GOP hopeful wants to instill work ethic in poor children by putting them to work — as janitors

Poor kids, especially in projects and inner city neighborhoods, should be hired as part-time janitors for neighborhood schools.

So was the declaration of Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich in brainstorming recently about ways to lessen unemployment and economic decline in urban areas.

Clarifying remarks he made last month in a speech at Harvard, he said redesigning child labor laws to allow 14- and-15-year-olds to work would help curb the lack of a work ethic in many poor neighborhoods. It would also allow schools to give such mid-teens part-time jobs as janitors or janitorial assistants.

Gingrich said that successful people he knows started work early by doing small jobs like babysitting and shoveling snow.

Such simple answers to complex questions have some likening Gingrich to the Grinch who stole Christmas. His comments have gained weight as he has risen in the polls in the last two weeks ahead of Republican frontrunner for the presidential nomination Mitt Romney.

Speaking with the pomp and authority of a child study expert, Gingrich diagnosed the unemployment problems in inner cities as a kind of self-perpetuating cycle of lack of work leading to more lack of work and more Americans being crippled by a merry-go-round of poor work ethic.

Sizing up the problem as such, Gingrich immediately offered his own remedy for the country. His solution — put lazy and helpless inner city youth to work. It was a solution, some experts say harkened back to the days when the stereotype of welfare queens refusing husbands, was used by the Ronald Reagan campaign in 1980 to help frighten the country into ultimately implementing workfare reform as an antidote to welfare, ironically, during the Clinton Administration.

This time Gingrich has thrown his own form of dynamite into the presidential race igniting controversy and accusations against him of race baiting. Catching stiff flak, Gingrich backpedaled a bit to say he obviously was not talking about the “working poor,” but rather households where there is no work.

“They have no money. No habit of work,” the politician said.”[They have] No concept of working and nobody around them who works. ‘No concept of I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

What was left unsaid, according to critics, was that Gingrich was speaking about Black and Hispanics who, more than any other groups, fit the profile of the “very poor” inner city kids Gingrich described.

“What kind of nonsense is this?” exclaimed City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. “How dare anybody make such a suggestion. It’s ridiculous that a white candidate for president would try to put people in certain classes based on economic background saying they lack work ethic.

“I was born in public housing — Richard Allen projects. These were low-income people. But I have a brother with a Ph.D. My sister and I have master’s degrees. My oldest sister is a computer expert. We have so many exceptions of poor people. This Thursday (Dec. 15) I will be honoring the original Richard Allen Committee — a group of success stories [out of Richard Allen]. They have all given back.”

Things didn’t improve after Blackwell’s retort as the floodgates of criticism opened.

“I think there is a clear ‘dog whistle’ of racial signaling, when he talks of inner city poor,” said Daniel Cook, associate professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers–Camden in South Jersey. “Statistically he’s referring to families and children of color.”

Charles Gallagher, chairman of the sociology department at LaSalle University, agreed, saying Gingrich was using “coded” language for Blacks and Latinos when he spoke of the “very poor,” “inner city poor” and children “in projects.”

What Gingrich also did not say outright was that if his plan to use youth as janitors in schools were adopted, it would be a matter of throwing a single brick through two windows at the same time, windows that were institutions that have long been targets of conservatives — unions as well as child labor laws.

While sidestepping labor laws, Gingrich admitted that the proposal would allow the reduction of unionized school janitorial unions and their members.

“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school,” said the former U.S. Speaker of House of Representatives.

Gingrich has drawn criticism in the past from some Democrats and pundits for contending that U.S. child labor laws are “truly stupid” and should be “rejiggered” to allow such things as children janitors in schools.

There are Blacks who agree with Gingrich’s prescription. Ward Connerly, political activist, businessman and former University of California Regent, based in California, is one of them. Connerly’s postion is not surprising since, in the past, he has opposed racial preferences and quotas.

“His [Gingrich’s] observations are quite valid ...,” said Connerly last week. “America is in decline not just budget-wise … but the infrastructure [of our families and our culture] is deteriorating. There are enormous problems in the urban core. There needs to be the right kind of tutelage to lead productive lives.”

He said Gingrich’s suggestion that “really poor” kids lack work ethic and could profit from school janitorial jobs may help remediate the situation. According to Connerly, some young Blacks feel that doing the things required to hold down a mainstream job is “acting white.”

“This is a problem with a lot of our kids,” said Connerly. “But not just our kids [lack work ethics]. White kids too. These kids are low income and don’t see parents going to work or coming home from the job. … There is a need for love here.”

Critics like Al Sharpton, who recently did a tour through inner city schools with Gingrich [at the behest of President Obama in an effort to heighten awareness of the problem plagued education system] agreed. He said Gingrich’s words sounded suspiciously similar to the coded language used to describe felon Willie Horton during the campaign of George H.W. Bush for presidency. He said it was also similar to the use of the “welfare queen” image by Reagan and Richard Nixon in their presidential campaigns. Now the target seems to be children as potential scapegoats for the current economic situation, he said.

“This is where we are getting into this cheap kind of race-baiting kind of poor,” Sharpton said in a radio interview. “[He is talking about] criminal kind of behavior and we need to call it out.”

“He knows better,” said Sharpton.

He said this should be especially so following Gingrich’s inner city tour that included Philadelphia. “He knows these kids have parents that work and that are not making money illegally.”

