Gingrich: Media Replete with "Racially Fixated Minds"

Newt Gingrich

Commentary by Newt Gingrich - The Washington media reached new levels of absurdity in its coverage of the Republican convention in Tampa this past week. That's how we know it was a success.Completely at a loss for truthful or substantive criticism yet determined to derail the Romney-Ryan ticket, they resorted to accusations of imagined racism. To listen to some TV commentators, you'd think that conservatives oppose President Obama out of prejudice. Indeed, the charge that Republicans were using their convention to race-bait was leveled again and again and again through the week.
I doubt these attacks will work with voters, since no reasonable person watching the convention could possibly have seen what these media personalities claimed to perceive.
But the charges were all the more outrageous when you looked at the figures appearing on stage.
Now, the media commentators could be forgiven for having missed former Representative and former Democrat Artur Davis--the African American Congressman who submitted Barack Obama's name in nomination four years ago--since MSNBC didn't even air his amazing speech (undoubtedly afraid it would embarrass their commentators and their candidate). 

Artur Davis - Nominated Barack Obama in 2008

But these highly nuanced and racially-fixated minds surely must have noticed that, beside Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the faces of the party they were accusing of race-baiting were Marco Rubio, Condoleezza Rice, Ted Cruz, Susana Martinez, and Luis Fortuño. 

These people are the stars of the Republican Party. And they're stars not because of their race or their gender, but because they're some of the best, most intelligent, most innovative, most persuasive leaders anywhere in the country.

It must drive the elite media nuts, since they're intent on fabricating racial excuses for the nation's disappointment in its president. In some cases, it literally did drive them nuts.

When I appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews earlier in the week, he was eager to discuss a litany of conjured-up charges of racism.

Each was more absurd than the last.

I was race-baiting because I've pointed out that more Americans have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than under any president in American history.

Mitt Romney was race-baiting because he denounced the President's gutting of the welfare work requirement.

Ronald Reagan was race-baiting because he spoke

Chris was not exactly feeling a thrill with my response.

pointed out to him his own prejudiced thinking: the vast majority of people on food stamps and welfare are white. To assume that anyone talking about those services is speaking in racial code is to hold a racial stereotype of those groups yourself, not the other way around.

Ronald Reagan's welfare queen was *committing fraud against the taxpayers*. He never said she was African American. But rather than acknowledging that Reagan was offering an example of welfare fraud which we know was *in fact a real problem*, Matthews tries to excuse the behavior just as he excuses President Obama's failure: by trumping up charges of racism to distract from the important issues at hand.

Gingrich: Media Replete with "Racially Fixated Minds"