If you still think that members of the Republican Party have grasp on reality or ethics, read on.
Former House Speaker and 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Friday during a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and should be repealed. Yes, that’s right. Child labor laws, you know, so 8-year-olds and 10-year-olds can’t be forced or compelled to waste their childhood toiling away instead of learning, playing and doing things children should be doing with their time.
Here’s what Gingrich had to say:
It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child laws which are truly stupid. Saying to people you shouldn’t go to work before you’re 14, 16. You’re totally poor, you’re in a school that’s failing with a teacher that’s failing. …
I tried for years to have a very simple model. These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work; they’d have cash; they’d have pride in the schools. They’d begin the process of rising. …
Go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job at 9 to 14 years of age. They are selling newspapers, going door to door, washing cars. They were all making money at a very young age. What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don’t do it. Remember all the stuff about not getting a hamburger-flipping job? Worst possible advice to give the poor children.
The only job that I can think of that “children” performed in the mid-1900s was delivering papers, and those were mostly teenagers, not 9- and 10-year-olds, as Gingrich is suggesting. Before that, children were employed in the lucrative professions of chimney sweeping, factory workers and courtiers, with very foul implications in each case. Children taking on jobs before the coming of age has rarely ended well for them.
Gingrich has always been an establishment type of politician and not really one given to toeing the fringe line in the same way as modern intellectual giants like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. Now, he appears to be solidly in the Tea Party camp. He was described by The New York Times as one of the GOPs most creative thinkers. Perhaps, but I don’t think calling for the repeal of child labor laws quite qualifies as “creative,” rather anachronistic and immoral, not to mention a bad idea from an educational and economic standpoint.
I can only come up with two explanations for why Gingrich would offer such a ridiculous proposal. First, he has never come off as an evangelical candidate, so he probably can’t win over the most ardent believers in this race. Thus, he might as well strike a sentimental tone and hearken back to the way things used to be four or five decades ago. The older among the electorate surely remember the days when teenagers, perhaps younger than 16-years-old, did deliver papers. Second, this can only be another of many strategies to move the political center so far to the right that what we mean by “center” in 2012 is vastly different than what we meant by “center” in 1994 when Gingrich led the notorious GOP takeover.
Has the electorate mindset shifted so much that a former establishment politician like Gingrich has to change is tone and amplify his speech to have a chance in 2012? I hope not, but that may well be the case. One would think that with the preponderance of fringe candidates on the GOP roster this year, an establishment guy might be able to cut a different niche for himself. But, of course, that road may only be wide enough one person: Mitt Romney.