This janitor thing is vintage Newt. Back in the 1990s he unveiled, around Christmas time no less, his “Big Idea” to take poor kids (i.e., black kids) away from their single moms and put them into state run orphanages.

His argument then was similar to now, that the single mothers are all on welfare and don’t work for a living (bad role models, etc.) Then, as now, his data was bogus. Labor dept statistics showed then that about 70% of the parents he was slandering had jobs, just as available stats now show that most of the people on food stamps are white, contrary to his claims.

But facts are not anything to stop Newt, because he realizes that his followers will keep believing the prejudices he exploits no matter what the data actually shows. Just yesterday, after he had surely heard many times that most food stamp recipients are white people, he was bragging to a reporter that he is not going to be silenced by “political correctness” and offered as his example of speaking what’s true that “most people on food stamps are black.

(The exact stats are 34.4% are white, 21.2% are African American, ref: page 59, of . )