According to Charles Gallagher, in the sociology department at LaSalle, “Gingrich is way off with this. He is trying to score points with white Americans that Black culture is a culture of poverty that the children learn about helplessness and laziness because their parents don’t work. This is amazing coming from a man who is supposed to know history.

“It’s not laziness,” said Gallagher, “but the lack of opportunity. The structure no longer exists for jobs based on manual labor [or entry level skills]. It’s disingenuous looking at 11- and 12-year-olds and say ‘Get a job.’”

Gallagher said Gingrich failed to mention discrimination, “which is very much a part of this.”

Adds Gallagher: “He doesn’t look at the structural conditions that create poverty. It’s unbelievable that he would stoop so low as to blame 14- and 15-year-olds for the recession we’re in.”

Daniel Cook, a sociologist at Rutgers-Camden said he disagreed with Gingrich’s argument that having or not having parents was key to youths having work ethics.

“Anybody who knows anything about children from less economically advantaged backgrounds, know they live in situations [in which they have to practically raise their brothers and sisters and provide unpaid care]. They are at different ages, and they have to be incredibly responsible, helping siblings with clothing, eating, getting to school. It’s not paid labor but it’s an incredible amount of responsibility. The picture he paints because of class divisions is incorrect.”

LaSalle University’s Gallagher said the focus of Gingrich’s argument — tying the minority families to their economic level — is reminiscent of the work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan who blamed young Black women who got pregnant without looking for marriage as a reason for the ills in Black upward mobility.

Some have said that Gingrich’s comments are another effort to pin Black and Hispanic economic levels on their own family backgrounds.

Regardless, some local political leaders agree with City Councilman Curtis Jones, who argued recently that Gingrich’s comments would be helpful to President Obama campaign.

“It’s the best thing that could have happened,” said Jones. “With Gingrich running it makes us see that whatever Obama did wrong, Gingrich proves that it could be a lot worse.

True leaders don’t engage in racial stereotyping

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and fellow contender Rick Santorum are perpetuating racial stereotypes in their campaign to win the GOP nomination.

Gingrich, the former House speaker and Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania are facing criticism for speaking of overhauling food stamps and other welfare program by seeming to equate food stamp recipients and Blacks.

Gingrich said he would encourage African Americans to demand paychecks, not food stamps and Santorum said that he did not want to “make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Gingrich and Santorum were rightly rebuked by the NAACP and the National Urban League for their remarks.

“It is a shame that the former speaker feels that these types of inaccurate, divisive statements are in any way helpful to our country,” said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP.

Jealous called Santorum’s remarks “outrageous.”

“He conflates welfare recipients with African Americans, though federal benefits are in fact determined by income level,” Jealous told CNN.

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, called Gingrich’s comment insulting and accused him of “dredging up the discredited racial stereotypes of the past.”

The fact is the majority of people using food stamps are not African American. According to 2010 census numbers, about 26 percent of food stamp recipients are African American, while 49 percent are white and 20 percent are Hispanic.

Gingrich seems to be especially obsessed with food stamps. He frequently calls President Barack Obama “the food stamp president,” as if the president is responsible for the economic downturn he inherited and the increase number of food stamps recipients and not the recession that started before Obama became president.

Gingrich also says food stamps can be “used for anything’ including a trip to Hawaii.

This is not true.

The food stamp program which is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has precise rules about what an electronic benefits transfer card or EBT card it can and cannot pay for.

According to the Agriculture Department, which runs SNAP, households can use benefits to buy groceries or to buy seed and plants which produce food and in some limited cases restaurants can be authorized to accept benefits from qualified homeless, elderly or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals.

In addition to perpetuating racial stereotypes, the attacks by Gingrich and Santorum lacks compassion and reason for Americans suffering during difficult economic times.

These are tough times for millions of Americans. The unemployment rate is at 8.5 percent. In addition to losing their jobs thousands of Americans are losing their homes through foreclosures.

At a time when Americans are facing sustained unemployment and rising food prices, Gingrich and Santorum are attacking one of the most reliable safety nets for families who suddenly find themselves unable to pay for food.

Their racial stereotyping and attacks on the poor make Gingrich and Santorum unqualified to lead.

It’s a question that comes up every time you hit the home page of the Republican National Committee’s website: Where are all the Black Republicans?

Only a year after celebrating the last days of its first African-American chair, the RNC is fairly light on Black faces these days. What was once, especially during the ’90s, a fairly aggressive photo-op promotional strategy strung together by a small network of die-hard Black political consultants, former elected officials and partisans, is all but dead. While it did little in the way of yielding any results comparable to Democratic counterparts, there was a sense — leading up to the election of Michael Steele as party chair — that some progress had been made in mending the often bitter relationship between African Americans and the Republican Party.

Now, as a bloody Republican primary carries on, the GOP appears smitten with the Latino vote. Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are bending over backwards, and breaking the bank, to connect with Latinos — looking for every conceivable angle to attract skeptical Brown voters turned off by a wave of anti-immigration sentiments. And the RNC happily trotted out a Director of Latino Outreach in January, eagerly announcing the move in a gritty effort to snatch Hispanic voters away from Democrats in what observers expect to be a grueling November election.

“The RNC will place staff on the ground across the country to coordinate the GOP’s Hispanic effort as part of a program to make sure Barack Obama is a one-term president,” said RNC Chair Reince Preibus when introducing Betinna Inclan as the point person for Republican Latino strategy. “Latinos play an integral role in our communities, and the Republican Party believes it is essential to involve Latinos at every level of our Party’s efforts in 2012.”

