Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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Your Daily Newt: The Case of the "Pouting Sex Kitten"

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 11:05 AM PST

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich holds up a copy of something that's not his 1994 novel, "1945." Gage Skidmore/Flickr

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Gingrich's 1994 novel, 1945, presents a provocative alternative history in which Hitler invaded eastern Tennessee at the end of World War II. Most news accounts of the book didn't get that far, though. Instead, they focused on the sex scene in the novel's opening pages. But as Charlie Homans reports, that's really not Newt's fault; blame one of his co-authors, Jim Baen:

Baen's eagerness to secure a large audience for 1945, [Gingrich friend David] Drake believes, was to blame for the Nazi Sex Kitten Incident. Dissatisfied with the first draft that Gingrich’s new co-author, William Forstchen, turned in, Baen began rewriting much of the novel himself—including an opening scene in which a Nazi spy, posing as a Swedish journalist, seduces the American president's chief of staff in an effort to pry loose nuclear secrets. "Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress," he wrote. “She rolled onto him and somehow was sitting athwart his chest, her knees pinning his shoulders. 'Tell me, or I will make you do terrible things.'" Convinced the scene was the book’s strongest selling-point, Baen circulated an excerpt to political reporters and Hollywood producers.

The book, unsurprisingly, was a flop. As Homans notes, "When the speaker appeared at the Chicago Book Fair to promote To Renew America, Baen was reduced to handing out free copies of the novel to anti-Gingrich protesters outside, who tore the books to pieces on television."

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Grand George Soros—Fox News Alliance Exposed at CPAC

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 10:06 AM PST

Photo by Tim MurphyShona Darress has it on good information that George Soros, liberal financier, scourge of the right, quarterback of the no-huddle offensive against all that makes America great and holy—the Sultan of Slant, the Maharishi of Misinformation, the Big Bopper of Bias—is secretly controlling the flow of information at Fox News. This might come as a surprise to some of you, given Fox News' fairly unambiguous vendetta against Soros and the progressive causes he helps support. But it is apparently the reality we must deal with, and Darress has the charts to prove it.

When I approach her booth (sponsored by the group "America's Survival") deep in the bowels of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and ask how she possibly came to the conclusion hinted at by her display, she quickly points to a smiling face on a poster a few feet behind her. "This, here: Sally Kohn. She's Soros-funded." Darress points to the next face, right below. "Jehmu Greene. She's Soros-funded." Although Sally Kohn is, according to Darress' literature, "the new face of Fox News," I've never heard of her; Green's role at Fox is as the token liberal on Sean Hannity's nightly program, a position that seems to exist solely to give Hannity and his panelists someone to yell at. "They're publicly owned," she says when I ask how Soros came to control the country's leading outlet for conservative news. "It's not that they went to Fox News and said we want to buy your stock—they just did it." The pamphlet she hands me spells it out more clearly: "Most likely Fox knuckled under to blackmail. Soros went after Murdoch's Empire with the hacking investigation against News of the World using the left-wing Guardian newspaper."

All of which explains why she'a hawking the bumper stickers that drew me in to begin with—red ones with "Bring Back Beck" in big white letters. "Glenn got shoved out because of Soros. He was outing everybody, wasn't he? He wasn't shutting up about George Soros! Soros didn't really like that." As for Beck, "He'll stay undercover a little bit longer. But the news is out."

Spread the word.

Update: Sally Kohn tweets: "I am NOT nor ever have been funded by Soros, despite Right wing assertions to contrary."

The Best Swag at CPAC

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Feb. 10, 2012 3:30 AM PST

Forget everything you've heard about shrinking government, icing the welfare state, and giving poor children the maintenance tools to pull themselves by their bootstraps—at the Conservative Political Action Conference, everyone's just looking for a handout.

That, at least, was my conclusion after talking to the good folks at Procinctu, a firm that "works to arm you with the knowledge and tools necessary to attain self-sustainment, empowerment, and security." That entails a number of things—warning you against the evils of Monsanto, promoting the purchase of gold and silver, encouraging exercise. And purchasing, for $10, this t-shirt:

If that's tough to read, let me spell it out for you: It's a t-shirt celebrating corpse desecration (a response to this). No one's buying, though; mostly people just come by, snap a photo, and keep on walking when they find out it's not free.

Maybe that's because everything else at CPAC is free. Here's a very incomplete sampling:

The plot of this book—free, if you promise to tell three friends about it—is that Einstein was wrong, time-travel is possible, and our 16th president has done exactly that in an attempt to steer America back on course.

