Newt is not making any nuevo amigos

Not even officially in the race for president and Newt Gingrich is out speechifying and not making any new friends in the process. For a few years after he was no longer in a position of power, he seemed almost human. But now that he's considering tossing his hat into the ring, the old Newt we loved to hate is back and as dicky as ever. This time, he's letting the true colors of his southern racism show ever so brilliantly. We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto Anyone who knows me either personally or through reading this blog knows that I'm not one of these dogmatic PC liberals. I'm not for giving special rights to illegal immigrants. I don't want them getting drivers licenses or receiving any other benefits that tax paying citizens get because they are not paying into the system. But that doesn't mean I want to kick them out of the country either. And I do think that it's a really good idea that everybody who lives and works in this country really ought to learn English. But since there is a significant number of people in this country who are less than fluent, and as we are supposedly a country founded on equality (fact that those founding principles were conceived while slavery was a perfectly acceptable practice notwithstanding) then we need to accommodate these people while strongly urging them to become fluent English speakers. What bothers me the most is that this sort of talk really only has one purpose, to excite the ugliest elements of the republican base. This is the Nixonian "southern strategy." Appeal to the racists with talk like this as well as talk of "states rights" which is a code word for being down with the confederacy when spoken by republicans (since they have demonstrated abundantly that they are quite against states rights to pass legislation that they disagree with). I actually hope Newt jumps into the ring and goes all the way in the primaries because if this is any indication, he will show mainstream America the absolute ugliest side of the republican party. Of course, that could come back and bite me in the ass if the electorate gets as ugly as they did in the last couple of presidential elections. Americans are an unpredictable and fickle bunch.