Gingrich Goes Over the Top

19 December 2011 |permalink | email article

Continuing his crusade against activist judges Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer the former House Speaker said as president he would consider sending the Capitol Police or a U.S. Marshall to subpoena any federal judge who issued an opinion he though was out of sync with American values. In addition he would then encourage Congress to impeach the judge. Gingrich, who fancies himself as a serious historian, said the past presidents, including Lincoln, ignored certain Supreme Court decisions and thought that in some cases, a president should ignore the courts. Gingrich, while losing altitude in some national polls, is known to believe the issue will help his campaign, notably with conservatives and Christian evangelicals. What caught his ire was when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco removed the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, for him a rampant sign of “secularism and assaulting individual liberties.” Schieffer, a veteran reporter, retorted that such actions would throw the entire court system into chaos, adding that even conservative judges found the idea ludicrous. He quoted former George Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey as saying it was “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, off the wall and would reduce the entire court system to a spectacle.” Gingrich said lawyers were trained to view judges as supreme, and they had “lost their perspective,” He offered America the choice of reasserting the Constitution, or America becoming a secular, European sort of bureaucratic socialist society. Gingrich has raised a false dichotomy and if he is the GOP presidential nominee Democrats, moderate Republicans and rational independents will send him packing. Already Gingrich is seen by many GOP professionals as a weak general-election candidate.

131