Flaylo
Handsome Devil
Newt Gingrich 'Irritated' By Outrage Over His Comments On Food Stamps
Newt gets confronted and comes up with weak cop-out
Bullshit cop-out, Newt was racially pandering to rightwing whites by mentioning blacks and welfare in the same breath.
Newt gets confronted and comes up with weak cop-out
At an event that his campaign billed as a "Hispanic Town Hall Meeting," held at the Don Quijote Mexican restaurant here, Gingrich was pressed on the topic by Yvan Lamothe, an African-American New Hampshire resident.
"My point is, about a week ago -- some time ago -- you mentioned that black people should be able to earn a paycheck, not be on welfare, implying that black people in general are on welfare," said Lamothe. "And I really took exception to that because it demeans my accomplishments, my hard work, because I have worked all my life. I have never been on welfare. You know about history. You know that back in the 1930s, Hitler started talking in Germany about a Jewish problem. My question to you is, do you think that blacks represent an American problem, and if you don't think that, will you stop using blacks in general as a stepping stone or a punching bag?"
Gingrich disputed Lamothe's characterization of his comments, blaming the Democratic National Committee for taking them "totally out of context."
"I didn't say what you just said," he said. "Let me be very clear, because this is something that makes me, quite frankly, very irritated. ... What I said was, there's a real problem in America because you have a president who's put more people on food stamps -- people, I didn't say any ethnic group, people -- than any other president in history. ... And I said I would be willing to go to the NAACP annual convention -- which most Republicans are not willing to do -- and I'd be willing to talk about the importance of food stamps versus paychecks."
Bullshit cop-out, Newt was racially pandering to rightwing whites by mentioning blacks and welfare in the same breath.