Redecorating your office? Looking for something for that special someone this Valentine's day? Enter to win a free portrait of your favorite GOP presidential candidate:

Of course, if you load up on hand-drawn portraits of GOP presidential candidates, you'll probably need a car to help you bring them home with you. And if you're going to have a car, you'll want a bumper sticker to go with it:

And if you're going to get rear-ended by the driver who took your bumper sticker the wrong way, you'll want same sustenance while you recover. Like a cake replicating the board for the "Tea Party board game." Its creator told me it was like a combination of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. They offered me a slice. I told them I always have someone taste my food first. No one laughed.

In addition to handing out Chuck Norris t-shirts, our friends at birther hub WorldNetDaily are shilling for a presidential candidate of their own. But do they know he was born in the Philippines?

This is....interesting:

Pasha Roberts, the creator of the animated film Silver Circle, explained it to me this way: "Basically the plot of the movie is there is a severe economic collapse in 2018. There's a group of rebels who are fighting the Federal Reserve, and the way they fight is by making alternative currency out silver." Think Children of Men meets the Ron Paul Revolution. When I tell him I work for Mother Jones, he adds one more detail: one of the heroines of the flick is a "pot-smoking lesbian":

This isn't free, but I had to share it anyway. It's just a few feet away from a display of Ron Paul books. As I thumbed through this defense of colonialism, a Mitt Romney supporter next to me picked up a copy of End the Fed and held court with his friends: "This is what his freakish followers read. When they protest Romney events, they have a megaphone and they just read the book. It's disgusting!"

Runaway Slave: Run From Tyranny to Liberty, celebrates the exploits of African-Americans who have...embraced the Republican party. As the tag line puts it, the film "lays bare the truth about blacks and the progressive agenda. Get on board the new underground railroad!"

CPAC: Attack of the Anti-Multiculturalists!

—By Tim Murphy

| Thu Feb. 9, 2012 10:33 AM PST

The hottest piece of swag at the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC is the beer koozie. You can pick up upwards of a dozen varieties wandering through the massive exhibit hall in the basement of the Marriott Wardman Park. You can even get a koozie from the anti-multiculturalist student group, Youth For Western Civilization. But it wasn't the knick-knacks that drew me over to the group's table in the basement exhibit hall, though—it was their logo, a black-and-white image of a flexed arm grasping some medieval piece of weaponry.

It looks like a battle axe, but I'm quickly corrected—it's actually a war hammer. "It's supposed to represent Charles Martel," a volunteer tells me. That's a reference to the eighth-century French leader and father of Charlemagne who turned back the Muslim invaders at the Battle of Tours. Martel is something of a hero to the group because they believe the same thing is happening today—American civilization (Western Civilization) is slowly being watered down into something unrecognizable. We don't just need less illegal immigration; we need a lot less immigration, period.

"Mitt Romney is a soulless automaton with no principles—which is why he's good," says Kevin DeAnna, the American University graduate who founded the organization, suggesting that the GOP front-runner's malleable core values might make him easily persuadable. "He's not a closet leftist like George W. Bush." No group benefits more from immigration than the 1-percent, another volunteer chips in, and Kevin quickly agrees. "When Occupiers come up to us—and I'm sure you can imagine they do—this is what we say to them," he says. The 99-percent should be vehemently opposed to illegal immigration—as proof, he cites the early 20th-century labor organizer Samuel Gompers, who called for limits to immigration out of concern for the domestic workforce. Of course, Youth for Western Civilization's alliance with the Occupy Wall Street crowd is probably short-lived; the same group has also posted articles on its website denouncing Nelson Mandela as a "bloodthirsty terrorist" who should have been hanged in the 1980s. (DeAnna tells me he wishes the Occupiers weren't so caught up in political correctness.)

After wandering through the exhibit hall, I dashed upstairs, where an overflow crowd was gathered for a breakout session called "The Failure of Multi-Culturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening American Diversity." As one speaker put it, "Europeans and their trans-Atlantic cousins are literally an endangered species." Another speaker, Rosalie Porter, chairwoman of the anti-bilingualism group ProEnglish, lamented that the Civil Rights Act had ushered in an era of multiculturalism, in which Americans were distinguished by made-up terms like "Hispanic."

Which isn't to say that the entire conference is dominated by White Nationalists. But in a year in which the CPAC's organizers blocked the LGBT group GOProud from co-sponsoring the event, their inclusion is a jarring reminder of the deep-seated biases preventing the conservative movement from actually becoming the Big Tent Republicans say they want.

Your Daily Newt: Gingrich Shoots a Pig. Sort of.

