Gingrich, the anti-conservative

[zsdersw]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will122211.php3

When discussing his amazingness, Newt Gingrich sometimes exaggerates somewhat, as when, discussing Bosnia and Washington, D.C., street violence, he said, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 16, 1994]. What primarily stands between us and misrule, however, is the Constitution, buttressed by an independent judiciary.

But Gingrich’s hunger for distinction has surely been slaked by his full-throated attack on such a judiciary. He is the first presidential candidate to propose a thorough assault on the rule of law. That is the meaning of his vow to break courts to the saddle of politicians, particularly to members of Congress, who rarely even read the laws they pass.
Gingrich’s most lurid evidence that courts are “grotesquely dictatorial” is a Texas judge’s aggressive decision concerning religious observances at high school functions, a decision a higher court promptly (and dictatorially?) overturned. Gingrich’s epiphany about judicial tyranny occurred in 2002, when a circuit court ruled unconstitutional the Pledge of Allegiance phrase declaring America a nation “under God.” Gingrich likened this to the 1857 Dred Scott decision that led to 625,000 Civil War dead. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned the circuit court’s “under God” nonsense.

So, Gingrich is happy? Not exactly. He warns that calling the Supreme Court supreme
amounts to embracing “oligarchy.”

He says that the Founders considered the judiciary the “weakest” branch. Not exactly. Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch (Federalist 78) because, since it wields neither the sword nor the purse, its power resides solely in persuasive “judgment.” That, however, is not weakness but strength based on the public’s respect for public reasoning. Gingrich yearns to shatter that respect and trump such reasoning with raw political power, in the name of majoritarianism.

Judicial deference to majorities can, however, be a dereliction of the judicial duty to oppose actions irreconcilable with constitutional limits on what majorities may do. Gingrich’s campaign against courts repudiates contemporary conservatism’s core commitment to limited government.

Logically, Gingrich should regret the dictatorial Supreme Court decisions that have stymied congressional majorities by overturning portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and other restrictions on political speech.

Logic, however, is a flimsy leash for a mind as protean as Gingrich’s, which applauds those decisions — and the Kelo decision. In Kelo, the court eschewed dictatorship and deferred to the New London, Conn., City Council majority that imposed a stunning abuse of eminent domain. Conservatives were appalled; Gingrich, inexplicably but conveniently, says he is, too.

Gingrich radiates impatience with impediments to allowing majorities to sweep aside judicial determinations displeasing to those majorities. He does not, however, trust democratic political processes to produce, over time, presidents who will nominate, and Senate majorities that will confirm, judges whose views he approves.

Although not a historian, Gingrich plays one on television, where he recently cited Franklin Roosevelt (and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln) as “just like” him in being “prepared to take on the judiciary.” Roosevelt, infuriated by Supreme Court decisions declaring various progressive policies incompatible with the Constitution’s architecture of limited government, tried to “pack” the court by enlarging it and attempted to purge from Congress some Democrats who opposed him. Voters, who generally respect the court much more than other government institutions, reelected those Democrats and so thoroughly rebuked FDR’s overreaching that Congress lacked a liberal legislating majority for a generation.

To teach courts the virtue of modesty, President Gingrich would attempt to abolish some courts and impeach judges whose decisions annoy him — decisions he says he might ignore while urging Congress to do likewise. He favors compelling judges to appear before Congress to justify decisions “out of sync” with majorities, and he would sic police or marshals on judges who resist congressional coercion. Never mind that judges always explain themselves in written opinions, concurrences and dissents.

Gingrich’s unsurprising descent into sinister radicalism — intimidation of courts — is redundant evidence that he is not merely the least conservative candidate, he is thoroughly anti-conservative. He disdains the central conservative virtue, prudence, and exemplifies progressivism’s defining attribute — impatience with impediments to the political branches’ wielding of untrammeled power. He exalts the will of the majority of the moment, at least as he, tribune of the vox populi, interprets it.

Atop the Republican ticket, Gingrich would guarantee Barack Obama’s reelection, would probably doom Republicans’ hopes of capturing the Senate and might cost them control of the House. If so, Gingrich would at last have achieved something — wreckage, but something — proportional to his swollen sense of himself.

(Disclosure: This columnist’s wife, Mari Will, is an adviser to GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry.)

The judiciary should never be bound by the desires of the majority. It is there to determine the constitutionality of any laws the majority (through the legislature and executive) seeks to impose.

