The HyperTexts

Newt Gingrich Quotes, Epigrams and Poetry

This page contains quotes, epigrams and poetry related to Newt Gingrich, whose name sounds like a villain from a Charles Dickens novel. Unfortunately, Gingrich regularly acts like such an unsavory character.

compiled by Michael R. Burch, an editor and publisher of Holocaust and Nakba poetry

Newt Gingrich has accused Mitt Romney of waffling on important positions, but Gingrich is an opportunistic career politician who waffles himself at the drop of a hat, when pandering for votes and campaign contributions. He waffles even when doing so puts the planet, billions of human beings and trillions of animals at risk. Recently Gingrich said it's unclear whether man-made global warming is real. "I believe we don't know," he told Fox News' Sean Hannity, presumably because that's what Hannity's audience of right-wing conservatives wants to hear. But in 2008 Gingrich appeared in an ad with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging action on climate change, saying, "We do agree that our country must take action to address climate change." Earlier in his career, Gingrich co-sponsored a 1989 bill which stated that climate change "resulted from human activities." But it really doesn't matter whether human beings are responsible for global warming. What matters is that ice caps and glaciers are melting, that sea levels are rising, and that human beings must address these very real problems, regardless of how they originated. Gingrich claims to be an "intellectual" and a "deep thinker," but his actions belie his incessant bragging. If he was capable of rational analysis, he would realize that the dinosaurs weren't "responsible" for the climate change that caused their extinction, and yet they became extinct nonetheless. And do the quotations below emanate from a man wise enough to lead the most influential nation on the planet? ...

“It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”—Newt Gingrich, explaining why other people should ignore his hypocrisy

"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to."—Newt Gingrich, speaking to Gail Sheehy

Newt Gingrich is an unapologetic hypocrite, as he just admitted in the quotes above. How can any presidential candidate say, "It doesn't matter what I do"? If that was true, Gingrich shouldn't criticize Barack Obama, as nothing he does would matter a hill of beans either. But of course Gingrich has created a ridiculous double-standard, in which nothing he does matters, but anything anyone else does matters greatly. So he can claim to be for "family values" while having multiple affairs and dodging child support, then turn around and castigate Bill Clinton for being unfaithful to his wife. According to realchange.org, "In an amazing act of hypocrisy, Gingrich was apparently dating [Castilla] Bisek all during Clinton-Lewinsky adultery scandal, even as he proclaimed family values and bitterly criticized the President for his adultery."

Normally, I would say that the sex lives of politicians should remain private. But when a hypocritical moralist attacks other people for something he's doing himself, I think we have every right to question his character, especially when he elects to run for high office. And the shameful way Gingrich treated his own family certainly calls both his character and personal morals into question ...

"The most notorious incident in Gingrich's marriage ... was when he cornered Jackie [his first wife] in her hospital room where she was recovering from uterine cancer surgery and insisted on discussing the terms of the divorce he was seeking. Shortly after that infamous encounter, Gingrich refused to pay his alimony and child-support payments. The First Baptist Church in his hometown had to take up a collection to support the family Gingrich had deserted. Six months after divorcing Jackie, Gingrich married a younger woman ... with whom he had been having an affair." ("Newt's Glass House" by Stephen Talbot, Salon.com, 8/28/1998)

Gingrich dismissed his infidelities, which at least twice happened while his wives were facing health crises, by turning them into acts of heroic patriotism:

"There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich claims to be a Christian, but because Jesus Christ reserved his sternest criticism for hypocrites, how can we take Gingrich, the Ultimate Pharisee, seriously? If Gandhi had called for everyone else to practice non-violence, then had gone around mugging people himself, would anyone consider him a great man of peace? Of course not. We need a president who practices what he preaches, not one who lectures other people on ethics he has no intention of applying to himself.