Meanwhile, the move angered a number of Black Republicans who were already feeling left out in the cold following the abrupt downfall and forced removal of Steele in 2011. Many continue to express disgust at the GOP love fest for Latinos, some out of concern that they have no other political home to turn to.

“You have no Blacks on staff at the Republican National Committee — or any of its other committees — and there are no Blacks on staff of any of the presidential campaigns,” snorts longtime Black Republican strategist and marketing expert Raynard Jackson. “But maybe after a few more electoral loses you will awaken to the most loyal customer you have ever had.”

Most politically active and prominent Black Republicans — and there are only a few compared to Black Democrats — are not as vocal about their displeasure with the GOP’s intense focus on the Latino vote. Most are quiet, some out of fear they might anger RNC bosses who are already stressed trying to keep a fractured party intact. But many are seething over what they view as a combination of betrayal and intrusion, a knife in the back from a Republican Party that was theirs from its Abraham Lincoln beginnings.

However, a source tells the Tribune that focus could shift back to Black outreach as the Romney campaign prepares to hire a senior advisor for that exact purpose. While the source would not give details on the timing of an announcement, it was clear the embattled former Massachusetts governor is thinking ahead to the general election. “We’re finalizing the details,” said the source. “But, we’re not completely there, yet.”

The reason behind that reluctance could reflect a larger sense of caution surrounding the primaries. There are still many more states to go, with the delegate-rich “Super Tuesday” on the horizon for March 6. With the Romney campaign nervously gauging the rise of Rick Santorum while smarting from triple losses in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, it may be difficult to start thinking about the national scene while you’re still engaged in state-by-state trench warfare. Plus, finance reports are showing a Romney campaign low on cash and near tapped on donors. Do they even have enough to go the distance?

In terms of the Black vote, it’s much more complex than that. Much of it has to do with pure numbers — only 10percent of African-American voters, on average, vote Republican during any given presidential or congressional mid-term cycle. The only Republican in the 21st century to slightly defy that trend was President Bush in 2004 when he won just over 11 percent of the Black vote against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. In statewide races, Republicans tend to garner 15 percent of the Black vote on average. In 2006, then Lt. Gov. Michael Steele was able to capture more than 20 percent of the Black vote in Maryland’s U.S. Senate race — but that was still very negligible for a Black candidate with extensive local roots and who never shied away from his Blackness.

Many Republican strategists and candidates alike are quick to attribute those dismal ratings to Black dismissiveness. “It’s hard. We get called ‘racists,’ but we’re expected to go out and do outreach with these people,” complains one veteran white GOP campaign expert who wanted to speak off the record. Visibly angered by the question, the senior aide to numerous Republican campaigns accused Black voters of “setting unfair expectations.”

Hence, Republican insiders point to the math in recent primaries. For example, only 2 percent of Black voters in South Carolina are registered Republicans. To make it worse, only 1 percent of South Carolina primary voters in January were Black — and that was in an “open primary” where voters of all partisan stripes can vote. In Florida, it was the same: only 1 percent. And, in Iowa (where there are sizeable pockets of African Americans living in such cities as Des Moines), Black votes didn’t even register on a significant scale.

The problem is two-fold. The Republican Party’s southern strategy in the 1960s alienated Black voters in the race for southern white and segregationist votes. This has led to the prevailing image of a political party either constantly attacking major Black policy priorities, or serving as the face of institutionalized political racism. But there is also the problem of African Americans refusing to force the two major political parties to compete for their voters. Most are fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party to the point where such affiliations are based more on personal considerations than political interests.

In contrast, Latino voters only lean 60 percent Democrat on average. In key primary states like Florida and Arizona, they represent 12 percent of the Republican primary electorate — a significant presence that warrants the attention of campaign strategists battling for every vote they can get. And a recent Cooperative Congressional Election Survey found 14 percent identified as Republican and a significant bloc, 19 percent, identified as “Independent.”

It’s that 19 percent that gives Republicans reason to believe they can compete for Latino votes in the general election against Barack Obama, despite recent anti-immigration rhetoric and legislation. The survey also found Latinos are more inclined to vote by race than party. With scores more Latino Republican elected officials than Black, Republican elected officials (there are no Black, Republican elected officials under the age of 40), the GOP figures it has a better chance chasing after Brown votes than Black ones.

Political strategist and former congressional candidate Princella Smith argues that because African Americans vote “lopsidedly Democrat — 80 percent to 90percent of the time,” the Republican Party fails to see any prospect of a return on the investment. “Why should I campaign to a community who will reject me as soon as I get to the front door?”

Ron Thomas, a Black Republican and former senior advisor to Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s, R-Minn., failed presidential bid, agrees, quickly arguing that the GOP’s enthusiastic focus on Latino voters should be something for Black Republicans and African Americans in general to worry about. “I have a bottom line philosophy: You have to have tensions on both sides of the aisle. We’re the only culture where we don’t make the political parties compete for our vote. Until we decide as a people that we’re going to do that, we’re going to stay in the same situation we’re in right now.”

The Republican presidential candidates continue to reveal themselves not to be fit for the most powerful position in the world.

