Newt Gingrich on Matt Gaetz’s move

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who think Gingrich was a good Speaker, and knowledgeable about the workings of the House, please take a look at what he wrote just prior to yesterday’s vote to oust McCarthy:

Newt Gingrich on Tuesday urged House Republicans to vote down an internal rebellion against Speaker Kevin McCarthy and remove the instigator from their conference.

“Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) is an anti-Republican who has become actively destructive to the conservative movement,” wrote Gingrich, a former Republican speaker, in a Washington Post op-ed. “Gaetz’s motion to remove McCarthy should be swiftly defeated, and then he should be expelled from the House Republican Conference.” …

Gingrich first floated the idea of expelling Gaetz from the GOP’s narrow House majority on Sunday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Is Gaetz secretly an agent for the Democratic Party? No one else is doing as much to undermine, weaken, and cripple the House GOP,” Gingrich opined in another post.

Other populist-leaning conservatives, including Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas), the policy chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, and Fox News host Mark Levin have recently criticized Gaetz for refusing to support any stopgap measure to fund the government, thereby forcing McCarthy to pass a less conservative version with Democratic votes. It was McCarthy doing just that on Saturday that prompted Gaetz to move for his ouster.

Roy and Levin are saying that because Gaetz wouldn’t cooperate with a more conservative stopgap funding bill that McCarthy worked on, McCarthy passed a less conservative one. Then Gaetz accomplished the ouster with the support of 3.6% of the House Republicans and 100% of the House Democrats.

More from Gingrich [emphasis mine]:

“Gaetz obviously hates House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.)—and that’s fine,” Gingrich wrote in the Post. “But Gaetz has gone beyond regular drama. He is destroying the House GOP’s ability to govern and draw a sharp contrast with the policy disasters of the Biden administration.” …

According to Gingrich, Gaetz is also violating a House Republican Conference rule that the motion to vacate “should only be available with the agreement of the Republican Conference so as to not allow Democrats to choose the Speaker.”

“I served 20 years in the House, including four as speaker. On occasion, I fought against the GOP establishment. I led the fight against President George H.W. Bush’s 1990 tax increase after he had broken his word about ‘no new taxes.’ I felt bound to stay with my commitment to the American voters,” Gingrich recalled. “Unlike Gaetz, though, when I rebelled, I represented the majority view of the caucus at the time.”

For those who have forgotten some of what Gingrich did, here’s a refresher:

During negotiations with the Democrats who held majorities in the House and Senate, President George H. W. Bush reached a deficit reduction package which contained tax increases despite his campaign promise of “read my lips: no new taxes”. Gingrich led a revolt that defeated the initial appropriations package and led to the 1990 United States federal government shutdown. The deal was supported by the President and Congressional leaders from both parties after long negotiations, but Gingrich walked out during a televised event in the White House Rose Garden. House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel characterized Gingrich’s revolt as “a thousand points of spite.” …

In the 1994 campaign season, in an effort to offer an alternative to Democratic policies and to unite distant wings of the Republican Party, Gingrich and several other Republicans came up with a Contract with America, which laid out 10 policies that Republicans promised to bring to a vote on the House floor during the first 100 days of the new Congress, if they won the election. The contract was signed by Gingrich and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The contract ranged from issues such as welfare reform, term limits, crime, and a balanced budget/tax limitation amendment, to more specialized legislation such as restrictions on American military participation in United Nations missions.

In the November 1994 midterm elections, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954.

Gingrich was a conservative and certainly had cojones to spare. He also had some other advantages: he knew how to build effective alliances within the GOP. He had a detailed plan and the ability to articulate that plan to the American people and then execute it. In addition, he had the advantage of having a larger majority in the House than at present (it was 25 votes in the House, with a Repulican-controlled Senate as well, 53-27). That gave him more power to pressure Bill Clinton, who had been elected by presenting himself as a moderate. Under Gingrich, there were bills on welfare reform, tax relief, and a balanced budget. Two government shutdowns were involved.