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Feb. 8, 2012 2:50 PM PST

David Becker/ZumaPress.com

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

In early February, Newt Gingrich launched a new website attacking GOP front-runner Mitt Romney for his less-than-distinguished record as a hunter. The site, romneyguns.com, mocks the former Massachusetts governor for once claiming to have hunted "small varmints," and depicts Romney in an Elmer Fudd-style cap holding a rifle, standing inside a silver cup. It's funny because Romney has been hilariously uncomfortable when he's asked about hunting. It's also funny because the man attacking him is Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, as my colleague Andy Kroll reported in January, has never owned a gun in his life. His comment that "males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes" notwithstanding, he does not hunt. Instead, Gingrich's passion for wildlife is on the complete other side of the spectrum—he once told a reporter that he'd like to spend 6 to 12 months in the Amazon staring at tree sloths. When it comes to big-game-hunting bona fides, the former speaker gives Romney a run for his money. Newt's affinity for firing a gun in anger at an animal was captured in this scene from a 1995 Vanity Fair profile:

Carter tells a down-home kind of story from the 1970s. Newt and Carter, who was then his campaign treasurer, used to barbecue hogs in the Gingriches' driveway in Carrollton, Georgia. They would go to a friend's farm and pick out a hog --and shoot it.

"One day, Newt says to me, 'I need to be the one to kill the hog. It's only right, just morally.'"

Carter showed Newt how to use a Walther P-38, a W.W. II German pistol. "I said, 'Put some corn in your left hand. When the pig comes over to get it, put the pistol against his head and shoot him between his eyes.'"

"So the pig comes over and he starts eating," says Carter. "Newt flinches as the round hits the pig on the side of the head and ricochets down." But the shot only stunned the hog and sent it fleeing back into the pen. "Newt keeps trying to get this pig to come back to him. Newt's getting madder and madder. I said to him, 'You just shot the son of a bitch in the head, Newt, why do you think he's gonna come to you?'"

Carter recalls urging his comrade-in-arms, "'You gotta get in there, in the hogpen, and go get him.' But Newt wouldn't do it. So I ended up going in the pen and killing the hog."

Rep. Sue Myrick Retires, Opening Door for Islamist Intern Cabal To Take Power

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Feb. 7, 2012 1:46 PM PST

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) Courtesy of the office of Rep. Sue Myrick

North Carolina GOP Rep. Sue Myrick told supporters on Tuesday that she will not be seeking re-election next November, making her the third elected representative from the state to announce her retirement in just the last few weeks. On the surface, it's not an especially big deal, largely because Myrick is hardly a power-broker in Congress and her district is solidly conservative.

But Myrick's departure will deprive Congress of one of its loudest voices in the fight against the largely nonexistent threat of "stealth jihad"—a congresswoman who once held a press conference to declare that the Capitol had been infiltrated by a secret cabal of radical Islamist interns bent on destroying America from within. (As anyone who's spent much time in this city knows, the real power in Washington is held by Hill interns; the lobbyists are just there to make sure we don't run out of cigars.)

Such behavior would become a pattern. When Myrick sat down with Muslim constituents in Charlotte in 2010 to explain herself, the Associated Press noted that Myrick had "proposed fighting Islamic radicalization by cutting off exchange programs and weapons sales with Saudi Arabia, passing legislation that would make it a treasonous offense to call for the death of American citizens and investigating the selection of Arabic translators." Admittedly, it was an incomplete list. Last August, she held hearings on the Muslim Brotherhood's supposed attempt to take over America through self-jihad (it didn't go so well). Myrick has also addressed—and been honored by—the anti-Islam activist group ACT! for America. ACT!'s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Muslims should be prohibited from serving in the military and blocked from holding public office.

Last fall, Myrick canceled her planned appearance at a September 11th memorial out of concerns that she had become a target for terrorists, citing an article published by Iranian state media that mentioned her name. Myrick declined to elaborate on the specifics of the threat, except to say that "I live with threats every day; that's my life." The Iranian report was actually just a translation of a report on Islamophobia published by the liberal Center for American Progress. And although Myrick alleged that she had been told be intelligence sources that the article put her life at risk, Salon's Justin Elliott noted that none of the other Republican members of Congress implicated in the report canceled their public events on 9/11.

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Your Daily Newt: Touched by an Angel > Ellen

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Feb. 7, 2012 9:38 AM PST

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (left) and Ellen Degeneres. Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons; Allen Light/Flickr

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Conservative activists are freaking out over J.C. Penney's decision to hire Ellen Degeneres to shill for its products. This is because Ellen, star of the now-dormant eponymous sitcom and host of the still-active eponymous talk show, is openly-gay. By endorsing a popular line of clothing, her sexual orientation will now ooze into the very fabric of our society. So to speak.