Front runner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is a serial flip-flopper. Businessman Herman Cain is dropping fast after allegations of sexual harassment and after his stumbling responses to basic questions on foreign policy. Former senator Rick Santorum is way too angry and too socially conservative. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is also too extreme and too loose with the facts. Texas governor Rick Perry is awkward and inarticulate in debates.

Texas congressman Ron Paul and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman will never be accepted or trusted by most of the Republican Party because they do not always follow the party line.

The failure of these candidates is one of the reasons why some Republicans have desperately turned to Newt Gingrich, the 68-year-old former House of Representatives leader who is now rising in the polls.

Gingrich is rising because many Republicans refuse to accept Romney as their nominee to challenge President Obama. Romney’s frequent change in positions causes many conservatives not to trust him.

But Gingrich is a questionable choice for anyone to put their trust in. He is a man full of contradictions. His multiple marriages and extramarital affairs make him an unlikely presidential candidate for a conservative party that espouses family values.

Gingrich was fined $300,000 for giving misleading information to investigators during a congressional ethics probe. In 1998, facing legal challenges and ethics questions, he decided not to seek re-election.

In addition to the contradictions in his personal life and ethical problems, Gingrich has contradicted himself on policy.

It was revealed this week that Gingrich received $1.6 million from consulting contracts with the mortgage agency, Freddie Mac, from 1999 to 2008.

Gingrich had criticized Obama in 2008 for accepting campaign contributions from executives of the federally backed mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He suggested that Obama should return the contributions he had received from the two mortgage giants.

As usual, Gingrich does not see the hypocrisy of his sweetheart deals.

WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich has always had a way with words — provocative words, harsh words, incendiary words. He and GOP consultant Frank Luntz pioneered Republicans’ use of catchy phrases and misleading language not only to demean their rivals but also to redefine their rivals’ policies.

As speaker of the House, Gingrich famously fined his caucus members any time they failed to call the estate tax a “death tax.” He was so successful that he apparently persuaded many Americans that the estate tax, levied only on the richest Americans, was routinely assessed on the corpses of common folk.

It’s no accident, then, that Gingrich recently spoke of poor children with mean-spirited condescension, suggesting that many of them are criminals. He told a Des Moines audience, “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

After he was roundly and deservedly criticized, Gingrich claimed that he only meant to point out the need for a strong work ethic, a fundamental all-American virtue. But if he had meant that, he would have said that. Many public figures, including President Barack Obama and comedian Bill Cosby, would surely agree.

Gingrich was up to something else: updating the Southern strategy of appealing to conservative white voters who cling to hoary stereotypes and unfortunate misperceptions about the Black poor. Gingrich’s audience likely associated the phrase “really poor children in really poor neighborhoods” with Black urban ghettos portrayed as havens of dysfunction, not with rural enclaves where white children struggle with a similar poverty.

And that’s what he wanted them to think. By way of clarifying his remarks, he told reporters that he was specifically thinking of “people who are in areas where there is public housing” — which is synonymous with the Black poor.

Gingrich is no old-timey mossback, no Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms. From time to time, he has enunciated racially enlightened policies that challenged Republican orthodoxy. But Gingrich is now waging a campaign to win the crown jewel of political offices, the presidency of the United States, and he is willing to say whatever he believes will win votes. He knows that the Republican base enjoys strident rhetoric and bombastic hyperbole, and nobody serves that up that better than he.

Gingrich also knows precisely where his support is coming from: older Republican voters. As Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones put it, “Gingrich’s support is heavily concentrated among Republicans who are at least 50.”

Those are also the voters who are most uncomfortable with the rapid demographic change symbolized by the election of a Black president, according to The Pew Research Center. In a study released in November, Pew noted that older white Americans are more likely to be racially intolerant than younger whites.

Denunciations of poor Black children as lazy and inclined toward crime don’t run a high risk of offending that group.

Neither do Gingrich’s attacks on child labor laws, which he contends have prevented poor children from taking jobs that would teach them the value of work, such as cleaning toilets and mopping floors at their schools.

If Gingrich were genuinely interested in offering poor children a road map to the American middle class, he might have started by acknowledging that globalization, among other forces, has exacerbated income inequality and made it more difficult for the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even if they work 12 to 14 hours a day.

He might also have acknowledged that the dysfunction that too often attends impoverished households is not limited to those who live in public housing; it also strikes those who live in ramshackle trailer parks and shoddy little shacks in rural environments. Has Gingrich ever seen the movie “Winter’s Bone,” a tale of white rural poverty worsened by the curse of methamphetamine addiction?

Furthermore, anybody who wants to see poor children succeed would encourage them to spend every spare hour reading, writing and learning arithmetic. In order to lift themselves up the ladder, they need the advantage of stellar academic skills.

Gingrich knows that as well as anyone, but he also knows what sells on the campaign trail. And the slander of poor Black children is a hot commodity.

Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

As the Republican presidential race heats up, and Republicans around the country struggle to decide who they want as their eventual nominee — race has found its way into the debate.

Gingrich, who is already under fire for labeling President Barack Obama “the food-stamp president,” touched off further controversy on Thursday for declaring he would visit the NAACP and explain to the organization why African Americans should “not be satisfied with” food stamps.

The former House speaker’s incendiary remarks came on the heels of Rick Santorum’s earlier comment in which he appeared to single out African Americans as recipients of federal aid — a statement that an NAACP official declared “inaccurate and outrageous.” Santorum has denied he was singling out Blacks.

