Newt Gingrich asks: “Do you want to move towards American exceptionalism, reassert the Constitution, reassert the nature of America, or do you, in fact, want to become a secular, European, sort of bureaucratic socialist society?”
Evidently his own answer is, “neither, thanks; I prefer a dictatorship.”
How do we know this? Because he has decided to abandon the rule of law, one of the key things that makes America exceptional.
On “Face the Nation,” Gingrich announced not only that court decisions that are out of step with popular opinion should be ignored, but that as president he might have judges arrested by the Capitol Police or the U.S. Marshals.
Ignoring court decisions and having judges arrested is what dictatorships do.
He was referring to a decision to keep a public high school graduation secular, something required by the Constitution. But ignoring unpopular opinions would not only let us establish government-ordained religion and reinstitute racial segregation, it would let undermine one of the pillars of our economy. I’m thinking foreclosures are fairly unpopular decisions these days — shall we be allowed to ignore them? How about evictions? Don’t want to pay a judgment for breach of contract? Form a mob and show how unpopular it is!
In my field, decisions tossing ADA cases based on procedural grounds such as standing or mootness are unpopular. Shall we ignore them and bring our sledgehammers with us when we visit inaccessible facilities? (Do NOT tempt me!)
Or are we only allowed to ignore decisions that are unpopular with conservatives?
And this guy is supposed to be the brain trust of the Republican party?
What’s funny is that Gingrich is smart. He knows how important the rule of law is, which also means that he knows he’s full of shit. But he has apparently decided that the only way to win this time around is graft the arrogance that has always been a side effect of his intelligence to some sort of random right wing slogan generator to create a FrankenCandidate who would be immensely entertaining if he weren’t so frightening.
And finally we have the Republican party 2011: proclaiming conservative values while embracing a someone with three marriages and multiple affairs; decrying elitism while embracing a pompous windbag with a $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s; and proclaiming American exceptionalism while rejecting the rule of law.
Thought Snax 
So, no argument here that Newt overstepped on these comments, but that’s election-year politics and all candidates make fanciful statements to grab headlines. Whether this was good or bad politics is up to the voters to decide. I suspect it will hurt more than it helps and his opponents already jumped on it (though Perry would be well-advised to learn how many justices there are on the SC before questioning anyone’s interpretation of constitutional law).
But, you say “He was referring to a decision to keep a public high school graduation secular, something required by the Constitution.” I am sure I will regret challenging a constitutional scholar like you, but I’m a glutton for punishment so here goes. I just don’t think the constitution (or the intent of the FFs) says that. The fact that most Americans believe the words “separation of church and state” appear in the constitution (I know you know they don’t appear) is indicative of how far we’ve travelled from the FF’s intent to today’s interpretation.
My understanding is that one of the things the FFs were trying to avoid was a “federal religion,” like what we had fled Englad to get away from. However, they never intended to constitutionally prohibit any intermingling of anything and everything related to the gubmint and religion. In fact, I believe many (all?) states had state religions (e.g., Virginia was Anglican at the time of the founding, by choice). What they did not want was the new federal gov’t trying to tell states what religion they support or practice. They wanted that left to the states or not at all. They just wanted to be certain thtat the new feds didn’t have a say in it.
So, you and I would agree that it would be unconstitutional for a school or other gov’t run entity to mandate religion, but there is nothing that mandates that kids can’t hold prayer sessions or that there couldn’t be an “opt out” prayer in a school. The latter tiptoes into the notion of “separation of church and state,” which is a concept that does not exist in our constitution.
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