Republican Audience Cheers Gingrich’s Child Labor Speech

What’s the difference between a Republican gathering and a tractor pull?  No, this isn’t a riddle.  I mean, is there any difference?  I once heard a standup comedian describe a tractor pull as “ten thousand people, six teeth.”

And this is what the Republican Party has turned into.  First we have a room full of Republicans shouting “YEAH!!!” when a debate moderator asked Ron Paul — and it was just a rhetorical question — if he thought an uninsured patient in an emergency room should be just left to die.  Not long afterward, a GOP audience sees a video of a Marine asking if the reinstatement of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would mean he has to go back into the closet.  The audience full of yellow magnet chickenhawks booed and jeered wildly.

And last night Newt Gingrich was — for the umpteenth time — expounding on the joys of child labor.  Needless to say, the inbred audience broke into furious applause.  Gingrich said:

“If you take one half of the New York janitors, who are paid more than the teachers. An entry-level janitor gets paid twice as much as an entry-level teacher. You take half those janitors, you could give lots of poor kids a work experience in the cafeteria, in the school library, in the front office, in a lot of different things. I’ll stand by the idea young people ought to learn how to work.”

[cue the whooping and hollering]

Have we hit rock bottom yet, or is there still room to sink even further?  America has turned into a country that yells “Jump!” when a suicidal person is standing on a ledge.