Putting the obvious drawbacks to Newt Gingrich being the GOP's presidential nominee aside, the man is brilliant, articulate, and would pose a formidable opponent to President Obama in a nationally-televised debate.  I'll be writing more about Gingrich soon (and why I think he's the one to challenge Barack Obama in 2012), but for now enjoy some playfully combative remarks from Speaker Gingrich regarding his chances against Obama next year.

It's just Newt being Newt.

By: R.J. Moeller

Bill Maher: It’s Sarah Palin’s birthday today – do you have any special wishes for her?

[Sarcastic laughter and snickering from the audience and Real Time with Bill Maher panel]

Hooman Majd: I don’t think we can say it.  Even on HBO.

Matthew Perry: Do you think she even understands that it’s her birthday?

[Raucous laughter from the audience, grins from the panel]

Bill Maher: I don’t.  I think they said, ‘Sarah, it’s your birthday,’ and she thought her water broke.

[More approving laughter]

And thus began the “Ask the Panel” portion of the most recent episode of HBO’s political talk-show Real Time with Bill Maher.  Straddling the same “It’s a comedy show when I want laughter and applause (or when I get in trouble for going too far), but I really want to subversively promote an ideological agenda the rest of the time” line that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert walk every night on Comedy Central, Real Time offers the hard-hitting analysis one can only find anywhere two or more liberals are gathered in President Obama’s name.

To say that the banter I printed above is childish and petty is a slight against all children and petty people everywhere.

But it’s a “comedy” show, dude.  Why take it so seriously?

It is my belief that politically-involved public figures are who they really are when no one is voting – when elections are not imminent, politicians and pundits become increasingly loose-lipped.

I am a student of the culture, as we all should be, and I know (as we all do) that there is more than a hint of truth in any joke.  More people under the age of 40 get their information about current events from fake news and political talk shows like Real Time and The Daily Show than anywhere else.  The opinions offered on these mediums matter.  It wasn’t my decision to make these shows and these comedians the gatekeepers of information in this country, but for (far too) many they are.

And I think it more than fair to say that after watching the clips I’ve included in this column, you will see that the smokescreen-like attempts by people on the Left to dismiss the importance of these shows simply because comedians host them is either misguided or purposely misleading.  The Left want students and young adults to watch these shows and lap up the ideas and values streaming off their television and computer screens.  They want parents to remain where (far too) many of them are: oblivious, out of the picture, and utterly disengaged from the ideological development of their child’s worldview.

Now, if a show like Maher’s Real Time or Stewart’s Daily Show simply had actors, actresses and entertainers on as their guests, they might be able to get away with the “We’re just joking around, bro” excuse.  But the cavalcade of intellectuals, politicians, and influential members of the mainstream media that grace the sets of these shows reveals the deeper intent: they want to promote a specific, progressive, liberal-Democratic understanding of everything from foreign policy to the abortion debate.

Alright, enough with the (valid) generalizations.  Let me show you what I mean when I say that not only are these types of shows actively pursuing the hearts and minds of as many Americans as they can, but that what you hear on such shows is typically how the guests and their host truly feel about the matter being discussed.

After bravely mocking Sarah Palin’s intellect, raising the level of civil discourse in this country by complaining that the Republican Party is merely the party of “insane people,” claiming that Abraham Lincoln would not be a Republican if he were alive today, and insisting that the French and Russian revolutions were each hijacked by “right-wingers,” Bill Maher opened a discussion with his panel of experts on the topic of Barack Obama’s personal and religious convictions:

So much to say about what you just saw, but let me quickly introduce the players involved in this little drama.  First there is Bill Maher himself.  Most of you are familiar with him, but for those who aren’t, all you need to know is that stand-up comedian Maher is an outspoken far-Left atheist who despises religion, Judeo-Christian morality, conservative politics, and not being able to use profanity and coarse sexual humor (which is why he had to leave network television for HBO).

Going from right to left on the panel you had MSNBC political correspondent Norah O’Donnell, Iranian-born author Hooman Majd, and Professor Cornel West of Princeton University.  Oh, and next to Maher was, of course, actor Matthew Perry (aka Chandler, from Friends).  O’Donnell works for MSNBC, so I’ll let you do the math on where she’s coming from politically.  Mr. Majd writes books and articles for publications like The New York Times and Huffington Post, and loves playing the moral equivalency “they’re bad, but we’re not great either” game between the dictatorial regime in his native Iran and the republican democracy known as the United States of America.