Newt Gingrich hasn't called for a J.C. Penney boycott. But he has been less than boosterish on Ellen's public profile. As the New York Daily News reported in 1997, when Degeneres came out on her show that year, Gingrich's response was to double-down on his call for major television networks to rededicate themselves to family friendly programming:

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), whose half-sister Candace is gay, said he's miffed the media celebrates the star of "Ellen" for revealing she's a lesbian while ignoring family shows like "Touched by an Angel."

Asked yesterday what he thought about the Ellen-is-gay hoopla, the Gingrich responded, "I didn't think much about it."

"I think that this is a commentary largely on Hollywood and on the people who define what's big," Gingrich griped on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"If you watch the next five nights of all the networks . . . How many times will a person deal with a serious spiritual question . . . as opposed to what hedonism to engage in next or how shallow and trivial can life be?" he asked.

Gingrich seemed to go out of his way not to mention the name of Ellen DeGeneres' ABC sitcom, calling it "the TV show which happened to end up on the cover of a magazine."

He is pushing the networks to devote the 8-to-9 p.m. time slot to family programing.

One week earlier, Gingrich and more than a hundred other members of Congress had taken out a full-page ad in Variety asking executives at the six leading broadcast networks to dedicate the 8 p.m. hour to family friendly programming: "Is it too much to ask Hollywood to voluntarily set aside one hour for families?"

Behold the Most Racist Political Ad of the Year (So Far)

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Feb. 6, 2012 9:04 AM PST

The year's most offensive Super Bowl ad—and the competition was stiff—wasn't seen in most of the country. It was from Michigan GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who's challenging Debbie Stabenow, an incumbent Democratic senator, in the fall. Or as the ad helpfully calls her, Debbie Spend-it-Now—"it" being "money," which Hoekstra fears will all end up in the hands of smiling, cunning Chinese women.

In the ad, an apparently well-educated young Chinese woman rides her bike through a rural rice paddie (Heaven knows why), and recounts Stabenow's support for raising the debt ceiling. Then she says, in perfectly broken English: "Debbie spend so much American money you borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie spend-it-now."

Stabenow's campaign is calling it "nothing more than a hypocritical attempt at a Hollywood-style makeover because the fact is, Pete spends a lot." But I think it's fair to say it's a lot more than just a Hollywood-style makeover; it's a play to racist Chinese stereotypes—simulatenously backwards, cold and calculating, anti-American, and capable of communicating only in broken English. Big Trouble in Little China was more progressive than this.

Thankfully, our new favorite Tumblr, "Racist Political Ads," is on the case.

Your Daily Newt: Crack Negotiating Skills

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Feb. 6, 2012 6:00 AM PST

Then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich photobombs Bill Clinton's 1997 swearing-in ceremony. Globe Photos/ZumaPress.com

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

One of Newt Gingrich's most compelling arguments on the campaign trail is that as president, he'll be able to win converts to his policies through sheer intellectual force and powers of persuasion. Put him in a one-on-one debate with Barack Obama and he'll wipe the floor with the president. Let him deal with Congress and he'll find a way to break through. Newt's been in the trenches with Bill Clinton, the thinking goes, and has the legislative victories to show for it. But as Robert Draper reported for GQ in 2005, Gingrich's negotiating skills often left his conservative colleagues shaking their heads:

The Clintons are never far from Newt's mind. They're like the Kennedys were to Nixon: glamorous, charismatic, brazen power-grabbing elitist amoral lying dream killers. Wrong on health care, wrong on the budget, wrong on the military...and so goddamned clever! Newt's staff and the class of '94 had seen it time and again: Every time Speaker Gingrich galloped into the Oval Office with his musket loaded for Slick Willie, he shuffled out holding his own gonads. "It got to the point where the Republican freshmen were afraid to send him in there alone," remembers Newt's archivist and friend, Mel Steely. "By the time Newt would get back to his office, Clinton's press secretary had already announced the opposite of what they'd agreed on. I'd say, 'Newt, how did you get suckered in?' And he'd say, 'Clinton would come up from behind his desk, put his arm around me, and say, "Newt, you're absolutely right." Just charm the pants right off of you.'"

Your Daily Newt: Ridin' the Rails

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Feb. 3, 2012 2:54 PM PST

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Newt Gingrich wants you to know that subways are for rich folks. Two weeks ago in South Carolina, he pilloried "those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro." On Friday in Nevada he blased Manhattan elites who take the subway to work.

Here's a photo of Newt Gingrich, from his 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way:

P.F. Bentley/Lessons Learned the Hard Way