Robert Reich Slams Newt Gingrich For GOP Complicity In Income Inequality
Jonathan Karl made a very lousy moderator. Several times Cokie Roberts attempted to get into the discussion to add substantive input. She was ignored by Jonathan Karl who mostly concentrated on the men. It ranked of sexism. Gingrich got ample opportunity to misinform. Roberts attempted to refute Gingrich on policy and was summarily disregarded. She seemed visibly perturbed.
The segment started with a video of Rush Limbaugh implying the Pope was a Marxist. Jonathan Karl asked Cokie Roberts about the Pope’s impact. She stated that he has shaken up the church and is bringing it back to being more like Jesus. She is puzzled that some have reacted the way they have. “They clearly have not spent much time reading the New Testament,” she said
Robert Reich chimed in saying that the Pope had the temerity to take on supply side economics. Reich referred to supply side causing inequality as a kind of ‘savagery’.
Jonathan Karl then asked Newt Gingrich if Republicans should be talking about inequality. Gingrich said they should. He said the Republican Party needed to address some of the indifference his party has towards the very poor. Gingrich then tried to segue into claiming the war on poverty was a failure. It was clear Cokie Roberts was attempting to get in to refute Newt Gingrich but was ignored.
Instead Robert Reich chimed in and reminded Gingrich that in fact the war on poverty was successful. Reich then implied that it was policies of the last thirty years (Reaganomics) that stunted progress.
Jonathan Karl as most in the ‘Liberal Media‘ do, attempted to bolster the Republican (Newt Gingrich) by asking why in the five years of the Obama administration, inequality has gotten worse. Robert Reich went for the jugular. He said it perhaps had to do with the intransigence of Newt Gingrich’s Party, the Republican Party. “Every time there was a jobs bill. Every time there was an effort to expand low income housing, every time there was an effort to provide better opportunity for young people,” he said.
Newt Gingrich interrupted and called Robert Reich’s truthful statements baloney. Gingrich then lied and said every major city which is a center of poverty is run by Democrats. The reality is two out of the top five are run by Republicans. Newt Gingrich then attempted to imply that it was Democratic policies in those cities that caused poverty. Cokie Roberts was attempting to get in seemingly to say that it wasn’t local policies that cause poverty.
Newt Gingrich was attempting to do what those on the Right do all the time. Mix two unrelated facts to come out with an outcome. The poverty in major cities is pronounced because of the concentration of people. Rural areas and areas in Appalachia and throughout the country experience poverty as well. They are just not in urban centers with a lot of media coverage.
The discussion between Robert Reich and Newt Gingrich show the difference between rhetoric and talking points and fact base information. More Progressives should take heed and hit Republican intransigence, disdain for the poor, and disdain for the working middle class hard whenever they spill their venom. They must reach not only to the mind (fact based information) but to the hearts by articulating policy in milk, bread, butter, employment, and family values.
I interviewed former Clinton Labor Secretary Professor Robert Reich a few weeks ago about his new film “Inequality for All.” Check out the interview here.
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Thank you for this post AND for your analysis. I did not watch the broadcast. It is maddening to see the differences between the two sides. I wonder that so many Americans are so ill-informed that they believe the lies.
Whoever said, “Don’t cong fuse me with facts,” should be dumped somewhere else.
Well… I often think Cokie simply provides soft cover for ideas held dear by conservatives (often without question). So as to whether the moderator Karl was deliberately steering away from her, it only makes me laugh, most especially when Cokie’s points of “opposition” clearly still favor viewpoints on the right. So was it sexism? Or was Karl knowingly navigating away from a panel that once again featured 3 conservative voices against 1 progressive (Reich). If anything, it seemed to me that Karl was moderating in a fashion that allowed the lone progressive to have equal footing against a stacked panel of conservatives.
Why would Karl do so? Perhaps to counter his rep for being a schill for Republican talking points…