 

[Anarchist420]

Gingrich is a Rockefeller Republican. He stayed in the Republican Party because he grew up as a Rockefeller Republican.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Wait- a politician uses hyperbole? That's hardly believable. Then again we don't want truth, we want to hear what we want to hear because we're idiots that way.

 

[micrometers]

Gingrich is a Rockefeller Republican. He stayed in the Republican Party because he grew up as a Rockefeller Republican.

yeah, he's actually a very interesting character. Far more liberal than the Republican party that he helped create. Also a big fan of zoos.

 

[thraashman]

The funny thing is the article author seems to indicate that Gingrich's attack on the courts makes him liberal. The attack on the courts has been coming from the right for years. How often do you hear conservatives bitch about "activist judges". But Gingrich's attack on the courts isn't something that surprises me in the least, they're something that would threaten his power were he President. It seems like in recent years when a Speaker is of the opposing party to the President, they let the power go to their head and become a power hungry piece of shit. Seems Gingrich still has that, Pelosi was like that, and Boehner is taking it to new heights of gigantic worthless douchbaggery.

On the left the only time you hear bitching about courts is the Citizens United ruling. And it's not really surprising the left would hate that ruling as it was made by the most conservative supreme court in history and overturned over 100 years of judicial precedence. (Also the idea that money is speech and corporations as an entity are considered people is just silly) And even then we're not trying to remove judges like I've heard suggest so many time from the political right.

 

[Atreus21]

The funny thing is the article author seems to indicate that Gingrich's attack on the courts makes him liberal. The attack on the courts has been coming from the right for years. How often do you hear conservatives bitch about "activist judges". But Gingrich's attack on the courts isn't something that surprises me in the least, they're something that would threaten his power were he President. It seems like in recent years when a Speaker is of the opposing party to the President, they let the power go to their head and become a power hungry piece of shit. Seems Gingrich still has that, Pelosi was like that, and Boehner is taking it to new heights of gigantic worthless douchbaggery.

On the left the only time you hear bitching about courts is the Citizens United ruling. And it's not really surprising the left would hate that ruling as it was made by the most conservative supreme court in history and overturned over 100 years of judicial precedence. (Also the idea that money is speech and corporations as an entity are considered people is just silly) And even then we're not trying to remove judges like I've heard suggest so many time from the political right.

From the majority opinion, authored by Kennedy:

"If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

From the dissenting opinion, authored by Stevens:

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Who is more the activist? Who here is beholden not to the restraints of the constitution, but to what he claims is the desire of the people?

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Wait- a politician uses hyperbole? That's hardly believable. Then again we don't want truth, we want to hear what we want to hear because we're idiots that way.

I agree that Gingrich is prone to hyperbole. I think this springs from his narcissism and desire to be heard. As such, even when he has the kernel of a good idea (like encouraging schools to employ high school students to clean after school), he conveys it in a needlessly aggressive and hyperbolic way ("child labor laws are stupid").

That being said, his comments on the judiciary go beyond hyperbole. He is openly calling for a subjugation of the judicial branch which would radically affect the operation of our government. The hyperbolic version of his thoughts is typified by his statements that the 9th Circuit should be de-funded, and that judges who make politically unpopular decisions should be arrested and compelled to appear before Congress. The underlying kernel there is NOT a good idea - it is a dangerous and stupid one, hence the fact that Republicans like Michael Mukasey have come out of the woodwork to call Gingrich's ideas "outrageous" and "ridiculous."

As I have said before, with respect to Bachmann, Perry, and Cain, the only reason Gingrich is enjoying a bubble of popularity is that the GOP has such distaste for Romney. Gingrich is a despicable man and would be an awful President. I find it remarkable that he is so widely disliked by his own colleagues that even hardline Republicans like Tom Coburn have come out to condemn him as a leader. This is a seriously bad guy.

 

[fskimospy]

From the majority opinion, authored by Kennedy:



From the dissenting opinion, authored by Stevens:



Who is more the activist? Who here is beholden not to the restraints of the constitution, but to what he claims is the desire of the people?

By the definition of 'judicial activism', the first one is more activist as it overturns precedent.

Everyone knows that the government can infringe on rights if it has a compelling interest. All Stevens is doing there is outlining the compelling governmental interest for restricting the actions of massively concentrated wealth through a pool of individuals.

I don't really care if you support it or not, and I personally don't even view judicial activism as necessarily a bad thing, but your two quotes don't support your argument in the way you think.