Newt's Bleeding Heart
Jules Witcover

In former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's latest bid to remake his image and become the next Republican presidential nominee, is he just a hardhearted conservative with an inner softie trying to get out?

What are we to make of the old Newt brutally telling Wall Street Occupiers to "get a job and take a bath," and then pleading the case for longtime illegal aliens faced with separation from their loved ones by deportation?

In the latest television debate, Gingrich largely put aside his usual condescension and assessment of reporters' questions as "stupid." Instead he put his heart on his sleeve with a call for compassion toward older illegals whose families would be broken up if they were involuntarily shipped back to the old country.

In a nod to the conservative crowd in the debate sponsored by two of the most prominent right-wing think tanks, Gingrich first recited their orthodoxy on immigration. "If you've come here recently," he scolded, "(and) you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home, period."

But then he opened a vein and let it bleed. "If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, paying taxes and obeying the law, belong to a local church," he said, "I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out."

Diminutive Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, dwarfed by the towering Newt standing next to her, glared up with righteous indignation. "If I understood correctly," said the self-appointed guardian of the gates, "I think the speaker just said just said that that would make ... 11 million people who are here illegally now legal."

There it was, the dreaded amnesty, the old condemnation dusted off from Vietnam War protest days sanctioning draft-dodgers who took refuge in Canada and wanted to come home after the shooting stopped. As far as Bachmann was concerned, that was what Gingrich was advocating. She also expressed opposition to offering "taxpayer-subsidized benefits to illegal aliens," an apparent reference to a policy backed by Gov. Rick Perry in Texas. It had earlier been condemned by rival candidate Mitt Romney as a "magnet" for illegal entry, and now by Bachmann.

Romney jumped in, agreeing that "amnesty is a magnet" that says "people who come here illegally are going to get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, and that's only going to encourage more people to come here illegally."

But Gingrich did not back down.

"I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter-century," he said. "And I'm prepared to take the heat for saying let's be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so they are not separated from their families."

Perry, rather incongruously as a governor accused of having just such a magnet in state education to children of illegal aliens, said he agreed with Romney that "one of the things that we obviously have to do is to stop those magnets for individuals to come in here." He said he also agreed that some "process" was needed to let families of an alien who made one mistake in coming in illegally years ago to stay together now.

This philosophy of turning the other cheek does not square with the picture of Newt Gingrich as a tough protector of the public purse and defender of self-reliance. Nor does it seem calculated to reassure the conservative faithful whose support remains his best chance to rise from the ashes of his previous political and personal blunders.

But as evidence that there may be a real heart somewhere in the reformed Newt, rather than an artificial implant, this new compassion could serve him well later on. In the general election, many Democratic and independent bleeding hearts will be beating, and voting. It could help, that is, if he should get that far, but that still seems highly improbable.