“I didn’t say Black.” Santorum said to CNN and Fox News. He told John King Wednesday night, “I’ve looked at that quote, in fact I looked at the video. In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say Black. I started to say a word, and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.”

And let’s not forget Ron Paul’s evolving story on his newsletters. Confronted about their racism when he campaigned to return to Congress in 1996, Paul first tried to defend the remarks. It wasn’t until 2001 that he floated the notion that someone else had written the newsletters, and it’s only recently that he completely deplored their racism and claimed he had absolutely no idea what was in them.

Santorum’s comments were criticized by National Urban League President Marc H. Morial as pandering to racist elements within the GOP. Morial also said that 70 percent of people on food stamps are white. The Agriculture Department does not break down food stamp participation rates by race.

NAACP President Ben Jealous also criticized Santorum’s remarks.

Food stamp participation and costs have risen under Obama, from 28.2 million participants at a cost of $37.6 billion in 2008, to 44.7 million participants at a cost of $75.3 billion last year, according to federal data of what is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The increases followed the steep economic downturn that began in 2008.

Gingrich, in a variation of a line he has used in other recent speeches, said in New Hampshire, “I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

“And I’ll go to them and explain a brand new Social Security opportunity for young people, which would be particularly good for African-American males because they are the group that gets the smallest return on Social Security because they have the shortest life span. And under Social Security today, you don’t build up an estate,” Gingrich said.

Jealous responded to Gingrich’s incendiary comments Friday with the following statement: “It is a shame that the former Speaker feels that these types of inaccurate, divisive statements are in any way helpful to our country,” said Jealous. “The majority of people using food stamps are not African-American, and most people using food stamps have a job.”

“We invited Speaker Gingrich to attend our annual convention several times when he was Speaker of the House, but he declined to join us,” Jealous continued. “If he is invited again, I hope that he would come with the intention to unite rather than divide. Gingrich’s statement is problematic on several fronts, most importantly because he gets his facts wrong.”

On the website YourBlackWorld.com, political analyst and commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins wrote: “I’m not sure where Gingrich is getting his perception of the Black experience in America. I’ve never asked for a welfare check in my life, and neither have most of my friends.”

The left-leaning Center for American Progress wrote on its ThinkProgress blog: “Not only is his perception of food-stamp beneficiaries prejudicial, it’s false.”

The center took the time to note that whites comprise the majority of people who are participants in the nation’s food-stamp program. In addition, most of the participants on food stamps are either children or senior citizens.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said Thursday in response to the criticism: “Newt believes that every American should have the opportunity to earn a paycheck, rather than be given a food stamp, and he is prepared to make that case in every neighborhood to all groups of all backgrounds in America. Furthermore, this theme of taking the conservative message to every American — including the NAACP — has been a constant refrain during Newt’s entire career.”

Gingrich has actually tried in his recent comments invoking the NAACP to demonstate his commitment to reaching beyond traditional GOP groups to Democratic constituencies.

On Wednesday he said, “My goal is to create a very big coalition. If the NAACP invites me, I will come and speak. If the various Latino groups invite me, I will come and speak. If the construction unions get fed up enough over the [Keystone] pipeline and invite me, I will come and speak.”

And last month in Columbia, S.C., he said, “Outreach is when five white guys hold a meeting and then call you. Inclusion is when you’re in the meeting. And I can assure you precisely because we want to decentralize back home, we want to have people back home with a bigger responsibility, that’s why I’m asking you to be with me. I want every community in America to have a better future.

“And I will tell you, unlike some candidates, if the NAACP invites me to come to their annual convention, I’m going to come there and I’m going to invite them to join us in getting America back on the right track so every American can work.”

Two Gingrich surrogates — former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith and former Ohio Rep. Bob McEwen — sought to make the case that their former House colleague would be a stronger candidate in a general election against Obama than Mitt Romney.

“You have to remember that in the Iowa caucus, 75 percent of the voters did not pick Romney,” Smith told reporters in a conference call.

McEwen was even more blunt, saying of Romney, “I don’t know how a party can nominate a guy like that and expect to win.”

In a subsequent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Gingrich lumped himself in with Santorum and Texas Gov. Rick Perry in further distinguishing himself from Romney.

“Santorum and Perry and I — all three — represent an American conservatism that is dramatically different than a Massachusetts moderate,” he said. “We all naturally have a similar reaction to Romney’s policies ... We three would write a platform more conservative than the platform that Romney would want to write.”

As traditional news organizations like The Associated Press and CBSNews.com picked up Gingrich’s remark — he had said something similar the day before, including an offer to visit Latino groups — the Gingrich campaign recognized trouble.

R.C. Hammond, Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman, was overheard at an evening event in New Hampshire chewing out a reporter over the coverage while kicking a door.

He said Gingrich’s statement was not patronizing, but an act of outreach to an organization usually ignored by Republicans. In a 2007 book, Gingrich criticized President Bush for failing to address the NAACP. It was a sign “to the African American community,” he wrote, “that Republicans did not see them as worthy of engagement in dialogue.”

The National Journal and New York Times contributed to this report.

Zack Burgess is the enterprise writer for The Tribune. He is a freelance writer and editor who covers culture, politics and sports. He can be contacted at zackburgess.com.

Newt Gingrich has a horrible habit of stereotyping the poor.

