Keeping An Eye On Newt

Republican Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience last Friday evening that the 2012 presidential election is the most consequential since the 1860 race that elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House and was soon followed by the Civil War.

Addressing the Georgia Republican Party's convention, Gingrich said the nation is at a crossroads and that the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama would lead to four more years of "radical left-wing values" that would drive the nation to ruin.

Gingrich also blasted Obama as "the most successful food stamp president in modern American history."

Last year, he suggested U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a racist, said Obama is best understood by his "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior," and argued that placing a mosque near ground zero in New York City was akin to placing a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.

Earlier Friday, at a speech before a gathering of economic conservatives in Washington, Gingrich said General Electric's aggressive legal and accounting strategy, which led to reports of a zero corporate tax liability last year, was a clever and rational response to the nation's high tax rates.

Just saying . . .