Primary Preview: Newt and Santorum on Edge

Tuesday’s Alabama and Mississippi primaries are all-important for Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Each are staking their campaigns on how well they perform Tuesday night, and bolstering that whoever loses should drop out.

Gingrich has essentially been banking his campaign on his performance in the South since the Florida primary loss to Mitt Romney. Gingrich at the time knew the northern contests in Michigan and Ohio would not play well to his favor and never put much into those primaries. Now Gingrich has a chance to prove his candidacy, and legitimize his reluctance to drop from the race, by showing he’s a strong favorite through the south and that, for instance, if Rick Santorum were to drop out, Gingrich could sway a large portion of Santorum’s voters his way to defeat Romney.

This is ostensibly the same argument Rick Santorum is making. In light of last week’s primary wins in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Dakota, and his near victory in Ohio, the Santorum campaign has publicly pressured Gingrich to drop out, arguing voters will coalesce behind him to defeat Romney.

Both candidates have strong cases for the other to concede defeat. Anti-Romney sentiment runs high in the GOP, seeing his wealth as a bulwark to connect with the average voter – and his gaffe-prone campaign cements that image nearly every day. Romney also does not have strong support in the south. Gingrich is from Georgia and can easily wrap up several southeast states in the general election. If voters are given Romney as the candidate, they may be willing to vote for Obama simply based on the improving conditions of the economy. Santorum, in contrast, polls well with southerners on social issues and can pull the evangelical vote his way throughout the south and the beltway. The evangelical voting-block could be essential for republicans this fall if they stand any chance of winning the White House. A poll today of likely GOP voters shows that a large majority of Alabama and Mississippi voters do not believe the President’s continued stated admission of his Christian beliefs and think he is a Muslim. But let’s be honest, Mississippi and Alabama also rank in the bottom 5 in education with some of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country. So, there’s that.

But maybe Romney still has the best argument for both Santorum and Gingrich to drop out. According to weekend polling in Mississippi and Alabama, Romney is virtually in a dead-heat with these other candidates. If he doesn’t win either state outright, he’ll still secure some delegates and inch ever-closer to the magic 1,144 needed for the nomination. And after last week’s big Ohio victory, the Romney campaign began making their case that they should be the nominee. Of course, it’s not about policies or that he really is the better candidate. It’s math! The Romney campaign thinks the others should drop out because they can’t possibly reach 1,144 delegates now, so, just get out! I know nobody wants me to win, but I’ve got a twenty run lead. You should just forfeit now in the bottom of the third. I’ll pay you…

~ Jason Owen with TJ Walker and AmericanLP

Super Tuesday Not Super For Mitt Romney

Super Tuesday offered a chance for Mitt Romney to finally secure the Republican nomination. It didn’t happen, despite narrowly winning the all-important Ohio contest. Here’s a round-up of the Super Tuesday results:

Mitt Romney won the crucial Ohio race, but it was neck-and-neck with his top contender Rick Santorum. Romney beat Santorum by a slim 1% margin, further proof of anti-Romney sentiment. This win was much less impactful than if Santorum had been the one to eek out a victory, especially in light of other key losses. But the former Governor did manage to win his other “home” state, Massachusetts, with a resounding 72% of the vote. Vermont, Alaska, and Idaho also fell his way. Virginia should have been a solid win for Romney, but comes with a heavy asterisk: Romney and Rep. Ron Paul were the only two candidates on the ballot. Romney earned 60% of the vote, but Paul’s 40% again shows the public’s timidity when it comes to their trust of “two-Cadillac” Romney.

Rick Santorum, by most counts, had a great night. He may not have won Ohio, but he came close, and it stands to reason if Newt Gingrich now drops out, Santorum will pick up most of the anti-Romney supporters. But what made Santorum’s night particularly noticeable were his wins in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Dakota, showing he still has the key evangelical vote. Santorum, however, is still having trouble garnering attention from more moderate republicans with his wild, dangerous social issues campaign. He has tried repeatedly to shift the message of this election from the economy to social issues. It worked in Tennessee last night and could be crucial for wins in the southern primaries next week.