Gingrich survived a challenge to his Speakership, but then in the 1998 election the GOP lost five seats, which sealed Gingrich’s fate and emboldened a group of Republicans (I’m not sure how many) to say they would challenge his Speaker position. He resigned.

Who succeeded Gingrich? Dennis Hastert, who was in turn succeeded by Nancy Pelosi, who was suceeded by John Boehner and then Paul Ryan, then Pelosi again, and then McCarthy.

But back to Gaetz. He has few supporters on the right – very very few. So the only power he has is borrowed power that the Democrats gave him. That is highly dangerous, and of course they will stab Gaetz in the back the moment it is to their advantage. What is his plan?

The “burn it down” crowd on the right doesn’t seem to think he needs a plan; at least, that’s my impression. They are okay with destroying the present powers in the party, because they have been a big disappointment. I share that disappointment, but I don’t think destruction without a plan – and accomplished with the help of self-serving Democrats, and with little GOP support – is ordinarily a good thing. If something good does end up coming from it, fine; for example, Jim Jordan would be an improvement, IMHO. But I’m not at all sure that will occur because, with such a tiny majority, the party needs unity to elect a new Speaker. And the party is not unified, nor do I see this Gaetz move as fostering unity. Au contraire.

Again, if I’m wrong in the gloominess of my prognostications, that would be fine with me.

The pro-Gaetz crowd tends to see no difference between the two parties as currently constructed, so destruction doesn’t bother them for that reason. But I see a big difference, as I believe we will find out if the Democrats gain control of the House in 2024 and keep control of the Senate, with a Democrat president. SCOTUS becomes dominated by the left, HR1 does away with voting security on a national basis, and Puerto Rico and DC become states. That latter act would assure Democrat control of the Senate and the presidency for the foreseeable future. And that would be just the beginning of the sharp moves we’d see to cement the power of the left.

Open thread 10/4/23

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen him live about ten times, the most concerts I’ve ever seen by a single person. Never been disappointed:

Here’s a photo I took in 2008 at a concert in a small venue. I had an obstructed view and so they moved me to a seat quite literally at his feet. I had to look up, but I got quite a view. There’s no zoom here; this was where I was sitting, with my nose up against the edge of the stage:

The House votes McCarthy out as Speaker

The New Neo Posted on by

This is what happened:

Lawmakers have voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership role, the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that the chamber voted to boot a member from the top job.

Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair. The final vote was 216 to 210 in favor of McCarthy’s ouster.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a measure against McCarthy known as a motion to vacate on Monday night, accusing him of breaking promises he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January.

I think this is a bad development. You notice why I say that? Let me highlight the reason: “Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair.” This was approved by Democrats and just a tiny number of Republicans. Do those eight Republicans – led by Gaetz – think that appropriations votes, or much of anything else, will go any better with another person in charge? If so, I think they are wrong.

In my opinion, now there will be an even more bitter civil war among Republicans, weakening them. And who will become Speaker? My prediction is that it won’t be someone better than McCarthy. I’d be fine with having those predictions be too gloomy, and seeing some better result. But at the moment I see this as a negative development.

More details here, here, and here.

The left and the Elites

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “huxley” asks an excellent question, and then answers it:

I understand it’s not a priority in conservative circles to wonder WTF happened to the Left. But, as an ex-leftist, I do.

Exactly how did the Left swivel away from the concerns of the (mostly) genuinely oppressed to this weird boutique world of mix’n’match identities, bizarrely ranked?”

I’ve concluded the Elites have beautifully coopted the Old-New-Left by way of the Social Justice Movement’s identity politics. …

Back in the 60s/70s the Left was perpetually on guard against being coopted by the Establishment to the point of paranoia.

