The day Newt Gingrich met Arlene Ackerman
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The day Newt Gingrich met Arlene Ackerman
I'm trying to figure out which is more shocking: The fact that Newt Gingrich has become the overwhelming frontrunner in the GOP 2012 field, or the fact that the frontrunner in the GOP 2012 field is the same guy who just 28 short months ago came to Philadelphia with the Rev. Al Sharpton and President Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan to tour a charter school, and a traditional public school, with now ousted and arguably disgraced former schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman in tow.
Gingrich said wonderful things both about the Mastery Charter School -- whose biggest and best-known donor is Oprah Winfrey -- and, by implication, the work that Ackerman was doing here.
This excerpt should give you a feel what went down here in Philly on Sept. 29, 2009:
It is a high-poverty system where only about half the students can read and write at grade level. But bright spots like Mastery make Superintendent Arlene Ackerman optimistic that the district is "in a breakthrough mode," and that a combination of reforms may be the best way to help students.
Ackerman, who sat in on the tour, plans to pursue a "renaissance" strategy similar to one Duncan did when he was schools chief in Chicago. Philadelphia's first cohort of "renaissance schools," to be identified later this fall, will be essentially shut down in June and reopened next fall with new staffs and new academic focus.
Gingrich, Sharpton and Duncan also visited Delaplaine McDaniel Elementary School in Philadelphia, a high-poverty school run by the district that met federal education standards for several consecutive years.
Gingrich said both schools give him "a sense of great hope" for bettering the U.S. education system, which lags many of its international counterparts.
From an education policy standpoint, there's nothing too alarming about the event -- placed in the contect of 2009, when the then-new Obama administration started casting for a middle ground on education reform that would include greater tolerance for some forms of school choice, while hopefully not completely alienating teachers' unions. Many conservatives like Gingrich like charter schools -- even though they like vouchers for private and even religious schools even better.
But from a political standpoint, to see Gingrich -- now appealing for and actually winning the votes of Tea Partiers who see any cooperation with Team Obama as a kind of treason -- playing footsie with an Obama cabinet secretary and a bete noire of the right wing like Sharpton is more than a little jarring.
Why do these things not hurt Gingrich, when his chief rival Mitt Romney gets savaged on the right for once being in the same place, more or less, with Obama (and Ted Kennedy) on a different issue, health care reform? I can't articulate this very well, but it's as if voters feel Romney has never once defined who he is while Gingrich has successfully defined who he is -- even though "who he is" is a politician who's all over the map at any given time. That's just Newt being Newt.
I also wonder what else was going in 2009. Many folks were at first bewildered when Sharpton -- who has ties, both financially and ideologically, to teachers' unions' groups -- started advocating for charter schools; they were later shocked, shocked to learn that a mega-billions hedge fund linked to conservative school reform had channelled a $500,000 donation to Sharpton's National Action Network when the organization was struggling with tax woes.
So what was Next's angle here?
Come on Will, you are suppossed to be the "journalist." Don't you have any insight? What is the problem? Oh I forgot. You do not have anything to smear.— CD75- Here is the problem, it is the ilk who post here will spin anything and everything to be liberal bad/conservative good. They will support a character like Newt, regardless that his position changes with whom is writing his next check and if elected president will sell off our country to the highest bidder. That Newt, who does not meet their high moral standards (whatever they are), lacks any morals, will dump his wife once they begin to become an inconvenient or lose their usefulness. — DavidAG
- I'm trying to figure out which is less shocking: The fact that Newt Gingrich has become the overwhelming frontrunner and he has risen to the top Libby target in the GOP 2012 field, or the fact that the frontrunner in the GOP 2012 field is being bashed for hanging with someone who now has problems...did they ever do that to Barry???? LOL!!! Libs are such predictable idiots!!!— sarah89
- Newt, like Obama, was "Winning The Future".— Mr. Smith
- Wow, talk about trying to make an issue out of a nothing event. Other side of the coin is Newt showing a bipartisan support for education, but you wouldn't see that angle, would you? And when Sharpton (or Jesse Jackson) talk about being for "people of color" they mean green like in money or black like in newsprint.— jimmymack
Comment removed.- Will apparently doesn't like the fact that Newt can "reach across the aisle."— Yankee Air Pirate 12
- A big part of the support for "school reform" comes from within the African American community, because they have to live with the public system every day. And despite the old notion, hammered away by the press, that conservatives are against African Americans, this issue is at the heart of conservatism - give them the tools they need to be successful.— Mirror
- Comment removed.
Along comes a gift horse, Will. What are you not supposed to do? Of course, it never was about ideological purity, we know that all too well, but the establishment never loses these contests anyway. What should be capturing your imagination right now is the ever increasing chances for a major independent candidate. This has Third Wave implications, and how ironic that Newt is a self-proclaimed Toffler disciple.- I can't tell what the point of this post is... Are you trying to smear Gingrich with Ackerman??— IggleFan68
- I think the point is that the GOP base are idiots or simply hypocrites at heart. I prefer the latter interpretation, because you guys just can't be that stupid. I like Newt myself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moFsABsJNL4
- ///Why do these things not hurt Gingrich, when his chief rival Mitt Romney gets savaged on the right for once being in the same place, more or less, with Obama (and Ted Kennedy) on a different issue, health care reform?///
Heck, Newt was in the same place with Obama and Kennedy on health care reform, back in the early 90s.— General Turgidson - It's worse than you could ever imagine General. I could dig up Newt's wonderful, analytical endorsement of Jimmy Carter in 1978, but why take the fun out of this? You guys will find out soon enough.
- Comment removed.
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