Newt Gingrich had a terrible night. He won Georgia, his home state, a surprise to no one, but failed to make an impact anywhere else on the board. He might have shown strong in Virginia, but he wasn’t on the ballot, and his campaign is hurting financially. He needs wins in the next couple of weeks in key southern states: the Missouri and Kansas caucuses, as well as Alabama and Mississippi. However, Santorum is polling high in those states and it doesn’t look likely that Gingrich will muster enough votes for a victory. More reason the Santorum camp is urging Gingrich to drop out.

Ron Paul suffered a harsh blow on Tuesday night. He did well in Virginia, but didn’t persuade republicans that he can beat Romney head-to-head. In North Dakota, Vermont, and Alaska, he also performed well, but failed to win any of the decisions. He managed only 9.3% of the vote in Ohio, and only picked up 21 delegates. Paul has a strong backing, but it looks like he’ll never get the delegates needed for the nomination.

President Obama was perhaps the biggest winner of Super Tuesday. Republican voters are so un-energized and dissatisfied with their nominees that, come November it will be difficult for conservative operatives to rally behind just one person. Romney did inch closer to the nomination to face off against Obama this fall, but Romney is still not generating any kind of excitement from the republican base. This reinforces the fact that Obama’s reelection is in his own hands and he may just cruise to victory.

~ Jason Owen with TJ Walker at AmericanLP

Rachel Maddow: Limbaugh "doesn't know what contraception is."

Rachel Maddow delved into the Rush Limbaugh controversy on her show last night and took the conservative political pundit to task for his incredible misunderstanding of how contraceptives work and how women use them. It's a long video, but watch the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.

Rick Santorum's Theocracy

I'm really trying to wrap my head around a Rick Santorum presidential victory and what it might mean for the country. And I find it a frightening scenario. First of all, I honestly do not think it will happen. I believe Michiganders will finally start thinking again before next Tuesday's Republican primary and Mitt Romney will win out after being ahead, then drastically falling, only to come to a tie again the weekend before the voters cast their ballots (that is, if he stops talking long enough...). This win for Romney will once again set him up as the front runner and I don't foresee Santorum coming back again. Much of Santorum's fall, however, is based on his own missteps (more on that momentarily). But should Santorum come in a close second in Michigan, and perhaps steal a few more primaries along the way, he could potentially be the Republican nominee against Obama. And even though many voters claim their highest priority is the economy in 2012, for many more the simple expulsion of Obama from the presidency factors much more and it may mean the President is not elected, giving candidate Santorum the White House. And if this happens, the bitterness still stinging your tongue from the Bush administration will suddenly seem like the most decadent wine you've ever tasted.

The number 1 issue on voters minds right now is the economy. Santorum, to his credit, recognizes he doesn't have the greatest record when it comes to the economy, spending, and earmarks, and his opponents are hitting him hard on it. Santorum's plan of government cuts and tax reductions will actually increase the deficit, just as Gingrich's and Romney's plans will do. In actuality, Ron Paul's deficit reduction plan is the only plan of the 4 remaining Republican candidates that will effectively reduce the deficit. Knowing his economic past may come back to haunt him, Santorum has attempted a debate 'coup' to change what the candidates are talking about. He criticized President Obama last week of practicing a "phony theology," questioning the very nature of the President's beliefs. Many from both sides of the aisle criticized this statement, and those who are incredulous to President Obama's stated Christian beliefs, and excoriated them for their double-standards. Santorum has also loudly drummed the "contraception controversy" and spoken of the President's "war on religion". Santorum is playing to his strengths and what he perceives as his best chance to secure the nomination and the White House: social issues. But there is a larger pretext to all of this: Santorum's want to create law based solely on "biblical law".

Santorum's questioning of President Obama's beliefs and his advocating to outlaw birth control, as well as abortions, and prohibiting same-sex marriage are directly linked to the former Senator's strict Catholic upbringing. Where most candidates and public officials recognize and abide the Constitution's separation of church and state, Santorum seems to be wholly ignorant of it (something many Conservatives might find interesting), or willfully blind to achieve his own selfish ends. The former Senator is running on a campaign that would essentially be the most theocratic administration in power in over 100 years. Santorum has unequivocally stated that civil law should "comport with God's law." Here's a video of him saying just that:

Santorum believes that sex serves no other purpose than procreation. He thinks sex, unless in the act of conceiving, is immoral. He believes this so strongly that he does not think contraception should be legal. He believes this so strongly that he does not think abortions should be legal, even in the cases of rape, incest, or if a woman's life is in danger. He believes this so strongly that, though he claims to have nothing against gay people and purports to "know" many homosexuals, he thinks homosexuality is a sin because there is no biological expedient to homosexual sex, therefore making it immoral. As President, and as a member of the "liberty loving" right wing, Santorum would make all of these things illegal because he believes more strongly in a book written 2,000 years ago than all of the literature, math, and scientific advancements achieved since. In the era where Republicans overwhelmingly bemoan the overreach of government in our daily lives, Santorum seeks to effectively control you to your very bedroom.

And did you notice that bit in the video right at the outset there too? He says, in Islam the civil law and the higher law are the same, what one Newt Gingrich might call 'Sharia Law,' but the United States is different because we have civil laws unrelated to higher laws but they ought to comport with the higher law... Um, what? So, basically, Rick Santorum is promoting that we should have 'Christian Sharia Law'? How is that any better than 'Islamic Sharia Law'? How would that be better than 'Jewish Sharia Law'? A theocracy is a theocracy. Maybe Rick Santorum doesn't exactly know his world history and that thousands of our American ancestors fled Europe to escape theocracies (and still found themselves plenty of theocratic colonies in the New World). But I doubt it. I think he knows full well what he's doing. And that scares me the most.

The Daily Show: Republicans Break Obama's Promises

     

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - President Evil
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

      Part 2:
     

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - President Evil 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

     

AmericanLP Daily News Brief 2/17/12

AmericanLP covers all the top headlines in politics on both sides of the aisle in this morning’s news brief. Major headlines yesterday once again pointed to a rebounding economy. New applications for unemployment hit a 4-year low. Also, the DNC released a new ad, which you can view at the 1:15 mark, highlighting the diverging ideologies between the Obama administration’s decision to save the auto industry and Mitt Romney’s 2008 Op-Ed “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. The bailout was unequivocally a successful administrative decision for President Obama, and coupling this with the rate for unemployment applications falling, and last week’s news that the overall unemployment rate has fallen to 8.3 percent, we have public opinion of the President quickly on the rise. 44% of Americans, according to a Pew Research Center poll believe economic conditions will be better in 2013 than this year. This coincides with a CNN poll yesterday showing the President’s approval rating is back to 50% for the first time in 8 months. The administration, and the Obama re-election campaign, have really begun hammering home the jobs numbers, focusing not on the unemployment rate so much, as that number is still unfortunately high, but rightly talking about how bad things were when Obama came into office (750,000 jobs hemorrhaging from the economy per month) to how his policies have vastly turned this country around (250,000 jobs added in January; a 1 million point swing) and have created the most manufacturing jobs since the 1990’s.

Switching over, AmericanLP discusses the latest from the GOP presidential campaign. Mitt Romney, on the verge of losing his front runner status in some polls, gave a speech Thursday in which he addressed the concerns of entrepreneurs looking for funding to start their own business. In a swipe at the Solyndra controversy, Romney excoriated the benefits of government funding a start-up business and instead suggested entrepreneurs should apply to venture capitalists, angels, or their parents for funding. A statement such as this is on par with Romney’s “$10,000 bet” and once again reinforces the notion that Romney is so fiscally out-of-touch with the general American public (the average salary for Americans is $26,000/year; Romney makes $57,000/day) that it’s hard to fathom how he’ll win the nomination. Romney was born to the kind of wealth where if he wanted to start his own company, he could go to his parents for the capital to get the project off the ground. However, most Americans cannot. Most Americans struggle to pay their own bills, and many are helping their parents through retirement after the recession. It seems every time Romney opens his mouth, he further ostracizes himself from the general American public. Maybe that’s why he chose to drop out of the CNN Georgia debate scheduled in a couple weeks. Rick Santorum also declined the invitation; his motivations for doing so are less clear. With less money and generally one of the candidates who performs well in these debates, it doesn’t really play to Santorum’s strengths not to participate. But Santorum was not immune to the ‘tax return release’ scrutiny either. Santorum released 4 years of his tax returns and they paint a startling contrast to much of what Santorum has been saying on the campaign trail. Posturing himself as a threat to big government, Santorum has actually made $3.6M in lobbying fees since losing his re-election bid for the U.S. Senate. Try as he might, Santorum seems just as much a “Washington Insider” as Newt Gingrich.