“She isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the President’s wife. And besides she has cancer.”—Newt Gingrich, explaining why he dumped his first wife

Gingrich, who looks like a puffed-up, bloated toad, has no reason to judge his wife, or any woman, by her age and looks. By his standard, Mitt Romney should be president because he's younger and better looking  than Gingrich. But then Paris Hilton is even younger and better looking, so why not make her president?

One of Gingrich's extramarital flames, Anne Manning, said of her relationship with him during the 1976 campaign: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'"

But of course that was also Bill Clinton's "thinking." It's not my place or desire to judge other people's sex lives, but I think Gingrich's hypocrisy is self-evident and deeply troubling in a presidential candidate. But Gingrich is also afflicted by wild hubris and erratic thinking that have no place in the White House ...

“Gingrich primary mission: Advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization, leader of the civilizing forces.”—Newt Gingrich

This is Gingrich describing himself. He reminds me of Richard Nixon, but while Nixon was equally creepy, he wasn't nearly as bombastic as Gingrich. How can anyone call himself the "definer of civilization" and keep a straight face? Can he really believe the press clippings he creates for himself? Can any sane person be that deluded?

"I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age, they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists."—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich brags about being an "intellectual." But anyone with a brain knows that if radical Islamists dominate a country, it will be neither secular nor atheist. Like most demagogues and rabble rousers, Gingrich tries to inspire fear in people, hoping they will be gullible enough to see him as their protector and savior. No intellectual, Gingrich is heavy on hype and bombast, and incredibly light on actual logic.

“I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.”—Newt Gingrich

Thinking a lot and thinking well are two very different things. As this page will amply demonstrate, Newt Gingrich is the antithesis of a good thinker on many important topics.

“This is one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger…It’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.”—Newt Gingrich

According to Newt-onian "logic," the U.S. government should allow terrorist attacks to succeed, in order to remind us that we're in danger! A more reasonable approach would be to ask if the dangers of terrorism may have been wildly overstated and used to excuse the invasion of Iraq in order to "secure" Iraqi oil fields during the reign of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who were both big-oil men

“Give the park police more ammo.”—Newt Gingrich

Newt the "intellectual" explaining how to solve the homeless problem, after police shot and killed a homeless person in front of the White House.

“I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power.”—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich is such an egomaniac, he actually expects us to be as thrilled with his ambition, fame and power as he is. He is obviously tone deaf to his own megalomania and hubris. Napoleon was infatuated with personal fame and power, as were Hitler and Stalin. But they were fascists. We obviously do not need another fascist in the halls of American power, as we have seen what men like Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were able to do, in just a few short years.

“The problem isn’t too little money in political campaigns, but not enough.”—Newt Gingrich

Yeah, right. This from the man whose Super-PAC is being bankrolled to the tune of $10 million (and still counting) by Sheldon Adelson, a gambling mogul and Israeli hardliner who has been lobbying to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such an insane move could trigger World War III, but Gingrich has said this will be his first act if he's elected president. Gingrich seems to care nothing about the Americans who will die in future terrorist attacks, or the young men and women who will die in unnecessary wars in the Middle East, if our country continues to fund and support Israel's terrible racial injustices. Gingrich claims to be a "historian" and yet ignores the history of the Palestinian people, who have been suffering under Israel's brutal system of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and slow genocide for more than half a century. A real historian would understand that Sitting Bull was not a "terrorist" but a man whose people had been pushed to the brink of extermination by white supremacists, and make the simple, obvious connection that Palestinians face a similar problem today.

And it's ironic that Gingrich has recently been running his campaign from casinos. Why should we gamble on a loose, erratic canon like Newt Gingrich? According to the New York Times, his aides "said that he had spent the past four days hunkered down in the sprawling complex of the Venetian and Palazzo casinos — owned by his supporter Sheldon Adelson — planning his new way forward." Adelson is currently under federal investigation, so I think we have to question the motives and methods of Gingrich's main supporter.

