Depends on whether or not they’re running for office.
While part of me is outraged, another part of me admires his honesty.
There’s a third option. In 30 years, we’ll have all new problems to be grappling with as a nation, they can just blame gay marriage. Ooh, maybe it’ll be global warming. If the planet is undeniably warmer in 30 years, they can just say gay marriage caused it.
No more so than you can have candidates today blaming all social ills on interracial marriage. It’s all fine and dandy to say that doing X would cause society’s collapse, but when X happens and society keeps on keeping on, it’s a lot harder to blame all your troubles on it without sounding like an out of touch crank.
Since when have Republican electoral candidates not sounded like out of touch cranks?
Are they really out of touch cranks, or merely pandering to the out-of-touch-crank bloc among voters?
I’m of two minds about Gingrich’s comments. If you read the transcript, it seems like he’s saying he can’t be all things and if gay marriage is your most important issue (pro gay marriage, that is) you should vote for Obama. That actually strikes me as a pretty reasonable thing to say, that you have to figure out what your defining issues are and choose the candidate that fills them.
It’s surprising coming from a pol, but I don’t think it has to be insulting.
It could also mean “if I’m elected president of this country, I’m only going to look out for the civil rights of some of its citizens”, which could certainly be considered insulting if you’re not among the privileged group.
Well, yes, but that’s why if you want those civil rights for all, we don’t vote for the jackass.
Staying with jsgoddess’ benefit-of-the-doubt reading:
“If I’m elected president of this country, my priorities will be ordered differently than yours, but that is irrelevant—I’m elected president, you should be much more worried about the resultant zombie apocalypse, swarms of locusts, hellfire conflagration, and extinction of the sun.”
It’s TRUE! 
Cause gay sex is hot?
I think that’s a reasonable assumption if we’re talking about a reasonable person on a reasonable issue. But this isn’t a pork barrel pet project of a tiny minority, gay marriage is rightly lumped into the whole civil rights movement, the unbroken continuum stretching from racial equality, to gender, to sexual orientation. Its like saying “My top issue is the deficit, I can’t worry about murder and rape right now”. If that is what Gingrich really believes, then Og help us all if he’s ever in any position of power again
What Gingrich seems to be saying isn’t “vote for someone who cares about your pet issue”, it’s “if you’re a single issue voter you should vote for the candidate whose views most closely align with yours on that issue.”
And clearly, Newton Gingrich’s views on civil rights for non-heterosexual non-white non-Christians don’t align closely with, well, anyone in those particular groups, or even most het-white-Christians. Him being a faulty douche nozzle, and stuff.
This isn’t ‘evil Republican idea of the day,’ it’s ‘*Stupid *Republican Idea of the day.’
Telling the gay guy to vote for Obama was brilliant. He lost a few gay votes that may have voted for Newt in the Iowa caucus (literally, like, 3), but he just got a couple hundred Iowan homophobes who were undecided.
And he appeared to be forthright - non-calculating. Plus he didn’t take the bait of the gay guy’s gotcha question.
The man is amoral, but not stupid.
How do you get to this interpretation. Is there another “transcript”? The relevant portion of the link says this:
Arnold never asked Newt to do anything for gays, for a “gay agenda”, or anything else. He asked how gays could engage and support Newt. Newt could have asked him to volunteer for the campaign, to just vote for him, or a dozen other things. But he chose to say what he said, which is a complete and utter rejection of Arnold as someone who can contribute anything of value to someone like Newt.
Rick Santorum announces in Iowa that he’s “for income inequality.”
Who knows if this will prove to be a stupid thing to say, though.
Well he did say that he’s OK with income inequality, as long as there is equality of opportunity, so that’s not quite as bad as one might think.
The really dumb part was when he unveiled his plan to increase equality of opportunity for blue collar and lower income workers - to give them a fair shot at a good life, as he put it.
His plan? Lower taxes and fewer regulations for American companies. Ya, Rick, that’s going to work just swell.
The Republicans are like a choir that only knows one song.
How is that a gotcha question? The guy had an issue and he asked Newt his opinion. If you think that he went into it hoping Newt would put his foot in his mouth, there’s a lot of things Newt could have said that wasn’t an asinine rejection of a voter
What’s with all the gotcha answers? I suspect people know that there’s no conspiracy or attempt to smear any of these Republicans. They’re doing it themselves
Yet another closeted family-values Republican outed:
He had the doubly stupid idea of using taxpayer money to purchase gay porn. I count it as a two fer’.