Newt Gingrich criticizes President Obama for diplomacy

President Obama spent the weekend visiting Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago, for the 5th Summit of the Americas.  Unlike his predecessor in the White House, President Obama is seeking to strengthen ties with allies and reaching out to enemies. 

In the last few weeks the world has watched as our new President has engaged in robust talks and diplomacy with world leaders in Europe and in the Americas.  While the vast majority of Americas are sighing a collective sigh of relief that we have a President who is poised and diplomatic, the leaders who represent the extremist right wing of the Republican party continue to seek fault with President Obama.

Newt Gingrich, not known for his skills in diplomacy criticized President Obama for shaking hands with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.  Chavez, for his part, was quick to take the opportunity whenever he could to get close to President Obama during the Summit of the Americas last weekend.  Perhaps he is trying to shore up his own reputation back home in Venezuela where he isn't as popular as he would like. 

Newt Gingrich complained that President Obama shook hands with Chavez on the Today Show.  Meredith Vieira, pointed out that the U.S. has a history of mending relationships with former enemies. 

That Newt Gingrich has become the speaking head of the GOP in the last few weeks is just one in a long series of illustrations of how the current Republican party has become desiccated.  Gingrich is being interviewed right and left on cable news shows and it's hard to tell if he fancies himself running for president or trying to replace Rush Limbaugh as snake oil salesman of radio.  Gingrich's chances of a successful run at the presidency are extremely low.  Remember when he threw a temper tantrum and effectively shut down the government?  It was a disaster.  Here is what Tom DeLay had to say in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender.

"He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force one...Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost.  What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child.  The revolution, I can tell you was never the same."

DeLay was speaking of the so-called, "Republican Revolution." 

Newt Gingrich is a buffoon, a cartoon caricature of a has-been politician.  He has been married three times.  He was having an affair at the same time that he was leading the Congressional investigation of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.  Gingrich is a hypocrite and a has-been.

Because of his past, it's unlikely that even his inflated ego would lead him to believe he could make a successful run for the White House so I can only conclude that his strategy is to take the reins as de facto GOP leader from Rush Limbaugh.  While Gingrich is certainly more intelligent than Rush Limbaugh, his childish behavior is no less repulsive to a vast majority of Americans, including many in the Republican party, the majority of the party that is moderate and has fled from the extremist views of the right wing fringe that continues to dominate the party even today. 

Today's GOP leaders, those with the loudest voices are Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Fox News, John Boehner, Jim Cantor, southern governors like Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas, to name a few.  Their only strategy is to talk trash about the current administration no matter what they do and the American people are fed up with it.  The vast majority of Americans want the government to be proactive, constructive and work towards solving the problems of the nation.  They recognize that the GOP leaders are interested in anything and everything except solving the problems of the nation.  In fact, to most of us, the GOP appears to be campaigning long since they lost the election.

I'm not complaining.  For Democrats and liberals, the party of no, the obstructionist movement that has overtaken the Republican party, is a sweet windfall.