Newt Gingrich Blames Virginia Tech Tragedy on Liberalism

This will come as a surprise to no one. He even tries to tie it to McCain-Feingold election financing. Go figure.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week yesterday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) blamed the Virginia Tech tragedy on “liberalism” and the “culture” it has “created.” In the wake of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, Gingrich made a speech in which he said, “I want to say to the elite of this country — the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton…of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for the things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have to courage to look at the world you have created.” Asked by host George Stephanopoulos if he would apply those same words to the Virginia Tech tragedy, Gingrich said “yes,” before launching into a ramble attempting to connect Virginia Tech to Don Imus and McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. Gingrich has repeatedly spun tragedy for ideological and partisan gain. In 1994, after Susan Smith confessed to drowning her two children, Gingrich quickly blamed liberals, saying the only way to avoid similar future incidents was “to vote Republican.” After former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) was forced to resign over his sexually inappropriate behavior towards House pages, Gingrich declared on Fox News that conservatives didn’t stop Foley because they “would have been accused of gay bashing” by liberals. At the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, Gingrich blamed the residents of New Orleans’s 9th ward for “a failure of citizenship” — by being so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.”