Newt Gingrich "is doubling down on racial politics, and I'm going to continue to call it out when I see it," declares Joan Walsh on Salon. Most recently, he referred to President Obama as a "food stamp president." He previously said Obama would only "get the whole country to resemble Detroit." He referred to 2012 as the biggest election since 1860—"you know, when Abraham Lincoln got elected and the South began to secede over slavery," Walsh writes. And last year, he spread "the lie that Obama inherited angry African anti-colonialism from his absent African father."
"I might not have paid attention to Gingrich's 'food stamp president' jibe had it not come along with a panorama of images designed to make clear Barack Obama is blackity black black," Walsh writes. His comments are "coded racism," having hit "pretty much every way the GOP has used to divide Americans by race in the last 200 years!" And that's why Gingrich will never be president, Walsh says, although he has "developed the perfect platform to run a spirited GOP campaign that attracts a cadre of aggrieved white people." Click for Walsh's full column, or check out her original column on the food stamp comment. (More Newt Gingrich stories.)