"If you look at the collapse of Detroit and the rise of Texas, and you say to yourself which would you like better, the state that had the most job creation in the past 10 years or a city which has collapsed? Talking to Gov. Rick Perry and others, I know how to make the whole country look like Texas. President Obama knows how to make the whole country resemble Detroit." Newt Gingrich flagrantly using a race-baiting Southern Strategy on Hannity
Nice. No racism there. Shame on me for even entertaining such an idea. How could a guy who wrote a book that fantasizes about a Confederate victory at Gettysburg possibly use racial dog whistles?
Oh, and by the way, Newt? Texas "rose" because of President Obama and the Democrats passing the stimulus bill -- legislation that you vocally opposed. Proof:
Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched.
"Stimulus was very helpful in getting them through the last few years," said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies for the National Association of State Budget Officers, said of Texas.
That's reality. Newt is living in some sort of masturbatory fantasyland where Confederates won the Civil War and where Rick Perry actually means what he says. La-La Land.