A new segment on AmericanLP, “News From The 14^th Century,” highlights the ridiculous spectacle yesterday from Congress where Darrell Issa barred a woman from testifying on a birth control hearing in response to the contraception controversy. Republicans, for all their talk of individual freedom, want to deny women access to birth control, even though 98% of Catholic women say they have used some form of contraceptive in their life. Issa, instead of allowing one woman to testify, decided to fill the panel with men and priests. Clearly, they’ll have a deeper understanding of contraception than any woman might…

These are just a few of the highlights from this morning’s briefing. Watch the whole video for more news in politics from around the country. ~ Jason Owen with TJ Walker

Allen West: The Personal Good

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place late last week in Washington D.C. All the biggest names in Republican politics were in attendance, and even some Occupy Wall Street protesters decided to join in on the excitement, or maybe just create some on their own. There were countless speakers throughout the conference, each offering up their litany of excuses not only as to why President Obama is such a bad president, but why he's such a bad person. Frankly, that's all anybody has heard who's been even remotely paying attention through the twenty-something debates the GOP primary has had so far, so as an outsider and liberal, none of that stuff really excited me. Mitt Romney didn't convince me any more than he did Sarah Palin that he's conservative. Rick Santorum gave a well received, though ultimately uninspired speech at the conference, and failed to hold the momentum he gained earlier in the week with a sweep of lat Tuesday night's caucuses. On Saturday, Santorum placed a distant 3rd in Maine's caucus. Ron Paul continues to hold his firm grasp of a decent-sized portion of the GOP electorate, narrowly beating front runner Romney in Maine. And Newt: I'm not too sure he's over the hill quite yet. But there was at least one thing I heard coming from CPAC that interested me.

Florida Congressman Allen West gave a speech on Friday night where he laid out this little tidbit, "We also realize that the public good is a misnomer, created by our liberal friends. It is not the public good that matters. It is the personal good."

I'm quite astonished by this statement. To me, this sounds like one of the most selfish things ever uttered by a man. It is made worse that Rep. Allen West considers himself a christian, a religion that teaches the practice of helping others in need, "do unto thyself as you do unto others," and to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ". Not only does this statement fly in the face of West's supposed religious beliefs, but it flies in the face of American values. We are the "United States," are we not? It's difficult to separate the inherent "public" of this nation when 50 territories (and thousands of others still within those) are bound by a simple doctrine of "We the people..." A statement such as West's is so callous and base that it makes me wonder how I grew up in the same society as a man elected to public office who would say this. Personal good means nothing without public good. If the public lacks freedom then the individual is bereft of it. If the public lacks goods and services then the individual is in want of these. If the public lacks safety, the individual is isolated in fear of everyone around them, and the more selfish they become the smaller the island to which they are immured.

Mitt Romney Wins New Hampshire

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary tonight. The numbers as of press time show Romney with about 36% of the vote, about 11% more than his closest rival, Ron Paul. While that is a large margin, and CNN was able to call the primary just after 8 pm eastern time for the former governor when the polls were officially closed, it was not necessarily a decisive one. The Huffington Post splashed as their headline tonight, “5 Years Campaigning, Less Than 40%?” Romney has ostensibly never quit his 2008 presidential bid in New Hampshire, keeping offices open, continuing to build support over the last 4 years, much like what Congressman Paul had done down in Iowa (yet it still couldn’t get him a win). Romney did win, but he was only able to garner roughly 36% of the primary voters. With a lasting campaign as he had had, one might have thought New Hampshire would be a runaway victory for Governor Romney.

