Newt Gingrich is taking flak from his GOP rivals and some conservative commentators on things like Freddie Mac and his ideas about the federal judiciary. But as?his fellow debaters have learned, he can be a well-armed and highly-confident opponent.
Professor Gingrich was lecturing again Saturday ? this time on the history of the US judiciary, referencing Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.
Skip to next paragraphIt was a conference call from Iowa on ?how to bring the federal courts back within the constraints of the US Constitution.? Fascinating stuff, if a discussion of habeas corpus, Marbury v. Madison, and 14 German saboteurs ordered executed by FDR are what turns you on.
Obviously Newt Gingrich thinks the federal judiciary is an issue worth campaigning on. Railing on ?activist judges? is part of any conservative?s standard operating procedure. And in Gingrich?s case, it?s a way of taking the political discussion somewhere other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
His having been paid $1.6 million by one of the now-disgraced mortgage industry giants ? who cares whether he was actually ?lobbying? or not? ? continues to be something not just Michele Bachmann is interested in. Civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Fannie?s and Freddie?s former chief executives, announced just hours after Bachmann?s Thursday night debate attack, certainly didn?t help Gingrich any.
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Then there?s the Wall Street Journal?s long editorial on the subject Saturday. Bottom line:
?The real history lesson here may be what the Freddie episode reveals about Mr. Gingrich's political philosophy. To wit, he has a soft spot for big government when he can use it for his own political ends,? the newspaper editorialized. ?Mr. Gingrich would help his candidacy if he stopped defending his Freddie payday, admitted his mistake, and promised to atone as President by shrinking Fannie and Freddie and ultimately putting them out of business.?
But back to the Gingrich and the courts. It?s not just court-loving liberals who are critical of what the former House Speaker is proposing, which includes abolishing certain judgeships.
In the National Review Online Friday, noted conservatives Ed Whelan and Matthew Franck take turns knocking "Gingrich's Awful Proposal to Abolish Judgeships,? as their exchange is titled.
?I have often said that judicial independence is something we could stand to have a lot less of,? Franck writes. ?But there are right ways and wrong ways to bring activist judges to heel.?[Gingrich?s proposal] is a very badly wrong way.?
Whelan (who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and served in the Justice Department under former president George W. Bush) calls it ?constitutionally unsound and politically foolish.?
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