No Newt is good Newt!

Or The "Contract on America" has expired

By Tom Murlowski, Associate Director,
November Coalition
Quotes compiled by Ms. Francis McMillen

Even the Republicans have tired of mean spiritedness -- or so we hope. Speaker Newt Gingrich is now out of a job, having fallen on his own sword. We fondly bid farewell with Newt's own words:

"We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to employ marijuana legally, under medical supervision from a regulated source."- as printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, March, 1982

On fighting crime: "There's a way to get a drug-free society. You ruthlessly drive out the drug culture. There's a way not to get to a drug-free society. You don't ruthlessly drive it out. What you shouldn't do is lie to yourself and stand in the middle. Then you have the total mess that we have today. I would raise the cost of the behavior at every level. The current penalties for drug use are such that if you're a baseball player or you're a rock star, what do you care? I'm not sure of the constitutional provision on this, but I'd charge middle and upper-income people 10% of their gross assets for first use, 20% for second and 30% for third. People would care very fast. If you raise the penalties enough, people quit doing it. I would also use the death penalty for people who import commercial quantities. They are going to addict our children. And I love our children enough to use the death penalty to stop that . . .which is the Singapore position . . ." -1995, speaking to Time, Inc.

Criticizing daytime TV-

". . . where people get on and describe the most disgusting behaviors. We end up with the final culmination of a drug-addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilization and no sense of rules of life in which human beings respect each other." -1997

"Just Say No as a campaign worked." - 1997

"We need a World War II-style victory campaign for a drug-free America." - 1998, Washington DC

"I personally think we ought to build a fence everywhere we have illegal immigrants and drug dealers crossing into the United States." -1997, Georgia

"Once America got involved, it took our country just four years to win the Second World War - the greatest military effort the world has ever seen. In the Civil War, it took just four years to save the Union and abolish slavery. But this President would have us believe that with all the resources, ingenuity, dedication, and passion of the American people, we can't even get halfway to victory in the War on Drugs until the year 2007 - nine full years from now. That is not a success. That is the definition of failure." -1998

In an unexpected move, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has officially resigned; not just as speaker, but from Congress altogether. During his tenure as Speaker, Gingrich set new standards for downright meanness, moralistic preaching, and petty partisan squabbling. He was one of the most ardent and vocal drug warriors

In 1997, Newt sponsored the 'Drug Trafficker's Death Penalty Act', which mandated life in prison or death for as little as 2 ounces of marijuana. In a high school speech in 1997, Newt was heard to say, " when we start killing 30, 40, or 50 of them at a time, then they'll see the price of their deadly business go up." This man was talking about mass executions of nonviolent, low-level 'drug traffickers' in the United States of America.

In 1994, Gingrich signed a 'Contract with America' in which he promised smaller government, and less intrusion in the private lives of citizens. I think we can safely say the 'Contract on America' has expired, and, hopefully, the continued attempts by Congress to legislate virtually every aspect of behavior in America.

Newt and his 'Gingrich Republicans' were a small but powerful minority within Congress. It seems likely that, in the wake of Election Tuesday's startling results, the rank and file of the Republican Party exerted tremendous pressure to wrench party control away from Mr. Gingrich and his allies. Congress may be engaged in an internal power struggle that could dramatically change our present course. Perhaps Washington has finally come to its senses, and realized that the People don't want to be governed by moralistic, mean-spirited rhetoric, but by compassion and common sense.