Have I Ever Mentioned That I Hate Newt Gingrich?

Okay, I may have mentioned it once or twice or twelve thousand times.

The former Speaker of the House, who oversaw 1994's Contract with America and the subsequent Republican-led witch-hunt of President Clinton, is a presumed Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential race, and he appears to have begun his campaign at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference yesterday.

AP—Gingrich: Gingrich: Obama is 'most radical president ever':

Gingrich reminded conservative activists why he was one of the nation's most polarizing leaders in the 1990s, opening the Southern Republican Leadership Conference with a biting assessment of Obama's policies.

"The most radical president in American history has now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people: 'I run a machine. I own Washington and there's nothing you can do about it,'" Gingrich said. He urged his fellow Republicans to stop what he called Obama's "secular, socialist machine."

Would that Obama were the most radical president in American history, and not the second coming of Lyndon Johnson.

CBS—Newt Gingrich: We Need a President, Not an Athlete:

"What we need is a president, not an athlete," Gingrich said during a question and answer period after his speech. He added: "Shooting three point shots may be clever, but it doesn't put anybody to work."

Mm-hmm. That's definitely something he'd say about a white president. And big words coming from a guy who (seriously) took to the podium for his speech to (I shit you not) "Eye of the Tiger."

Salon—Gingrich: Say yes to government shutdowns!:

The theme of Newt Gingrich's speech Thursday night at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference was supposed to be "the party of yes." Republicans, tarred for a year as knee-jerk obstructionists, should instead talk about what they're for. "There are many things that we can say yes to," the former House speaker told his audience.

But the plan that Gingrich got the most applause from, as he tried to rally a few thousand GOP activists to say "yes," involved just saying no in a different way. "When we win control of the House and Senate this fall, stage one of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund any more," he said. ... In other words, shut down the government.

...That won't be all the new GOP says "yes" to, though. "A Republican Congress and Republican president in January 2013 will repeal every radical bill passed by this administration," he said. And once that's done, they'll get around to cutting taxes, deregulating commerce, encouraging more public prayer and shrinking government at every level from the local school board to the federal bureaucracy. (And also cutting benefits for the poor: "I'm tired of finding new ways to help people who aren't working; I want to find ways to help people who are working.")

That is an actual quote from his actual speech: "I'm tired of finding new ways to help people who aren't working; I want to find ways to help people who are working."

I don't know if I've ever seen a more shameless, unapologetic, naked enthusiasm for social Darwinism from a presumed presidential candidate.

Gingrich just explicitly advocated a job policy based on the theory of survival of the fittest, but Obama's the radical. Okay.

Maude on Seven, I really hate this guy.

[Related Reading: Call Me Citizen Asshole.]