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic."—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich the "historian" seems to have forgotten the American Declaration of Independence, which clearly says that all human beings are created equal and that if they are denied equal rights and representative government they have the right and duty to resist their oppressors, using force if necessary to secure their inalienable rights. In his incredible hubris, Gingrich negates the very basis of American values, by saying that some people are not really people and thus have no right to resist oppression. That was the fundamental mistake of the Confederacy and Nazi Germany, both of which chose to ignore the human rights of millions of people. Now the U.S. constantly risks World War III because our "ally" Israel refuses to treat Palestinians like human beings, while more than a billon Muslims watch their degradation and suffering with horror.

“It is time we passed a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending.”—Newt Gingrich

This from the man who wants to put a colony on the moon and who resists spending less money on a far-flung military empire that we don't need, can't afford, and only gets us in trouble when we try to police the world, especially in the Middle East. 

“The idea that a Congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.”—Newt Gingrich

This, coming from a politician who made a career (and millions of dollars) out of blatant influence peddling, is overt hypocrisy and demagoguery. Of course Gingrich will quickly damn any of his political opponents who accept tainted money. Does accusing them of conflicts of interest or taking bribes automatically make him a "socialist"? Of course not. But Gingrich doesn't want anyone to pry into his private affairs, because of all the dirty laundry he's amassed over the years, so he uses the "socialist" buzzword to protect himself from scrutiny.

“If you're not brave, you're not going to be free.”—Newt Gingrich

Brave words, but why didn't Gingrich have the courage to live on his ample salary during his days in Washington, and thus not resort to influence peddling? Why do politicians like Gingrich ask young Americans to risk their lives, health and mental well-being in wars they start on false premises, when they themselves lack the courage to simply not take bribes and kickbacks?

“If the Soviet empire still existed, I'd be terrified. The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now.”—Newt Gingrich

Do tell. We saw the cost of one "fairly ignorant" presidency, that of Bush Junior. Can we really "afford" an ignorant, bombastic, hypocritical presidency? That's what we'll undoubtedly see if Gingrich gets elected.

Democrats will bring to the United States "the joys of Soviet-style brutality and the murder of women and children."—Newt Gingrich

Oh really? Didn't Democrats like John F. Kennedy do just the opposite and stand up to the Soviets? How many American Democrats, exactly, are in favor of murdering women and children? In reality, if any American politicians are endangering the lives of women and children, it's those Republicans who are working feverishly to deny women and girls the right to abortions even when they are victims of rape or incest, and when their lives and health are at risk. Having a baby is never a walk in the park and can be fatal. Many Republicans ignore the very real dangers of childbirth and autocratically deny women and girls the right to decide whether they want to become mothers. This is the sort of alpha male domination we might expect from the Soviet bloc, but here in the United States such "thinking" usually originates with right-wing lunatics like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. 

"The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change, and the only way you get change is to vote Republican."—Newt Gingrich

Only an incredibly insensitive cad could use the deaths of innocent children to fish for votes.

"There is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us."—Newt Gingrich

No, Newt. Gay people and many other Americans who aren't ultra-conservative Christians like you just want the same rights as everyone else. No heterosexual is threatened by gay marriage. I'm not going to leave my lovely wife to shack up with some man, just because it's legal. There is no reason to discriminate against other people because their taste in food, beverages or sex is different than ours.

The meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev was "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938."—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich made the comment above in 1985. If he had been the president then, rather than Reagan, the Cold War would still be in the deep freeze stage.

"The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."—Newt Gingrich

Gingrich made this comment recently, in 2010. But American Democrats are not doing anything like what then Nazis and Soviets did, when they denied citizens basic human rights and justice. Rather, in the United States, it is Republicans like John McCain who keep pushing legislation such as the latest National Defense Authorization Act, which grants the U.S. military the right to arrest American citizens without bringing charges and imprison them indefinitely without hearings or trials, even transferring them to prisons in foreign countries beyond the purview of American courts and judges who are versed in the Constitution.