Last, but certainly not least, is Professor Cornel West.  A practicing Christian, and outspoken Socialist, West is an “expert” on racial issues in this country.  He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.  This group’s founder, and someone West holds in high regard, Catholic-turned-atheist Michael Harrington, once explained the organization’s political ideology like this:

“Put it this way. Marx was a democrat with a small d.  The Democratic Socialists envision a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning...and racial equality. I share an immediate program with liberals in this country because the best liberalism leads toward socialism.... I want to be on the left wing of the possible.”

Nice.

With the introductions out of the way, let’s tackle the actual words spoken – and valuable insights revealed – in the YouTube clip above.

Commenting on the president’s insistence that he is a “Centrist” politically, Maher said, “I think [Obama] is a Centrist the way he is a Christian…He’s pretending to be a Centrist.”

I applaud Mr. Maher for his candor in recognizing what any casual observer ought to clearly see in our president (and, to be fair, a large number of politicians): an unnatural comfort-level with presenting yourself as one thing, when you really you are nothing of the kind.  To the issue of his politics, it is without a doubt true that the president often tries to cover up his true ideological leanings.  We on the Right see right through this and are disappointed, both by the fact that he is a progressive liberal to begin with, and also by the fact that so many people buy the moderate rhetoric he has peppered throughout a decidedly far-Left political career.

As to his faith in God – no one can know another man’s heart, and it is not my place to speak to the nature of a personal relationship one has (or does not have) with their Maker.  We generally take someone at their word about such matters.

But Bill Maher is insinuating what we all know to be true: actions speak louder than words.  What about the president’s actions since taking office point to a real, energetic faith in God?  We all knew George W. Bush was a Christian, in large part because the media never shut up about it.  They mocked President Bush for being honest and direct about his prayer life and faith in Jesus Christ.  With President Obama, in between the times it is convenient to reassure Americans that he is a Christian, the media goes out of its way to downplay the man’s faith.

The only way someone would know President Obama is a Christ-follower is if he or she has read either of his two memoirs.  But those are the books that also tell us about the radical nature of the president’s political ideology and worldview, as well as his deep affection for (and connection to) people like Jeremiah Wright.  If we’re supposed to look at the president’s own words about his own beliefs, we find an affinity for the Marxist rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky and his radicalizing manifesto Rules for Radicals (which Obama believed so much in that he took action and taught classes on the text to up-and-coming community organizers in Chicago for more than a decade).

Please hear me: I do not stand in judgment of President Obama’s heart.  Only his actions.  In this case, however, even Bill Maher can read through these lines.

The conversation continued:

Bill Maher: His mother was a secular-humanist, and I think he is too…It’s like when he (Obama) says ‘I struggle with the issue of gay marriage.’  You don’t struggle with it.  You’re fine with it.

Professor West: He supports gay marriage, of course.

Maher: No, he says he struggles with it…that he doesn’t like it.

West: Yeah, but that’s the political answer…

[Panel concurs with knowing glances]

Hmm.

When a conservative or Republican, say, Rush Limbaugh, for example, attempts to analyze the president’s track-record and make pronouncements about his actual stance on the issues they are scoffed at and accused of having partisan blinders on.  When one of the most respected liberal professors in the country comes to the same conclusion that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity have about the president’s disingenuous position on the redefinition of marriage, it is affirmed as a fact that everyone ought to already know.

This, of course, says something less-than-favorable about President Obama’s character, but it also speaks to the minimal importance that modern liberalism puts on the subject of character and integrity in its leaders.  Neither Right nor Left, Republicans nor Democrats, hold the moral high ground in the sense that one side or the other are literally “better” people.  We’re all sinners.  But the comfort-level that the Left has with morally-questionable (or out-right immoral) behavior on the part of their leaders is worth noting.

To the majority of Americans, traditional marriage is held up and recognized as a sacred institution – the building block of society.  It is a massively important issue.  In order to garner votes in 2008, the president and vice president claimed to be on the side of history, biology, 6,000 years of religious teaching, and the will of the American people when it came to keeping marriage one man-one woman.  But again I ask: what actions have these men taken to solidify and strengthen the institution of marriage?  Heck, what words have we heard from either of them in 2 years on the matter (other than their enthusiastic support for the repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy)?  With a heavy heart, I must admit that I think Professor West speaks the truth in this matter.

Admittedly, one episode of Bill Maher’s show is not a comprehensive or exhaustive representation of all Center-Left thought – but it is a fair one.  It is fair because it is common.  You can hear such things any night of the week on everything from The Daily Show to The Rachel Maddow Show to TBS re-runs of The Steve Harvey Show.

