It’s been a long while since disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich held public office — 13 years, to be exact — but for those who followed his career on Capitol Hill, it’s hard to overstate how much Gingrich hates the federal judiciary. To be sure, Gingrich had all kinds of people and institutions he targeted, but the courts were always near the top of his list.
So when it came time for Gingrich to address the right-wing Value Voters Summit yesterday, it came as no surprise that he spent much of his time going after his favorite subject.
“I would instruct the national security officials in a Gingrich administration to ignore the recent decisions of the Supreme Court on national security matters, and I would interpose the presidency in saying, as the commander in chief, we will not enforce this.”
Gingrich is also apparently interested in defunding the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, generally considered the most progressive bench in the country.
“Congress has the power to limit the appeals, as I mentioned earlier. Congress can cut budgets. Congress can say, ‘All right, in the future, the 9th Circuit can meet, but it will have no clerks.’ By the way, we aren’t going to pay the electric bill for two years. And since you seem to be — since you seem to be rendering justice in the dark, you don’t seem to need your law library, either.”
And Gingrich is running for president in part because of a nine-year-old court ruling that ended up being thrown out of court and affecting no one.
“Let me be clear. judicial supremacy is factually wrong, it is morally wrong, and it is an affront to the American system of self-government. One of the major reasons that I am running for president of the United States is the 9th Circuit Court decision in 2002 that ‘one nation under God,’ in the Pledge of Allegiance, was unconstitutional. That decision to me had the same effect that the Dred Scott decision extending slavery to the whole country had on Abraham Lincoln.”
Remember, as far as Gingrich is concerned, President Obama is a wild-eyed extremist.
Any guesses on what ol’ Newt would say if the president decided to ignore Supreme Court rulings and deny funding to appeals courts Obama considers too conservative?