"People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz."—Newt Gingrich

Hitler once professed to be all that stood between Germany and disaster. But like many American Republicans, Hitler didn't trust ordinary citizens with basic rights and freedoms. So we need to be very wary of "protectors" whose "protection" involves assuming more and more power, until the "supermen" start squashing us like insects beneath their goose-stepping boot-heels.

"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."—Newt Gingrich

American Muslims had nothing to do with 9-11, so there is no reason to punish them. The men who attacked us on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, not New York City. What Gingrich proposes is like saying that no Christian from New York should be allowed to worship in Oklahoma City, because Timothy McVeigh was a Christian from New York. Of course that makes no sense, because all New York Christians are not collectively guilty for the Oklahoma City bombing.

“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words.”—Newt Gingrich

May I point out that Hitler Youth were taught to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful by the Nazis? Do we really want our children to be loyal, obedient lapdogs, or do we want them to be able to think for themselves?

“We're all human and we all goof. Do things that may be wrong, but do something.”—Newt Gingrich

What Gingrich really means is that when he makes mistakes (or does illegal or immoral things on purpose), all his sins should be instantaneously forgiven. But of course he would never accord the same treatment to Barack Obama, or to any other Democrat. Gingrich's hypocrisy and lack of a sense of justice is always self-evident.

“There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period.”—Newt Gingrich

But of course Barack Obama didn't apologize to "radical Islamists." He apologized to Hamid Karzai, the president of an ally in the war against terror, when American soldiers destroyed Korans by mistake. That was, of course, the right thing to do.

"It is an outrage that on the day an Afghan soldier murders two American troops, President Obama is the one apologizing."—Newt Gingrich

But President Obama’s apology was made hours before the US troops were killed. The truth seems to mean little or nothing to the Great Newt.

Newt Gingrich Poetry

Newt Gingrich sounds like the name of a too-preposterous-to-be-true villain in a Charles Dickens novel or a Dr. Seuss children's book. And Gingrich makes even the pre-repentance Ebenezer Scrooge seem like an angel of light, since Scrooge was at least honest and didn't pretend to be trying to "help" the poor people he disdained. The name Gingrich sounds like a rich Grinch, but at least the Grinch was honest and didn't pretend to be trying to "help" the people of Whoville.

Newt, the Rich Grinch
by Michael R. Burch

Newt, the Rich Grinch,
told all the poor whos:
"dark serfs, grab your buckets!
swab hard! pay your dues!
while I and my Cronies
whose s**t never stank
peddle Influence
and laugh to the Bank.

Newt Gingrich loves to give poor people lectures and sermons about developing a better "work ethic." But according to the New York Times, Gingrich received 38.6 million dollars in "consulting" fees from Freddie Mac and various health care companies. Unless he can explain clearly what he did to earn such extravagant sums of money, the American public has every right to believe he was up to his old tricks: peddling influence for what basically amounts to bribes.

the ballad of Newt Gingrich
by Michael R. Burch

let those dark tiny tims push and pull heavy mops
while I and my Patrons spin slogans like tops,
lauding american “except-shun-ill-Ism”
while We laugh to the Bank with Huge Bribes, dripping Jism,
the Morality Police of dull peasants like you
but immune to all laws, since We decide what is True!

ps,

by “winning the future” We mean that We’ll win
while padding Our Wallets with the Wages of sin,
so never examine Our actions, or Profits —
just obey Us: your Lords, Overseers and Prophets!

The Viceman cometh
by Michael R. Burch

If Newt Gingrich is going to have any chance of being the last man standing in the Republican presidential primaries, he will have to win southern states, so Tennesseans should soon be subjected to the Newt-onian physics of bombast, hypocrisy and utter disregard for reality.

Gingrich sounds like the name of a villain in a Charles Dickens novel. He compares poorly with Ebenezer Scrooge, who was at least honest about his disdain for the poor and didn’t pretend to be trying to “help” them while getting rich at their expense.

