Thanks to Newt the Stupid!

Newt Gingrich is one stupid guy. He has conned himself and some segment of the media into thinking he's bright. He blathers on and on, but he actually doesn't know what he's talking about 90% of the time. He's a pseudo-intellectual blowhard. And he's dumb as a post politically. Slick and clever sometimes but actually stupid.

The clearest evidence of his colossal stupidity is the fact he's running at all for the GOP nomination. Did Obama bribe him to get into the race? Newt's so-called candidacy is doing the Democrats a world of good.

Why? How?

Because Newt has the biggest set of baggage in politics, and each piece of that baggage is full of dirty linen. Some of it's personal, but a lot of it is Republican.

Let's set aside the three wives for the moment. (Newt too sets aside wives.) Let's look at what a great walk Newt is providing politically down memory lane. Let's rejoice in how his now-spotlighted candidacy is reminding everyone of how really disgusting the GOP has been all along. And how the GOP is most emphatically responsible for the current economic and financial plight of this country.

Example:  One of Newt's "groups" got $37 million from the health care industry for "access to Newt". The out-of-office Speaker still had clout in D.C. at the time the Medicare prescription drug coverage was being enacted. The name of the game for PHARMA was to ensure that Medicare drugs  would cost the program full freight. Other federal programs, like the VA, bargain for drug prices and thus save billions of fed dollars. And Medicare bargains down prices for medical services. But, as the ex-Speaker of the House helpfully plowed the field for PHARMA, Medicare was prohibited from bargaining for drug prices.

The result? Medicare has to pay prices like the $850 a drug company charged Medicare monthly for each little bottle of just one medicine my late husband HAD to take or die. The pills probably cost a dime to make, and the bottle probably cost a nickel.

The bigger result? The conservative Club for Growth estimates this one bit of plowing by Newt costs the feds $60 billion a year. "Costing the feds" actually means costing you and me and the rest of us struggling taxpayers.

There's more about Newt and the money he got for the special treatment he finagled for the most rapacious elements in society. Lots more. These items will be bouncing around the media while Gingrich has his moment up in the GOP polls. Take note of them and hope that others do too. These are not Newt's moments alone. They are the standard M.O. of the GOP, so colossal in scale that it dwarfs the Democrats who try the same influence-peddling.

So thanks to you, Newt, all the shabby and dirty linen is on display.

But before we leave you, Newt, here's a special thanks for one of the best laughs ever in the pre-Daily Show era. It was back when Newt got booted out of the Speakership of the House for messing around with a staff woman. His replacement as Speaker served for a few weeks and then had to resign when it emerged he too was messing around on his wife. Mark Russell, then a piano-playing political comedian on PBS, did a delightful bit, solemnly entoning a "provision of the Constitution" that reputedly said, "In the event that the President of the United States shall be impeached for having sexual relations with an intern in the Oval Office, two successive Speakers of the House of Representatives shall immediately   resign."

Happy Thanksgiving, Newtie ol' boy! You have given us Democrats a lot to be thankful for in this campaign. And now everybody knows how you can afford to drop a million bucks at Tiffany's.