Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“Former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has picked a foreign policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to be his national security adviser. Kiron Skinner directs CMU’s International Relations and Politics department and also services on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and service on the Council of Foreign Relations. Skinner has previously served as an adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Defense Policy Board of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001 to 2007. Skinner will continue to teach full-time on social and decision sciences at CMU, but will be on call to advise Gingrich………”

Clearly Newt Gingrich doesn’t like to stray far from the ‘reservation, at least in matters of picking policy advisers, if not in ‘other’ matters. His choice is somewhat better than Romney, who picked a veteran of the right-wing and genocidal Lebanese Forces militia (apparently Romney feels that he needs to shore up his right-wing credentials). But, hey, the day is young, and I have not looked in Mr. Skinner’s closet yet. This almost certainly means that he, Newt, will decline my advise to take a hike on the Iraq-Iran border, preferably making a two-feet sortie across the border. Dommage.
Gingrich is also eschewing the Bush-Obama-Clinton trend of seeking high profile female foreign policy advisers (Albright, Rice &Rice). Maybe ‘somebody’ has learned something after all.
Cheers
mhg


[email protected]