Is “Newt’s World” Selling Snake Oil?

I was wondering what he was up to. It’s just my natural journalist’s reaction, you can call it cynicism, I won’t debate the point. But when Newt Gingrich launched his TheAmericano website late last year I raised a metaphorical eyebrow.  ¿Y este, que se trae?

Gingrich believes he can attract Latino voters to his conservative, and personal, cause – along with every politician and marketer in the country. He’s already formed a fairly strong rationale, in his own mind, as to who Latinos are, how they behave and what they believe. In an interview published last October in the sunsentinel.com he shed some light on how he distinguished some Latino’s (the one’s he wants) from others.

I would start by saying if you are a Hispanic who is interested in a job and a paycheck rather than in unemployment and food stamps, there’s very little reason to look at Harry Reid.

Less than two months after that he launches TheAmericano.

But it turns out that it’s not only Latinos that Gingrich covets, and he’ll do what he can to get what he wants. A very revealing piece in The New Republic outlines all of the organizations, websites, companies and non-profits that he’s launched an amassed and that his staff “affectionately refer to as ‘Newt World.’” Here’s a breakdown:

• The Gingrich Group, a consulting company formed in 1999.
• Center for Health Transformation (CHT), launched to oppose Clinton era health reform.
• American Solutions for Winning the Future, set up to mimic Organizing for America and MoveOn.org.
• Renewing American Leadership, which “help(s) people of faith take back their own country.”
• In 2009 he “toured the country with its leader Arne Duncan and liberal frenemy Al Sharpton, touting Obama-style education reform.”
• In December he “endorsed ‘Right on Crime,’ a prison reform campaign that champions cutting costs through reduced recidivism.”

All together it paints a stark portrait of contradiction. This is how TNR explains it:

The Americano has published editorials in favor of the Dream Act, Hispanic Heritage month, and lower deportation rates. But Gingrich’s other endeavors have taken a much harder line on immigrants. American Solutions, for example, calls for the country to “control the border first.” On the ReAL website, Representative Steve King wrote a column chastising Democrats for being soft on immigration reform. (King, Capitol Hill’s resident immigration wingnut, also wants to eliminate birthright citizenship.) Gingrich may flaunt bilingual outreach through The Americano, but, at his flagship site, Newt.org, he calls on the United States to “end [its] policy of official multilingualism.” He recommends making English the national language, eliminating bilingual education in public schools, and producing English-only ballots. His stance is nicely summed up with his pithy slogan: “Want to pursue happiness? Learn English.”

¿Como se dice Buyer Beware en español?