Now the Left welcomes being coopted. It’s not a simple betrayal. Since the Left took over the academic high ground, the Elites have been indoctrinated into the Left and it became a class distinction. (Witness the BBC.)

And now the Elites have eaten the Left.

Kinda brilliant in its way .

I’ll take a stab at it as well. The question interests me, too, although I was never on the left, exactly. I was merely a garden-variety liberal Democrat, now a much scarcer commodity than it was back then.

Isn’t what’s being described in that quote the usual basic trajectory of the left when it comes to power, although the details might be somewhat different? That is, to start out being the champion of the working person when the left is on the outs and trying to worm its way into power, and then to change? That early left will speak idealistically about all sorts of things, but once in power it’s the nature of the beast to do whatever it takes to – well, I’ll let Milan Kundera explain, in a quote from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting:

… human beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of har­mony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.”

It is very very easy for ideological fanatics to segue into tyranny when they get power.

But what of the left’s unity with “elites”? They’ve long embraced and been embraced by academics on the left, of which there are many. The academics are the vanguard, the conduit to the minds of the young, and the academics are good at justifying almost anything as long as its done by the left and for providing theories to back and promote whatever the left might want to do.

What’s harder to understand – at least on the face of it – is the left’s embrace of financial elites. But it’s always the case that they need funds, and financial elites can help provide those funds with generous donations. Also, with the advent of the internet and its growing dominance, corporations such as Facebook and Twitter (until Musk bought the latter) were near-perfect ways for leftist governments to exert censorship power beyond their wildest dreams (the left is always pro free speech until it gets into power, after which it is gung-ho for censorship).

These days the financial elites are mostly those with degrees from colleges where leftists have been doing the teaching, and thus they have already been primed to agree with the left. Plus, if a rich person feels guilty about his or her wealth, what better way to obtain a “get out of conscience-jail free” card than to support the left? Identity politics makes it that much more attractive, because the financial elites can pat themselves on the back for being free of bigotry as bigotry is defined these days.

So what we have now is the marriage of much of corporate America with the left, and because the left is in power it can give perks to its financial supporters. It makes perfect sense, really. But – although I suppose this is just quibbling – I wouldn’t say with huxley that “the Elites have eaten the Left.” I’d say that it’s the other way around, although the Elites have willingly let themselves be eaten.

Trump and the New York show trial

The New Neo Posted on by

All Americans should be outraged about the show-trial nature of the charges of fraud against Trump in New York. The persecution is obvious and blatant. The tragedy is not really the biased prosecutor and judge, although of course these are awful. The larger tragedy is the acquiescence and approval of so many people who don’t recognize it for what it is, and that our free press has no interest in informing them about what’s going on, because the target is the hated Trump.

And I suppose that more and more people probably have become unaware of what a show trial even is. In fact, they are unaware of the most basic facts of our government, in a survey from a year ago:

Americans’ understanding of basic facts about the U.S. government declined for the first time in six years, as fewer than half in a new survey could name all three branches of government.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual Constitution Day Civics Survey found a significant drop in the percentage of Americans who could name all three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — falling by 9 percentage points from a year earlier.

About a quarter of Americans surveyed could not name a single branch.

The survey also found a decline in the number of respondents who could name any of the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Freedom of religion was named by 24 percent of those surveyed, falling from 56 percent from the previous survey. Those who named freedom of the press also declined sharply down by 30 percentage points from 50 percent in 2021.

Abysmal ignorance, and no accident. Education in these areas has been purposely dumbed down.

But then there’s literature – although again, I wonder how many people read the original anymore:

‘It’s a pun!’ the King added in an offended tone, and everybody laughed, ‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’

Would that that last sentence were the case.

Andrew C. McCarthy – no lover of Trump – harshly criticizes the trial in an article entitled “With Trump Already Found Guilty, His New York Fraud Trial Begins” and sutitled “This isn’t a judicial proceeding; it’s a partisan farce.”