In a speech in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the former House Speaker and now Republican presidential candidate attacked President Barack Obama as the “food stamp president” and said you can now use food stamps for almost anything including a trip to Hawaii.

“Remember, this is the best food stamp president in history,” said Gingrich. “So more Americans today get food stamps than before. And we now give it away as cash — you don’t get food stamps. You get a credit card and the credit card can be used for anything. We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii.”

Is it true that food stamps can “be used for anything”? as Gingrich said.

No. The food stamp program, which is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has precise rules about what an electronic benefits transfer card of EBT card can and cannot pay for.

According to the Agriculture Department, which runs SNAP, households can use benefits to buy groceries or to buy seed and plants which produce food and in some limited cases restaurants can be authorized to accept benefits from qualified homeless, elderly or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals.

In addition to his comments about food stamps that benefit the poor, Gingrich says he wants to help poor children learn about work by paying them to mop and clean their schools, and roll back child labor laws.

In the same week that he is rising in the polls as the most serious challenger to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich called child labor laws “stupid” and suggested poor children and their parents do not understand what it means to go to work.

“Starting with the following two facts: Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” said Gingrich. “So they literally have no habits of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

The fact is that most poor children live in a household with at least one parent who is working.

But we can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Here is the Gingrich solution: “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children, in first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid.” He added that “most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to care of the school.”

It is unbelievable that a man who has made over a million dollars in consultation fees to the housing agency Freddie Mac would attack unionized janitors who earn a mean wage of $13.74 an hour, or $28,570 a year.

His bright idea is to replace janitors with children.

Gingrich’s remarks on food stamps and poor children are beyond ridiculous.

Americans are facing rising poverty and are losing their jobs and homes yet we have one of the top Republican candidates for president attacking food stamps program and unionized school janitors as the cause of the country’s economic woes.

Newt Gingrich is shameless.

If history tells us anything, the rise of sometime-historian Newt Gingrich to Republican presidential frontrunner is a sign that the tea party movement is destroying itself.

After all, the former House Speaker has surged to the top of Republican presidential polls on the shoulders of tea party supporters, a movement that ironically came together to topple “Washington insiders” — like Newt Gingrich.

The tea party movement rose up angrily in early 2009 to expose and clean out what its members saw as the greedy Washington fat cats and wheeler-dealers who line their pockets while raising taxes, expanding government and spending taxpayers’ money.

Now, less than a month before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the movement has become a faction of the party whose front runners are Mitt Romney, who the right largely rejects as as too moderate and flippy-floppy, and Gingrich, the quintessential Washington insider.

After all, this is a man who has earned millions by doing precisely what the Tea Party rages against: advising, promoting and lobbying for big corporate and public policy interests.

That includes at least $1.6 million he was paid by Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise that many conservatives scapegoat for the financial crisis, to help its efforts to block new congressional regulations it didn’t want.

Yet fiscal conservatives appear to be putting all that aside in the way many social conservatives are looking past his two divorces or his ethical challenges, including his historical status as the only House speaker to be penalized $300,000 for ethics violations.

No, what’s left of the tea party insurgency appears to be willing to look past Gingrich’s shortcomings in pursuit of a bigger prize, the defeat of President Obama — after defeating Mitt Romney.

One reason for Gingrich’s rise: the tea party and the Grand Old Party have been looking for strong, sure-footed leadership, and no one’s feet are more sure than Newt’s. Gingrich provides leadership the tea party appears to need: someone who can tell a movement what they are for when they only know what they are against.

After all, the teas rose to fill a political gap. The Republican establishment was in disarray, devoid of leaders and intimidated after President Barack Obama’s election landslide. The teas fired up town halls, seized the national conversation, helped bring a halt to bipartisan compromise in Congress and helped Republicans regain their House majority, among other victories in the 2010 midterms.

If ever there was a time for the ambitious Newt to make his move, I thought back when he announced his candidacy, this was it. The right was energized and the left, in those pre-Occupy days, was demoralized. Many were waiting for Obama to show the sort of tough, line-in-the-sand decisiveness he finally has begun to show in recent weeks.

But Gingrich had a problem. He was even more of a Washington insider than Mitt Romney, the GOP establishment favorite, at a time when the party’s tea party-energized base was looking for outsiders. Washington experience became a deal-breaker; feisty amateurism, a virtue. In a spectacle about as deliberative as “American Idol” auditions, GOP voters flirted with Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain — anybody but Mitt.

And now Newt. Gingrich suddenly riding high on a wave kicked up by his own confidently quick-witted and media-bashing debate performances and by former frontrunner Herman Cain’s stumbles. Suddenly Gingrich is tying or beating Romney in national polls. In Florida, a key early primary state, Gingrich took a 31-point lead over Romney in a Florida Times-Union poll this past week.

Of course, Gingrich could be toppled as the latest GOP flavor-of-the-month, but this close to the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, the timing of his return from the political grave could hardly be more fortunate.

But what does Gingrich’s rise say about the tea party movement? Are they selling out or buying in? Probably some of both. In that way, they’re beginning to look a lot like other conservative Republicans. In other words, business as usual.

So long, tea party. The name remains, but the spirit is fading.

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.

Newt Gingrich is playing racial politics and he is playing to win. First he says that Black children should get jobs as janitors (why not suggest they get the same consulting contract he did at Freddie Mac? — I’m with Mitt Romney here, what did Gingrich tell Freddie Mac that was worth more than a million dollars?). Then he says that he wants to tell the NAACP that we should demand jobs, not food stamps. He so bristles at Fox commentator Juan Williams that he gets a standing O in South Carolina. And he has repeatedly described President Barack Obama as a “food stamp” president.