In all likelihood, Romney will win the nomination. There really is nobody in the field who can match his campaign when it comes to spending and donations. Through his own resources and the capital of the Pro-Romney Super PACS, he can fend off any surge by the other candidates in the race. Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, they all rose and fell without Romney needing to do much. They had no chance when it came to Iowa, or New Hampshire. They beat themselves. Newt Gingrich, however, was a different story. With less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich saw a huge shift in support from likely voters. And with the holidays coming up, and the focus shifting off Iowa for a hot-minute, Gingrich looked poised to roll into the final week with a commanding lead. Sensing a shift in momentum, Romney (and his Super PACS) stepped in. They blanketed the airwaves with attack ads on the former House Speaker calling into question his integrity, his record, his marital strife. And it worked. Gingrich’s popularity plummeted and Romney went “all-in” in Iowa hoping to shut down this roulette wheel of Republican flavors-of-the-month. It didn’t quite work. Former Sen. Rick Santorum played well with Iowa voters with his social conservative issues and nearly pulled off an upset. Without a decisive victory, Romney would still have a large field of contenders to bat off in New Hampshire.

It’s a week later, and I don’t see that much has changed. Sure Romney won by more than 10% (with a field of five), but it’s not a knockout punch. Rick Perry, after tonight, should really drop out. But he was never focused on New Hampshire and has instead been looking to South Carolina’s primary on Jan. 21. But his showing was so bad tonight, and his campaign has been running on life-support for weeks, that he should just give up while still ahead. Of course, I probably could say the same thing about Jon Huntsman, but he never even bothered with Iowa. His focus was New Hampshire and it worked – to an extent. Huntsman will likely finish a strong 3^rd in New Hampshire, but with no base whatsoever in South Carolina to speak of it’s difficult to say how he can press on from here. Huntsman really did need a 1^st or 2^nd place tonight to get the momentum he needed in the coming weeks. With only about 15-18% of the vote in New Hampshire, and a significant distance to catch Ron Paul, this does not bode well for his campaign in the coming weeks. But then this all comes back around to Romney and how poor his numbers were for the evening.

Without breaking the 40% margin, Romney has to be wondering what is missing from his campaign to draw in new voters. There must be some consternation on his part that the anti-Romney popularity has not yet finished weaving its way through the field of contenders. About 30% of voters this past weekend were still undecided going to the voting booth and Romney's final tally were fairly consistent with his polling numbers, meaning he still has not done what's needed to sway the undecided to his camp. If given a few more days, or another week, might Huntsman turned more support his way? We can't say for sure now. South Carolina might still have something to say for Jon Huntsman. It may have something to say for all the other candidates as well. Rick Santorum's social issues might play better in SC. Newt Gingrich is from neighboring Georgia. Ron Paul's libertarian base seems to be holding steady between 20-25% of republican voters. If New Hampshire is indicative of South Carolina in its population of undecided voters, we might not be any closer to solidifying a republican nominee for the White House in 11 more days. And the longer this strings along, the worse it will be for Romney.

Gingrich Putting the Children to Work

With the Republican Presidential nomination race maintaining its highly contested aura, the candidates are searching for ways each can pull ahead. Generally such a highly contested race might spur some candidates to veer more towards the middle, to a more moderate stance in their party to avoid becoming the outlier, the crazy one, and draw more supporters. If we look back at the 2008 Presidential election, there were many independents on the fence about voting for an untested Barack Obama, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t bring themselves to lay down their vote for the gaffe-prone, “rogue,” Sarah Palin, John McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. After the landslide margin of victory for the Democrats in that election, you’d think the Republican Party might have turned down the far Right rhetoric. But it only seemed to get worse after Obama took office. And now here we are one year out from the 2012 election and it seems the crazier the Republican nominee, the better chance they have of winning the nomination.

That’s where Newt Gingrich comes in. Once considered completely out of the race, suddenly the former Speaker of the House finds himself in the lead with a slight edge over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Romney has had his share of problems, mostly his John Kerry-like indecisiveness and “flip-flopping” on key issues. (I use the term ‘flip-flopping’ here loosely. Romney, I feel if elected, would actually move far more the Left of his current positions on certain issues. I believe he’s aware that the GOP has shifted drastically Right since Obama’s election and to simply court the vote, Romney is veering far Right until the nomination.) Gingrich, on the other hand, has simply maintained. He has not had the major flubs that Michelle Bachmann and Gov. Rick Perry have had. Also, despite Gingrich’s marital problems, no extra-marital affairs or sexual harassment allegations have sprung up, like nose-diving Herman Cain. What Gingrich has going for him thus far seems to be only that he is the GOP’s self-professed “ideas man.” What exactly has Gingrich come up with lately? Well, this week he once again attacked child labor laws defending a remark he made in mid-November for how ‘truly stupid’ they are. Frankly, if these are the types of ideas a Presidential nominee is going to come up with, I fear the Right is far more out of touch with the American public, and the American economy than most realize.