I’m not sure about that word “farce,” because isn’t a farce supposed to be humorous? At any rate, here’s the way the piece begins:

The Bolshevik bloc of the Democratic Party is having its fantasy prosecution of Donald Trump play out in real life in New York City. There, in state attorney general Letitia James’s civil-fraud case against the former president, the trial will begin today even though Trump was already found guilty and sentenced to corporate death last week by a robed apparat named Arthur Engoron.

It doesn’t sound like the same Andrew McCarthy who a few years ago thought James Comey and the FBI would treat Trump fairly. But these current proceedings outrage him, and rightly so.

The same for Alan Dershowitz, who speaks about it in this podcast:

Open thread 10/3/23

The New Neo Posted on by

All of it amazes me. But the one-handed stuff amazes me the most. Yes, the smaller woman (she is supposedly 15 but looks younger) is very light. But she’s not so light that it makes sense that another not-so-very-big woman can hold her up with one arm; I’m talking about minutes 0:32 to 1:07, and 1:55 to 2:00. And then there are those crazy crazy backbends.

Jamall Bowman: pulling the fire alarm and then pulling our legs?

The New Neo Posted on by

What a long strange trip it’s been.

To wit, you’ve probably read quite a bit about this:

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a former school principal who pulled a fire alarm in the U.S. Capitol complex moments before the House was scheduled to vote on a bill preventing a government shutdown, did so because he thought it would “open the door.” …

However, Bowman spent ten years as a school principal in a state that requires 12 fire alarm drills per school year.

Bowman’s office similarly issued a statement claiming he did not know he would trigger the fire alarm by pulling it.

“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote. The Congressman regrets any confusion,” his spokeswoman said in a statement.

Bowman’s only 47 years old, so it’s unlikely to be senility. And yet it’s an odd crime to commit when under surveillance, and Bowman must have known that cameras would catch an image of him in the act. Did he think that no one would care? Or was he having one of those foggy, distracted moments, like when you put your keys in the fridge?

The NY Post has some photos of the alarm, described this way:

The bright red alarm is clearly marked with the word “FIRE” — and is right next to two signs that provide explicit details on how to open the emergency door at the Cannon House Office Building, photos show.

“Emergency Exit Only!” the signs read. “Push until alarm sounds (3 seconds). Door will unlock in 30 seconds.”

The strident socialist New York lawmaker, whose gaffe was caught on surveillance video, simply needed to turn his head to the right to see the glaring signs.

Hmmm – he’s a socialist. And according to Wiki, he was the principal for a Bronx public school called Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. He is described as being against standardized testing, and “Bowman’s school policy used a restorative justice model to address the school-to-prison pipeline.” Maybe he expected that his alarm-pulling stunt would be met by “restorative justice”?

[NOTE: See also this.]

It’s Senator Laphonza Butler till the next election

The New Neo Posted on by

You might ask – who’s that? I certainly had never heard of her before. But Butler fits the previously declared identity boxes – a black woman- and Newsom has said she’s a temporary placeholder. However, she’s certainly not barred from running in 2024 should she so choose.

But Butler is not merely her intersectional identity boxes:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, elevating the head of a fundraising juggernaut that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Butler was also involved in Kamala Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign. The campaign was disastrous, but then again she ended up as VP.

Butler is apparently a lesbian, and although I do not care one way or the other, that’s another identity box she checks. However, there was a little problem with the issue of residence – Maryland or California – but that will be fixed.

The appointment doesn’t really make a difference in terms of Senate votes. No matter who Newsom had picked, that person would have voted with the Democrats on every single measure. Butler will do so, too.

Open thread 10/2/23

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not just October; it’s October second. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s amazing how fast time goes these days. I even saw a few leaves yesterday that had turned color – the early birds.

The Name in the Stone – updated [BUMPED UP]

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m still working on Gerard’s book, and I thought I’d mention a few things that came up in the comments of my earlier post on the subject.

