A sad march to the inevitable

Republicans have a wide variety of conservative white males now vying to be their nominee. No, really. Bear with me.

They have former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich summing up the worst of the ‘90s GOP. Not only did he shut down the government during his tenure, he attempted to oust a president for doing what Gingrich was doing at that very moment. The Speaker investigated Bill Clinton for hanky panky with an intern (a paid one — FYI — oh the ‘90s were a golden age) while Gingrich was messing around with a Capitol staffer; soon to be his third and current wife, Callista.

I’ve stopped using the word “hypocrite” for people like Gingrich. It’s a 75-cent word no one cares about. A better term is “fraud.”

Gingrich enjoys going after people for the things he’s guilty of, like when he said we should lock up Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd. Gingrich described them as “the politicians who profited from the environment and the politicians who put this country in trouble.” This was before it was disclosed Gingrich was paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac for what any reasonable person would call lobbying. (He maintains it was anything from being a celebrity to being a historian that “earned” such a paycheck.)

He’s now attacking Mitt Romney for “making people unemployed” at the leverage buyout firm Bain Capital, while not mentioning Gingrich was on the advisory board at a competing leverage buyout firm Forstmann Little after his stint as Speaker.

Fraud.

But don’t worry, Republicans also have a sample of the worst of their party from ‘00s: Rick Santorum.  Now Santorum believes your uterus doesn’t have a right to privacy. If Santorum has his way, women’s private parts are up for public scrutiny and federal regulation. He’s also bravely stood up for states being able to ban birth control and not wanting to make black/blah people’s lives better by giving them someone else’s money.

But Santorum ranks among the worst of the Bush Era because of a blah spot on the Grand Old Party called: The Terri Schiavo case. In 2005, Schiavo was in a decades-long vegetative state; her husband wanted to abide by her wishes and not keep her alive by artificial means. Her parents disagreed. They went to court. Then Congress got involved. Then the President of the United States at his home in Crawford boarded Air Force One on Easter to fly to Washington to sign legislation to “save Terri.”