"Outrageous" Newt

Roger Simon (not to be confused with PJTV's Roger L. Simon) thinks Newt says a lot of outrageous things.  The sole example in the article follows:

“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” Newt said recently in Iowa. “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.”

I don't see what's so outrageous about Mr. Simon's example. He may not agree, and of course it isn't literally true in every case on the individual level -- but like most libs, Mr. Simon doesn't even come close to directly addressing what Newt said, he just calls it "outrageous" or "scandalous" and expects everyone to nod in agreement. Of course, the same libs will argue for spending millions or billions on programs for role models and government job programs to specifically address the exact same problem Newt is talking about (and perhaps even Newt himself has been for them in the past) -- and that's all perfectly ok. It's just not ok for a conservative, real or perceived, to point it out. Because, as we all know (because libs keep telling us), conservatives are a bunch of heartless a**holes for not agreeing that more government is the solution.

Newt wouldn't be my first or second or third choice. But we could do a lot worse than Newt. Case and point, take a look at who's in the White House... when the current president isn't on vacation, that is. (No, I'm not talking about Lady Gaga.)  A bonafide Alinsky radical.  I'm not pretending Newt is ideal or even awesome. But if this is the worst Mr. Simon can come up with for an "outrageous" comment, they have a lot to be afraid of.

Simon points out a piece written about Gingrich he uses to ridicule and put Newt's comments on "habits of working" because he didn't want to work through college and got his family to help.  Well, you know, family can say "no" if they don't think their money is well spent, and they didn't.  Not so with Government.  And people do grow and learn between college age and 50.  It is possible.  Simon quotes the writer

“Dolores Adamson, Gingrich’s district administrator from 1978 to 1983, remembers, ‘Jackie [Jackie Battley, Newt’s high school geometry teacher and first wife] put him all the way through school. All the way through the Ph.D. … He didn’t work.”

and goes on to skewer:

Early on, Newt found a secret: Get family to pay your way. Then get taxpayers to pay your way, then charge $60,000 a speech, and then get corporations to give you large sums of money. And ultimately, of course, there’s the presidency with its comfortable salary, free housing and that big plane where you can choose any seat you want.

So his family paid his way through school, he became an elected official ("get taxpayers to pay your way", a point of view that I have SOME sympathy with - but let's remember Newt was largely responsible for keeping Clinton reigned in) -- and dudes, you can't live on charging $60,000 a speech if people don't want to pay $60,000 to have you come speak. You're offering a product. They can take it or leave it. Free market. Same with "get corporations to pay you large sums of money." They won't pay you large sums of money if you aren't worth it to them. I'm not saying (because I don't know) that he didn't do things for corporations I'd disagree with -- but this is not evidence of not having a "habit of working".