The basic structure of the book was decided on by Gerard, and I’m following that with a few modifications. He’s the person who seems to have wanted it to be called The Name in the Stone, after the lead essay – one of his most well-known – about his uncle of the same name who died in World War II and was lost at sea, Gerard’s discovery of a monument in New York’s Battery Park with his name on it, and an earlier incident in his family about the names.

So that title is a given, as far as I’m concerned.

I know that Gerard also liked books – real books – from his time in the publishing business as editor at Houghton Mifflin, as well as his career as literary agent, but also because he was really into aesthetics and liked the look and feel of a good book. Since this one will be self-published and designed by me, I’m trying to get something that isn’t a piece of junk. There will also be an ebook version for those who prefer that sort of thing, but I consider the hard copy to be primary. One decision involves paperback versus hardcover. I’d prefer the latter, but the price would just go up and up, and prices are already high enough so it might end up being a paperback.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of fiddling with cover design. Again, that would be Gerard’s bailiwick. But it’s my task at the moment, and I’ve actually been having fun with it and a website called Book Brush. It’s the best one I’ve found for the purpose, and I’ve tested quite a few. Lots of fonts and colors and choices galore, so many that it’s become a big time-waster for me.

I started out – as shown in my recent post on the subject – with a very prinitive prototype (before I found Book Brush). My idea was to have a photo of the name on the monument, but unfortunately the photo I have is blurry, and it’s very hard to take a photograph of that part of the monument because it’s in shadow and very high up. Scaffolding and a very good camera and lighting would be needed. Later, with Book Brush, I tried all sorts of variations, and they all were blurry (and probably would be pixelated in the actual book cover) and not very pleasant to look at.

So I think I’m jettisoning that idea in favor of something else. What will that “something else” be? I’ve tried many possbilities and have fastened – for the moment – on some sort of attractive stone. Not a gravestone; just stone itself. Here are just a few samples from the many many I’ve designed; I have lots more. Some of these are more finished than others in terms of the back cover (on the left in all the photos) and the spine, but the finished product will have a lot more verbiage on the back than these do. I’ve included one of the “monument” ones, too, but as I said I think the finished product would be way too blurry to use that photo. Imagine these as 9 X 6 books.

What do you think?

Physical anthropologists, beware – the woke brigade has come for you

The New Neo Posted on by

From the party of science-non-deniers:

The world’s largest anthropological conference with the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society had hoped to answer [the question of making sex distinctions through skeletal remains] in a panel using science we’ve had since the dawn of humanity.

The event would have discussed “Sex identification whether an individual was male or female – using the skeleton is one of the most fundamental components in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology.”

The panel was canceled, because it was thought to indicate that “sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.”

Well they are – in the physical and biological sense. And the distinctions are easy to make with skeletal remains, not difficult. But we can’t have that, if it hurts someone’s feelings. As one of the canceled panel members (Elizabeth Weiss, a professor at San Jose State) said:

The field has been nose-diving into an ‘off the rails’ agenda, with activists pushing for some facts to be replaced with feelings. As anthropologists have developed more precise metrics to determine the sex of the human skeleton they study in the field, the more they get attacked for knowing and being able to determine those differences.

Truth is not necessarily considered an objective goal and the victims’ narrative is more important than facts.

This is Soviet-type stuff she is describing. Science as determined by politics is not science, it is propaganda. But since post-modernists don’t believe in objective truth, it doesn’t matter to them and truth must be stamped out if it conflicts with their agenda.

That’s why it’s so very very ironic that Democrats consider themselves the pro-science party and condemn the right as anti-science.

The proper response to this complaint was not to cancel the panel, it was to say “If you can’t stand truth, you shouldn’t call yourself a scientist.” My guess, though, is that it was canceled mainly because the cost and need for security would have increased exponentially had they kept the panel on the schedule. The activists are well aware of that dynamic, too.

[Hat tip: Instapundit.]