It’s race-baiting, pure and simple, and few have called him on it.

The true food stamp story goes something like this: In 2006, just 26.5 million Americans received food stamps. By 2011 the number had spiked to more than 45 million people. This has been the result of the Great Recession that has left at least 13 million people officially unemployed for an average of 40 weeks. Those are the official numbers, but they may be twice as high when we consider the people who have part-time work and want full-time work and those who have dropped out of the labor market because it costs too much to look for work. President Obama is not a food stamps president; he is a president who inherited an economic crisis. Newt is being extremely disingenuous and extraordinarily racist in his food stamps rap.

While about 14 percent of all of us — one in seven — get food stamps, in some states the number is as high as one in five. In South Carolina, for example, poverty is greater than it is in the nation, and 18.2 percent of South Carolinians get food stamps. The number in Maine is 18.6 percent, in Louisiana 19.2 percent, in Michigan 19.7 percent, in Oregon 20.1 percent, and in Mississippi 20.7 percent. Given the racial dynamics in South Carolina, did Newt decide to show off in a state where there is more poverty than elsewhere, and when the racial resentments (remember I said Confederate flag-waving) don’t need much fuel to turn to fire? He got a standing O by pandering to racial stereotypes. And that pandering may well have propelled him into victory.

Newt has managed to paint food stamps as a Black program, partly by describing our president as a “food stamps” president, and partly by putting food stamps in context with the NAACP. But Mr. Gingrich, often touted for his intelligence, must be bright enough to know that most food stamp recipients are not African American. Indeed, according to the Associated Press, 49 percent of food stamp recipients are white, 26 percent are African American, and 20 percent are Hispanic. Indeed, some of the folks who gave Newt a standing O are food stamp recipients, but they chose to bond with Newt’s racially coded messages instead of their own economic reality.

Poverty has a different face than it has ever had before. People who used to have big jobs and fancy cars are now struggling to make ends meet. People who always struggled are now strangling. More than 2 million families have doubled up in the past year because they needed a family lifeline to save their lives and their worlds. More than 40 percent of African-American children live in poverty. Newt Gingrich would blame the poor for their situation, but the economy that President Obama inherited is an economy that has thrust people into despair. Food stamps are a lifeline for many. How dare candidate Gringrich attack President Obama for providing relief to 45 million Americans!

Most food stamp recipients are people who used to work, and they would, frankly, rather be working than receiving assistance. But they have downsized their lifestyles, their dreams and their expectations. They are waiting for the job market to roar back. Half of the 45 million are white, and some of them stood to applaud Gingrich. Do they really think that a man who disdains the poor will provide them with a lifeline? Do they really believe that a man who is selling wolf tickets to the NAACP is really concerned with the well-being of the least and the left out? The poverty that too many Americans experience is repugnant. The extent to which politicians trivialize such poverty is character-revealing. Who will put Americans back to work? Who will alleviate poverty? — (NNPA)

Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C.

The most perplexing question surrounding this year’s Republican race for the presidential nomination has been why can’t Mitt Romney seem to close the deal, despite running against what many consider an inferior set of opponents.

He has rarely exceeded 20 or 25 percent in national polls. And many pundits believe that the 25 percent support he has garnered thus far is about as far as Romney’s support will go — which leaves him extremely vulnerable to candidates like Newt Gingrich, who is working to distinguish himself as the latest ‘non-Romney’ candidate and consolidate much of the remaining 75 percent of the Republican vote.

There was Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Gingrich. While the non-Romney’s rose and fell, Romney’s numbers have never seemed to move, with voters seemingly transferring their support from one surging candidate to the next.

“So far, with only three states having weighed in on who the nominee should be, I don't think it's fair to say that Romney isn't able to close the deal,” said Client Strategist for the Republican National Committee Eric Wilson. “At the end of the day, Republicans are going to unite around our nominee, because any of the candidates still in the race will make a better president than Barack Obama.”

If you look beyond the top-line data in the polls, it becomes clear that nowhere near 75 percent of Republican voters have been vehemently opposed to nominating Romney. A Gallup poll conducted before New Hampshire’s primary, for instance, found that only about 30 percent of Republican voters considered Romney an unacceptable nominee. These numbers have bounced around a bit from time to time and from survey to survey, but these results are fairly typical when questions like these are put to the voters.

About 25 percent of Republican voters are in Romney’s base (incidentally, about 22 percent of Republicans nationwide voted for Romney in their party’s primaries in 2008). And about 30 percent of the Republican primary electorate is truly opposed to him.

That leaves a swing group of about 45 percent of the vote. These voters can certainly imagine candidates that they’d prefer to Romney — but they also consider him an acceptable choice, more or less.

What seems to have become clear is that the hypothetical candidate these voters might have preferred to Romney has not materialized.

There are enough substantive and stylistic differences between the various non-Romney candidates that they should not be viewed as interchangeable, this evidence suggests. A considerable number of Santorum’s voters prefer Romney to Gingrich; a considerable number of Gingrich’s voters prefer Romney to Santorum.

And voters in the swing group are now settling for Romney. They are not necessarily doing so enthusiastically: A recent Pew poll found that there has been little improvement in Republican voters’ overall views of their candidates, which is unusual but not unprecedented.

