NEWT PRESENTS A FRESH NEW VIRTUAL FACE
By Ann Coulter
AnnCoulter.com
Before you newly active Republicans commit to
Newt Gingrich as your presidential nominee on the
basis of the recent debates, here's a bit of Newt
history you ought to know. I promise you, it's going
to come up if he's the candidate.
The day after the Republicans' historic takeover of
the House of Representatives in the 1994 election,
Newt was off and running, giving a series of Fidel
Castro-style speeches about "the Third Wave
information revolution." It had the unmistakable
ring of lingo from his new-age gurus, Alvin and
Heidi Toffler.
(Newt, who was married at the time, also began
dating again.)
A few weeks later, when Newt was elected House
speaker by the incoming Republican conference, there
was a small elderly couple standing by his side as
he gave a one-hour acceptance speech. It soon became
clear who they were, when he issued a reading list
to the Republican legislators. At the top of the
list was a book by the Tofflers.
Hadn't Republicans just won on a platform of smaller
government? Instead of a Republican victory, the '94
election seemed to be a victory for the Tofflers'
cyber-babble about "social wavefront analysis,"
"anticipatory democracy," "de-massification," "materialismo,"
"the Third Wave" and "decision loads."
Then, in his first week as speaker, Gingrich was
again promoting the Tofflers around town,
introducing them at a technology conference and
giving a speech titled "From Virtuality to Reality."
How about a speech on Republican plans to reform
entitlement programs?
Gingrich soon announced that all legislation passed
by the new Congress would have to pass a test: Will
it help move America into the Tofflers' vision of a
"Third Wave"?
If this guy ever became president, he could end up
foisting EST on the nation.
It was also a Toffler-inspired idea that led
Gingrich to propose giving poor families a tax
credit to buy computers -- an idea he called "dumb"
just one week later.
(Newt's denouncing Paul Ryan's Social Security
reform as "right-wing social engineering" and then
apologizing a week later -- and then retracting his
apology -- was not uncharacteristic.)
The Tofflers were a couple of old folks who couldn't
figure out how to program their VCRs, so they began
writing about the "shock" of technology and how we
needed government planning to deal with
technological overload.
Their big idea was that the world was about to
change faster than it ever had before, creating a
technological explosion that would frighten and
baffle the masses -- much like the bewildering VCR
clock. The government would have to have advisers
and committees in order to ease the transition.
The facts are nearly the exact opposite. In the
first half of the 20th century, we got widespread
use of the automobile, the airplane, the telephone,
electricity, radio and television, indoor plumbing,
air conditioning and refrigeration, the computer,
nuclear power and rockets.
All we got in the second half of the 20th century
were some improvements on one of those inventions --
the computer -- with the personal computer, the
Internet and the iPhone. (Boomers were more focused
on acid trips than space trips and dropped the ball
on the hard work of pushing scientific progress
forward.)
Far from needing government agencies to help us
"cope" with these advances -- "Scientific
Futurists," a "Technology Ombudsman" and a "Council
of Social Advisers," as proposed by the Tofflers --
the masses have taken to these improvements like
fish to water.
The Tofflers' recommendation that children be eased
into the coming technological revolution with adult
mentors sounds like the proposal of Clinton's
surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, that schools teach
teenagers to masturbate. In both subject areas, the
children can teach their elders a few tricks.
Not only was it completely crazy, but Newt's grand
schemes didn't quite fit the Republican model of a
small, unintrusive federal government.
But Gingrich became a Toffler acolyte when he was an
assistant history professor at West Georgia College
and attended a Toffler seminar in Chicago. Alvin
didn't notice Gingrich at the time, but later
remarked: "He kept reminding me of himself in
letters."
(Note that the maharishi of the information age and
his No. 1 groupie kept in touch by writing each
other letters.)
Soon, Gingrich was writing a foreword to a Toffler
book -- the same one on the Republicans' reading
list –- and spending Christmas with the pro-choice,
anti-school prayer, Christian Coalition-hating
Tofflers. Yes, there's nothing like having an
old-fashioned Christmas with a doddering couple who
hate prayer and Christians, love abortion and are
afraid of their microwave.
(Incidentally, this was around the same time the
purportedly pro-abortion Mitt Romney, as a Mormon
elder, was pressuring a woman who wanted to abort
her child to continue the pregnancy and give up the
baby for adoption -- something he was attacked for
in Teddy Kennedy campaign ads a few years later.)
At the end of Gingrich's first year as House
speaker, his endless, nutty pronunciamentos -- in
addition to his plan to entrust Republicans'
legislative agenda to an old couple whose living
room VCR continuously flashed "12:00" -- had driven
his public approval numbers into the dirt.
In a CNN-Time poll, 66 percent of respondents said
Gingrich was "too extreme," 52 percent said he was
"out of touch" and 49 percent said he was "scary."
It's true that the liberal media attack Republicans
unfairly. But that's a fact to be dealt with, not
ignored by nominating a candidate who keeps giving
the media so much to work with.
Gingrich has spent his years since then having an
affair, divorcing his second wife and making money
by being the consummate Washington insider --
trading on access, taking $1.6 million from Freddie
Mac, and palling around with Hillary Clinton, John
Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Al Sharpton.
Even Chuck Schumer wouldn't be seen doing a joint
event with Al Sharpton! But Newt seeks approval from
strange places.
Newt Gingrich is the "anti-Establishment" candidate
only if "the Establishment" is defined as "anyone
who remembers what happened the day before
yesterday."
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