The 2011 Republican Leadership Conference kicked off Thursday at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans with a sort of appetizer for the red meat coming on Friday (speeches by Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rep. Ron Paul, former Sen. Rick Santorum, Tea Party favorite Herman Cain and Govs. Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour). Thursday night’s conservative buffet was far more modest, with Newt Gingrich the only potential presidential candidate in a series of speeches by political strategists (the day’s other favorite, Fox News host Mike Huckabee, appeared before the dinner hour).
Much of the audience sat and clapped politely while speaker after speaker addressed topics like organizing by smartphone, “SuperPACs,” stats about the gross domestic product, and general anti-Obama administration rhetoric. Still, there were few familiar faces at the dais: “Who are these people?” asked one woman in the lobby. “I don’t know. I’m only here for Newt,” was the response.
About 7:30 p.m., the crowd rose to its feet as Gingrich entered to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” — probably best known to today’s generation as the song that played over the last scene of The Sopranos. The former Speaker of the House looked a bit tired, but he quickly ingratiated himself with the Louisianans in the crowd by reminding them he graduated from Tulane University (‘71, with a Ph.D. in modern European history). He described the 2012 elections as a chance to “end the 80-year rule of the Left.”
The defection of most of his campaign staff the week before obviously hadn’t quashed Gingrich’s presidential ambitions. “This is going to be a philosophical campaign. It will shock the news media,” he promised. If elected, he said, he would sign “200 executive orders” on the first hour of his first day in office. “I don’t know what they’d all be,” Gingrich said, “but I know the first four. The first eliminates all of the White House ‘czars’ as of that moment.” (Big applause; the crowd wanted no part of czars and czardoms.) The other three: ensuring no U.S. taxpayer would pay for overseas abortions; instating a “conscience provision” that no medical professional would have to perform any procedure that violates his or her religious beliefs; and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That wasn’t all; should he win and the GOP take both houses of Congress, Gingrich said, he would in the first week pass a tax cut that would eventually create 25 million jobs.
In his first week of office, Gingrich added, he would introduce five changes to the tax system: Make permanent the current tax rates; go to zero capital gains taxes; go to a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate; “100 percent expensing for all new equipment”; and “permanently abolish the death tax,” the proposal that got the most applause. He also proposed repealing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was introduced in 2002 with wide bipartisan support in reaction to corporate accounting scandals like Enron, as well as the 2009 Dodd-Frank Act. Gingrich also wants to replace the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency.
“Obama is going to fail in both practice and radicalism,” he said, saying the president was a “national secular humanist socialist.” He went on to spit-roast Obama for being squishy on American exceptionalism (he threw in academics and the press on the squishy pile). “You can’t have centralized power in Washington, because that becomes the rule of bureaucrats,” he said to applause, and shortly thereafter asked the crowd to send him back there. The room gave him a standing ovation.
MAY 23 Here's a story in the Picayune about some statistics that must come as a blow to folks who believe that any private school can do a better job of educating kids than any public school: Danielle Dreilinger reports that only 30 percent of the voucher kids are passing. That's less than half of the state wide average, she says. It's an interesting statistic because most of the schools (if not all) taking voucher kids have never had their students' standardized test scores released to the public before.
MAY 23 Stephen Sabludowsky blogs on Bayou Buzz about auditor requests here. Recently the state GOP started crowing about a request from the Legislative Auditor, claiming they were being targeted because of their anti-tax stance. (Uh, your what?) Denial and hyperbole aside, the state Democratic party blew holes in that theory with an email announcing they'd received the same request, Sabludowsky writes here.
MAY 23 Jim Brown blogs about the senate race in this post. He says that, given Bobby Jindal's "lack of traction" on the national stage, it might make more sense for the governor to consider running against Mary Landrieu for the senate seat. Since Tim Teeple left the Cassidy team, it makes sense he might land on a Jindal for Senate team, Brown opines.
MAY 23 In this Louisiana Voice post, blogger Tom Aswell writes of rumors that his nemesis, state Superintendent of Education John White, may be soon departing Louisiana for a federal post. It's hard to believe, given his performance, Aswell says, but stranger things have happened. An anti-White BESE member says that, if true, White is quitting before he can be fired.
MAY 23 In this post on American Zombie, blogger Jason Berry writes about the Mother's Day shooting. Mayor Landrieu said that "this is not who we are," but the fact is, this is New Orleans, Berry writes. The violence infused in the city is the result of a culture created by "sins of omission or sins of commission," Berry writes. It's not a problem that can be solved by legislating, policing, praying or publicizing, he says: Someone's got to understand what's happening first.
MAY 23 This post in the Westside Journal tells us what Port Allen Mayor Deedy has been up to lately: vetoing ordinances, apparently. This story is most interesting, however, when it delves into a petition that has been circulating around the city lately. It accuses the former mayor of a lot of nasty things; the former mayor says it is full of lies and "broken syntax" which may be a larger offense in his eyes.
MAY 23 This editorial posted in The Advocate is a bit confusing. The writing is poor - definitely not up to the usual editorial writing standard there - and the point is hard to grasp. Apparently, the writer is saying that privatization of state efforts is OK, as long as there is oversight and transparency, but Jindal's not good at that, and the legislature shouldn't over-react. Okey Dokey. Can't they get one of them Pulitzer-winning people to write an editorial?
MAY 23 This post on The Lens gives you links to a new Google Earth tool that allows you to see any spot on earth transform over the past 30 years. Bob Marshall, who covers the coast for the paper, says that in the case of Louisiana's coastline, it's possibly something you don't want to see, because it's not a pretty picture. There are several clips here, showing critical areas erode away. For Marshall, it was vindication for all those times he was met with eye-rolling when he talked about erosion.
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