The 2004 Democratic presidential race parallels this one in many ways.

For example, Democratic turnout was reasonably strong in November 2004, despite voters’ initial lack of enthusiasm for John Kerry. The opportunity to beat a polarizing incumbent is a powerful motivating force.

Jon Huntsman was candid when he offered insight into just how little faith Republicans have that Romney can beat Obama. Keep in mind, Huntsman has thrown his support behind Romney now that he is no longer in the race.

A recent Gallup poll found that GOP enthusiasm is on the decline. Republicans and Democrats are almost even, enthusiasm-wise, as they move further into the election year.

And the 2012 election is looking more like a carbon copy of 2008, which also looked an awful lot like 1996. Republicans are lining up behind Romney. The GOP seems to be coming to the realization that they have to nominate somebody, so it might as well be Mitt Romney.

But Romney's sudden downgrade from Republican frontrunner to potential also-ran coincided with a massive shift of conservative Christian voters in South Carolina to Gingrich's camp.

Why? Many observers trace it to lingering suspicion among evangelicals — a key Republican constituency — about Romney's Mormon faith.

And that has led some to suggest that Romney needs to make a speech about his Mormonism along the lines of John F. Kennedy's defense of his Catholicism to Protestant leaders during the 1960 campaign.

So could Romney pull a Kennedy? Should he?

Mike Huckabee, an evangelical favorite who sought the GOP nod in 2008, told Fox News after Romney's South Carolina implosion that the time had come for Romney to give it a shot.

"I do think he ought to address it," Huckabee said, arguing that such a speech would "sort of dismiss it, make it less important."Top of Form

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But few political observers, and apparently even fewer Romney's allies, appear to be urging that step.

For one thing, the tracking polls in the GOP contest over the past months have registered more spikes and dips than an erratic electrocardiogram. Romney's cardiac moment in South Carolina — and his continuing struggle heading into Tuesday’s Florida primary — needs to be seen in that context.

"I think it was more a result of Newt Gingrich catching fire combined with a pretty tough week for Mitt on issues like taxes and income," said David French, a social conservative and Romney ally who with his wife, Nancy, just published a book, "Why Evangelicals Should Support Mitt Romney (and Feel Good About It!)."

"It's a pretty conventional narrative — at least by the conventions of this very volatile race," French added. "If there was any blanket anti-Mormon sentiment, then Mitt would not have been up to begin with."

When Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960, it was only two months before the November election, and he did not have to worry about his Democratic base the way Romney has to worry about securing the GOP base to win the primaries.

Kennedy's chief task in 1960 actually was not to convert his audience; they were already a lost cause, and he knew it. What the Kennedy campaign hoped to do was to influence the 23 percent of the wider electorate who were still undecided.

"The campaign's polling showed that yes, if Kennedy could paint himself as a victim of anti-Catholic bigotry, that will move people your way," said Shaun Casey, a professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary and author of "The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960." And it worked.

Romney's "religion" problem is about numbers as much as theology. As Casey notes, Kennedy's other task in Houston was to rally his Catholic base, which he did. But rallying an already strong GOP Mormon base wouldn't do much for Romney.

While Kennedy had a Catholic population of 40 million behind him — about one-quarter of the electorate, concentrated in key battleground states — Mormons today number just about 2 million, and are geographically concentrated in the Mountain West in mostly reliable red states (with the exception of toss-ups Nevada and Colorado).

Romney already gave a "Houston" speech — and it didn't work. Back in 2007, Romney was struggling to overcome evangelicals' doubts about his Mormon faith. While the speech was well received, it didn't move Iowa caucus-goers back then, and a second speech now would likely not convince suspicious evangelicals in Florida (and beyond).

Romney's biggest task is convincing conservative Christians that he is a conservative, not that he is a Christian.

Evangelicals have shown they are happy to back all sorts of unorthodox candidates – Herman Cain being a perfect example. Evangelicals may not love Mormons, but they are really down on moderates. Indeed, Romney is arguably "not Mormon enough," Richard Land, a top Southern Baptist official, said on the eve of the South Carolina vote.

"If his stance on life and his stance on marriage had been consistently what the stance of the Mormon church has been, he would have far less doubts among social conservatives," Land said.

Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a top evangelical political activist, said he doesn't think Romney's Mormonism will necessarily preclude him from winning evangelical votes or the GOP nomination, so he doesn't need to make the Kennedy speech at this point.

"Bottom line is," said Reed, "he may need to address it as the campaign proceeds, and he may choose to address it as part of a speech down the road."

In Florida, which is more diverse and less ideological than South Carolina, cooler heads could prevail if Romney can exploit his advantage in minions and millions. He has had the airwaves largely to himself for weeks, accompanied by a superior organization. Romney's campaign is in attack mode now – a sign that the campaign shares the Washington insiders' anxiety.

“The process is working and there's still time for voters to decide,” said Wilson. “Romney's greatest appeal continues to be the 'electability argument' and as long as he continues to raise the money needed to fuel his organization, he'll be in the contest. The other candidates remaining in the race don't have organizations on par with Romney so in many ways they're playing catch up.”

The New York Times Contributed to this report.

Zack Burgess is the enterprise writer for The Tribune. He is a freelance writer and Editor who covers culture, politics and sports. He can be contacted at zackburgess.com.