999, when his primary contact was Robert Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac's chief lobbyist, and that "he was paid a self-renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000."
That gig lasted until 2002.
Interestingly, that was a time of scandal at Freddie Mac.
Let's go to the Associated Press archives:
Freddie Mac was accused of illegally using corporate resources between 2000 and 2003 for 85 fundraisers that collected about $1.7 million for federal candidates. Much of the fundraising benefited members of the House Financial Services Committee, a panel whose decisions can affect Freddie Mac. The fundraisers were organized by then-Freddie Mac lobbyists Robert Mitchell Delk and Clark Camper, who described them to the corporation's board of directors as "political risk management," the FEC [Federal Election Commission] said.
... Freddie Mac had held more than 40 fundraisers for House Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio. The FEC also found Freddie Mac officials used staff and resources to raise money from company employees to give to candidates, and that in 2002 the corporation itself gave $150,000 to the Republican Governors Association. The RGA ultimately returned the money.
Due to that illegal contribution and those fundraisers, Freddie Mac ultimately paid a $3.8 million fine, the biggest to date in Federal Election Commission history. It could be coincidence that, just as a powerful former speaker of the House was hired by the organization's chief lobbyist as a highly paid consultant, it began to funnel large amounts of money to his erstwhile Republican colleagues.
Was it?
Whether or not Gingrich bore partial responsibility for the illegal strategy, is it credible that he was unaware that the organization paying him so handsomely was also holding dozens of fundraisers and funneling big money to his recent colleagues? As Gingrich said Wednesday, in the course of defending himself, "It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington. We just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well. So, having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing." Did Gingrich know Washington well enough to see that his main contact at Freddie Mac was pursuing an illegal strategy?
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