Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Randi Rhodes: Eating Their Own

Hour One Guest: Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) on the game of debt ceiling Russian-roulette being played by the GOP and it what it means for your job and personal finances.

Newt Gingrich announced his candidacy last week. He’ll be lucky if it survives this week. In the past couple days, both Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump issued public statements saying they would not be in the running to be our next president. Newt Gingrich also said the exact same thing. He just wasn’t aware of it at the time. Newt managed to announce that he will not be our next president while in the act of running for president. Newt set off a hornet’s nest with statements that attacked Paul Ryan’s budget plan and that supported the idea of an individual mandate for health insurance. Newt really stepped in it, and by “it” I mean his own big mouth, where his foot is now firmly lodged. Now he’s begun the process of walking back those statements. And that is going to be one long, hard walk.

Newt called Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan “rightwing social engineering.” But all except four of the House Republicans voted for it. Newt, you can throw people under the bus… but you can’t throw the bus under the bus. Paul Ryan and the House Republicans worked very hard on that plan. I’d like to see Newt Gingrich come up with a better plan to destroy Medicare without doing anything for the budget deficit!

Now the GOP Empire is striking Newt back. Dick Armey said this fits Gingrich’s track record of being “confused and conflicted” on health care policy. Give most of the rest of the Republicans credit—they’re consistent on healthcare policy. Consistently wrong, but consistent nonetheless. But then not all Republicans feel that Newt is “confused and conflicted.” Charles Krauthammer said that Newt is “contradictory and incoherent.” So there’s a variety of opinions out there. Krauthammer also said point blank that Newt Gingrich “is done.” Hey Newt, you just got “Krauthammered!” Everything Newt Gingrich has said and done over the years is coming back to haunt him. Well, some of the things he’s said and done. If it were everything, he would be in prison for life.

Also, it came out that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child ten years ago with a long-time household staffer. OK, let’s do the math, and check the irony meter on Arnold’s fathering of this child. It looks like it was well after he made the movie “Junior.” That’s good. But uh-oh—it was right around the time he made “Collateral Damage.”

Today’s Homework | Discuss

In spite of being for a healthcare individual mandate since at least the 1990’s and as recently as two days ago, Newt rushed out this bizarre hostage tape-like repudiation of the individual mandate yesterday to try to appease the tea freaks that now control the GOP…

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