But I doubt that even Dickens could have conceived of a character like Gingrich, a hypocritical egoist who criticizes the “work ethic” of poor darker-skinned children, then imperiously commands them to push industrial-sized mops without pay, while he and his rich cronies line up to “earn” millions via blatant influence-peddling. How can someone who was ejected from Congress and fined $300,000 for multiple ethics violations lecture poverty-stricken children? And of course that fine was just a drop in the bucket to a man who, according to the New York Times, earned at least 38.6 million dollars for “consulting” work he did for Freddie Mac and various healthcare companies. Unless Gingrich discloses just what he did to earn such extravagant sums of money, Americans have every right to be suspicious, knowing his track record.

Gingrich’s flagrant hypocrisy was also self-evident when he tried to impeach Bill Clinton for having an extramarital affair while he was doing the same thing himself. Why do “family values” only apply to other people, in the endlessly strange world of conservative Christian morality?

Fly me to the moon! Gingrich claims to be a “big idea” man, but his big ideas are often erratic to the point of being completely contradictory. For instance, he claims to be a fiscal conservative, but he wants to build a colony on the moon, which would surely cost trillions of dollars. He also seems to be opposed to reducing our military budget, calling plans to sequester $600 billion from the defense budget “totally destructive” and “very dangerous to the survival of the country.” But hawks like Gingrich never mention the fact that our navy is larger than next 13 largest navies in the world combined, or that the second-largest air force in the world is our Navy’s. As Ron Paul has correctly pointed out, we have a huge, far-flung military empire that we don’t need and can’t afford, and which only makes us less secure when alpha males like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld seize opportunities to “advance American interests” with guns, bombs, cruise missiles and robotic drones. A U.S. colony on the moon would no doubt result in an even more Terminator-like world for our children and escalate the arms race toward human self-annihilation.

Gingrich claims to stand for "American exceptionalism vs. the radicalism of Saul Alinsky." But by “American exceptionalism” he seems to mean disdain for anyone who is poor and non-white, favoritism for rich white men like himself, false morality and a hyper-aggressive foreign policy. None of those things benefit the 99%, so it’s hard for me to see Gingrich as anything but a lackey for the 1% who butter his bread. He strikes me as a man who will say or do nearly anything to achieve his personal goals of wealth, power and ego gratification.

The only large group of people potentially dumb enough (or deluded enough) to help him gain the presidency are southern conservatives for whom faith trumps facts and reason. As a recent New York Times editorial pointed out, “Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina turned on an almost comically broad deception, an inversion of the truth in which the insider whose personal wealth and political experience are entirely creations of Washington becomes the anti-establishment candidate. That it worked speaks poorly of voters who let themselves be manipulated by the lowest form of campaigning, appealing to their anger and prejudices.”

Gingrich operates by the coda: “Do as I say, not as I do myself.” For instance, he blasted Mitt Romney for having investments in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But Romney’s research team quickly determined that Gingrich had publicly disclosed the same holdings. When Romney revealed that the would-be emperor was both clothes-less and cluelessly hypocritical, Gingrich’s campaign went into yet another tailspin. It takes irrational voters to elect erratic leaders, so Mr. Gingrich’s only remaining hope is probably to sweep the Bible Belt.

More Gingrich Quotes

Describing Medicare—“Now, we don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it, voluntarily.”

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child laws which are truly stupid … These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school.”

“We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.”

“These people [Democrats] are sick. They are so consumed by their own power, by a Mussolini-like ego, that their willingness to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions is unending.”

Newt Gingrich has said outrageous things in his time, and he is obviously proud of his bombast. Early in his congressional career, he said he would "define" his political opponents "out of existence," and as speaker of the House in 1996, he distributed a memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," in which he urged Republicans to tag their opponents with words like "traitor," "corrupt" and "pathetic."

"What if he [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?"

Conclusion

What if Newt Gingrich is so outside of our comprehension, that only if we understand his megalomania and desire for votes and campaign contributions, can we begin to piece together his actions?

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