If you only get your news and information about politicians and the issues they represent from skimming newspaper headlines or Katie Couric’s nightly reports on CBS, you will assume that Maher and his panel are joking.  With even a minimal effort to investigate the people you lend power to, and the issues that are impacting your jobs, schools, and families, you will learn that the joke has only been on you.  (And that the Left has been laughing us all the way to Western Europe for 40 years.)

It is said that a nation gets the leaders it deserves.  If West and Maher are correct in their appraisals of President Obama, what does that say about us?

You simply cannot explain the scope and breadth of the Obamacare debacle in one column...unless your last name is Krauthammer.

As an aspiring writer and commentator, I spend a great deal of time reading the books and articles and speeches of the people I feel effectively communicate the ideas I believe in better than anyone else.

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and Fox News Channel is one of those people.

Every night of the week, at roughly 6:40 p.m. (Eastern Time), Dr. Krauthammer is a member of the "All-Star Panel" on Special Report With Brett Baier.  (You should be watching or DVR-ing this every day).  And each Friday, his nationally syndicated column is read in newspapers all across the country.

Today he treated his reading audience to this gem on the current state of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama health care plan:

After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.

The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House "summit" with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans' way.

Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama's health care bill.

The Health Care Summit last week was a dog-and-pony show, meant to portray the Republicans as obstructionists and big old meanies.  But the president was confronted by the likes of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and the fact-based disagreements conservatives have with Obama's brand of "reform."  Republicans DO have ideas, and many key members of the GOP on the state and national level have been promoting them all year.

Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections -- contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.

Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments) they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?

And now, in what can only be described as the most brilliant summation of the American peoples' opposition to Obamacare, please enjoy the wit and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer in its rarest of forms:

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3-1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

That's it, folks.  Everything the Left promises sounds nice on an individual level, which is how they present their collectivist policies.  The problem is, of course, that all of their policies are implemented on a national level and cannot possibly succeed.  This is the heart of the debate between Right and Left: can the few rule, and provide for, the many?  Can "experts" in Washington "control" the expenses and costs of 300 million-plus liberty-loving Americans?

The good intentions of liberals are heart-warming and bone-chilling, all at the same time.

Chuck closes out his devastatingly informative column with the following:

The time for debate is over, declared the nation's seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington's wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of "budget reconciliation." The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.

Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.

The Conservative Political Action Conference was held this past weekend in Washington D.C., and the keynote address was given by Fox News' Glenn Beck. Regardless your opinion of Beck, this speech is worth watching.

My boy Newt Gingrich has been a guest many times on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and it's always a wild ride.

Last week the former Speaker of the House duked it out with Stewart over the president's handling of the War on Terror.

Smugness: Stewart is thy name.

The Heritage Foundation is one of the most important organizations in the country.  The work they do analyzing and promoting economic, social, and political policies is indispensable, and if you aren't very familiar with Heritage yet...get in the game, and get informed.

Today, in honor of President's Day, Heritage posted two separate blogs: one on Lincoln and one on Washington.

An excerpt for Abe:

Lincoln wanted freedom for the slaves, but he was no progressive. He was a prudent statesman, as Allen C. Guelzo points out in a First Principles essay, and in this prudence lies the essence of his conservatism. He recognized the inherent flaws and limitations of human nature. He did not want to somehow “supersede” or “go beyond” the Constitution, as progressives do. He instead wanted to see his beloved country live up to its founding principles, while upholding the Constitution.

We are not alone in the fight to preserve the self-evident truths that are the foundations of this nation. Nor is our fight new, or unique. We are but the newest carriers of the torch of American liberty in the midst of the darkness of despotism. It is a sometimes daunting but always honorable duty, one in which we have Honest Abe as a most shining example. So let us act as he did, with the goal “that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.”

And another for George:

This season’s snow falls and Snowpocalypse presents a great opportunity to remember our president who also suffered through the cold to save the Republic.

Happy William Henry Harrison Day! No wait. That is not right. Failing to wear a coat in cold weather is not the same as defeating the British during a blizzard.

The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history: like one who served only a month in office. This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington. That’s why it’s Washington’s Birthday; not President’s day.

Hear, hear!  We're not celebrating Barack Obama, or even Ronald Reagan: this is a day for George and Abe (and truthfully, both should each get their own day...especially in light of the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. does).

Does it bug anyone else that we can hardly point to any great movies about the life, faith, courage and sacrifice of Presidents Lincoln and Washington?  If Andy Warhol deserves a dozen flicks, these men should be able to look down from heaven and see bio-epics about their lives every summer.