The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/3/09 Section: Opinions

ZAID JILANI

Newt Gingrich wants attention. How do I know? Because the visiting law professor has been using the s-word - socialism. At the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, he lambasted Obama's effort to "create a European socialist government" and roll back "American free enterprise."

And on Sean Hannity's show, he compared Obama's economic plans to a "dictatorship."

Next Tuesday, he's giving a speech in the Chapel about "Effective American Policy in a Dangerous World," in which he'll likely rant about the existential threat a handful of guerrillas in the Middle East pose to our country; his Web site is headlined with a picture of a nuclear explosion with the ominous caption "A Single Nuke Could Destroy America" (maybe he should add "if AIG doesn't first").

All of this overblown rhetoric from Gingrich can only mean one thing - he's running for president.

I think he'd be a great president. He has every quality our presidents always have - he's completely unqualified, he has little regard for anyone other than his base of rich donors, and is a blatant hypocrite.

See, I've seen his work firsthand. When I was young, we moved to Kennesaw, in Cobb County. It was severely underdeveloped. We had to drive 20 minutes to get groceries.

Around this time, Gingrich became Speaker of the House. He immediately took aim at the welfare state. Under Gingrich, labor laws were eviscerated, the budgets for Temporary Aid for Needy Families and Aid for Families With Dependent Children were gutted, and all sorts of support for the poor, disabled and elderly was slashed.

One study by the Skillman Center for Children found that conditions for poor children were "worse than at any time during the last 30 years" due to Gingrich's cuts.

Yet as he virtually was waging war on poor parts of the country, he was quietly using taxpayer dollars to turn Cobb County into the Sweden of Georgia. In 1995, Cobb received more federal subsidies than any suburban county in the country outside Arlington, Va., (a federal district) and Brevard County, Fla., where the Kennedy Space Center is based.

That's right, the "free market" champion was the biggest socialist in Congress.

That's the dirty little secret of American capitalism - it doesn't actually exist. It hasn't in more than a century. Every major industry in this country receives or has received enormous federal support.

It's a welfare state for the wealthy.

Rich guys such as Gingrich, who finance their politics primarily with corporate dollars, extol the virtues of the market only to get to Washington and shower their contributors with federal subsidies.

Meanwhile, any attempt to help poor or working people is derided as "socialism." There are a few honest politicians, such as Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who really do believe in capitalism, but for the most part, the Washington consensus is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us.

Though I doubt Newt is actually religious - he's a serial adulterer, which is a no-no in the Christian faith - he likes to pretend he is when he's on TV by fear-mongering about the "radical secular left." Therefore, he should know the definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels. He's a perfect example.

I change my mind. He'd be a terrible president. Two years ago, Chris Matthews told me he thought Gingrich was an "awful, awful person." I think we already have enough folks like that in government.

- Zaid Jilani is a senior from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.

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