How exactly putting children to work will help the economy, and more specifically the unemployment rate, is something the prospective nominee does not purport to theorize. But, nonetheless, Gingrich is maintaining his stance on this issue. He believes that ‘poor’ children do not know how to work, that their work ethic is nonexistent because if they are poor, then surely their parents must not work. Gingrich glances over the fact that 15% of the country, 46 million people, are in poverty. The official unemployment rate is just below 9%. That means that 6% of the population works, but is still below the poverty line. That’s not lack of motivation, that’s lack of livable wages in the private sector. But say that Gingrich does somehow manage to rollback child labor laws, and his idea of putting school children to work with janitors in the evenings is implemented. How exactly does this help unemployment? Children are not officially counted in the unemployment rate. So, that would not dent the unemployed. But, if suddenly schools are allowed to hire children for less wages, thus more hands, they could feasibly layoff adults working in the school, which would actually worsen unemployment.

And what exactly does this do for a child? True, I’m sure they’d get valuable experience learning how to clean toilets and clean up kindergartener’s puke, if they aspired to be janitors when they grow up. Children should not be made to work in school. Parents should be raising their children. (Is this big government from Newt Gingrich?) Children should be concentrating on bettering their education, not what cleaning product works best on permanent marker scribbled on school lockers. A better education for the youth of our generation is the only means to a better future. India and China, the two fastest growing economies in the world, have invested billions into their education systems and they are leading the way in graduating math and science students, producing future innovators and entrepreneurs. It’s true that an after-school work program might keep a lot of kids off the streets and it will better prepare them for the future by teaching them needed skills, but it should be a voluntary, unpaid program. It should be like an internship program, or provide extra-credit for students struggling with their grades. Or perhaps it could be used as a reduction in school taxes for those parents whose children join the program. Lower taxes? Every Republican can get onboard with that one.

And speaking of China: until recently the country had very lax child labor laws. Comparatively to the US, they still do. Maybe Mr. Gingrich doesn’t quite remember sweat shops? Maybe Mr. Gingrich doesn’t quite remember our own sordid history with child labor in the fields and factories of the early 1900’s? For someone who’s written so many books, especially on history, I find that hard to believe. Maybe someone needs to remind Mr. Gingrich of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911? The point is this country has already seen it’s more than fair share of needless accidents involving the deaths of workers, especially children who were put into unsafe working conditions. We enacted laws to better safety standards of factory conditions so that workers are not risking their lives to make below poverty rate wages. The funny thing that happened along the way though is that as American labor laws became stricter, the factory owners and “job creators” just took their industries overseas to China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, to name a few. Sure enough, however, the same thing that happened here is happening overseas. There have been countless reports of death and injury in Chinese factories where the labor laws were extremely lax. But after some very public, egregious stories of operose workers being hurt, especially poor children from China’s vast countryside coming to the booming cities for work, the country has had little choice but to enact stronger labor laws to protect its people from unsafe American business practices. Why then, in a bit of hyperbole, does Mr. Gingrich wish the United States to rollback our labor laws and become more aligned with Communist China? Isn’t Obama supposed to be the socialist Kenyan, Newt?

Finally, I think the biggest problem I have with this whole idea of Gingrich’s is that he specifically points out that “poor” children are the ones in need of a solid employed role model in order to garner some kind of proper work ethic. Why is it just poor children who need this? What kind of work ethic do rich kids have that poor children do not? Poor children do not see how their parents boss the maid around the house in order for the maid to pick up after the messy child. Do rich children by some under-reported phenomenon, some kind of osmosis of ambition, absorb the ingenuity, the entrepreneurial spirit that their parents supposedly have? What about the children of Bernie Madoff? What kind of work ethic do they have if their father’s wealth came from crime? And what of the executives on Wall Street who crashed the economy with fraudulent mortgage foreclosures, mortgage-backed securities, derivatives, etc.? Sure these people made a lot of money, and they stole a lot of money from the country and the middle class. Is this the type of “ambition” that Mr. Gingrich feels we should be instilling in all our children?