Newt Gingrich, the man of Big Ideas and Bold Conservative Vision, seems a little unclear on the whole “child labor” concept: Newt: Fire the janitors, hire kids to clean schools.

Newt Gingrich tonight said at an address at Harvard that child work laws “entrap” poor children into poverty - and suggested that a better way to handle failing schools is to fire the janitors, hire the local students and let them get paid for upkeep.

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.

“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model,” he said. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

The multi-millionaire serial philanderer didn’t add:

And they’d be a hell of a lot cheaper too!

Good grief. When one of the Republican presidential frontrunners openly and blithely advocates throwing adults out of work and using children instead, we’re through the looking glass, people.

(h/t: Lidane.)