Newt Gingrich’s recent utter­ances about poor chil­dren – they ​“have no habits of work­ing and have nobody around them who works” – reflect not only the inabil­i­ty of con­ser­v­a­tives to talk seri­ous­ly about pover­ty, but a mean-spirit­ed­ness that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, large­ly eludes pub­lic scrutiny.

For conservatives like Gingrich, the solution is not to demand good-paying jobs, but to offer moral tutelage to poor children by getting rid of "truly stupid" child labor laws and unionized workers.

Appar­ent­ly, Gin­grich and the approv­ing Iowa crowd have nev­er heard of ​“the work­ing poor” – folks stuck in low-wage jobs (often more than one), but still unable to escape pover­ty. Based on the crowd’s reac­tion, Gingrich’s Novem­ber 28 speech achieved a key objec­tive. Con­ser­v­a­tives enjoy being told that pover­ty is caused by the bad behav­ior of its vic­tims, a belief famous­ly reaf­firmed by Her­man Cain (“If you’re poor, blame your­self!”). It is always eas­i­er to blame vic­tims than to con­tem­plate real solutions.

Gingrich’s views rest on the belief that sin­gle moth­ers in pub­lic hous­ing are bad role mod­els for hard work. But accord­ing to Andrea Levere, pres­i­dent of the Cor­po­ra­tion for Enter­prise Devel­op­ment, a non­prof­it that helps poor fam­i­lies build wealth, most poor chil­dren are raised in fam­i­lies with a work­ing adult. In an inter­view with NPR’s Pam Fessle, Levere observed, ​“many of these fam­i­lies work two jobs and three jobs.” And Fessler not­ed that in pub­lic hous­ing, ​“about half of non-elder­ly, non-dis­abled house­holds get most of their income from wages.”

Many poor peo­ple who can­not get pub­lic hous­ing still try to get work. The Nation­al Coali­tion for the Home­less reports that approx­i­mate­ly 19 per­cent of home­less shel­ter res­i­dents have a job.

Gingrich’s false and prim­i­tive protes­ta­tions about the poor were dis­tin­guished by what he left out. The GOP’s newest pres­i­den­tial fron­trun­ner failed to men­tion the con­stel­la­tion of forces that con­spire to mar­gin­al­ize and degrade poor com­mu­ni­ties – includ­ing poli­cies he and his par­ty have long championed.

For decades, urban com­mu­ni­ties have endured mas­sive job flight and the advent of a low-wage busi­ness mod­el enforced by aggres­sive anti-union strate­gies – both of which are abet­ted by con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. But this his­to­ry is too incon­ve­nient, even for a self-pro­mot­ing stu­dent of his­to­ry such as Newt Gingrich.

Of course, no one expects Gin­grich and the right-wing crowds to which he pan­ders to engage in crit­i­cal think­ing about race and pover­ty. They are invest­ed in avoid­ing sys­temic analy­sis that illu­mi­nates the influ­ence of exter­nal fac­tors on the human condition.

Thus, a hall­mark of con­ser­v­a­tive suc­cess in recent decades is the tar­nish­ing of incon­ve­nient ter­mi­nol­o­gy in our pub­lic dis­course – root caus­es, socioe­co­nom­ic con­di­tions, his­tor­i­cal fac­tors, even inequal­i­ty and social jus­tice! – that impli­cates sys­tems and gives con­text to indi­vid­ual fail­ings. The right has made such lan­guage taboo, and those who con­tin­ue to invoke it risk being mar­gin­al­ized and derid­ed as hope­less­ly lib­er­al, crim­i­nal-cod­dling, and traf­fick­ing in ​“moral relativism.”

How­ev­er, the ​“no-excus­es” dog­ma is demon­stra­bly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, for it applies only to poor peo­ple. Notice how Gin­grich him­self blamed work pres­sures for his ser­i­al infi­deli­ty; or how con­ser­v­a­tives wave off cor­po­rate crim­i­nal­i­ty as ​“just a few bad apples.” The deck is stacked against the poor, because eco­nom­ic hard­ship rais­es the risk of moral col­lapse. But what is Gingrich’s excuse?

Actu­al­ly, there is a self-serv­ing log­ic to the Right’s aver­sion to a sys­temic approach to pover­ty mit­i­ga­tion. Real­ly seri­ous anti-pover­ty strate­gies would require its cor­po­rate bene­fac­tors to raise wages, dis­pense with union­bust­ing, sup­port min­i­mum-wage hikes, embrace nation­al health­care, and stop dis­crim­i­nat­ing on the basis of race, gen­der, age and dis­abil­i­ty. This bur­den­some out­look is what angers con­ser­v­a­tives. The truth threat­ens their worldview.

Con­ser­v­a­tive attacks on the poor are not new. As Speak­er of the House, Gin­grich once pro­posed cut­ting off wel­fare ben­e­fits for chil­dren born to unwed moth­ers, then using the mon­ey to build orphan­ages for the chil­dren. Many oth­ers have built polit­i­cal careers on this theme, often invok­ing the right’s favored par­lance of ​“per­son­al responsibility.”

Indeed, almost sin­gle­hand­ed­ly, the mantra of ​“per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty” drove the nation­al wel­fare reform debate, cul­mi­nat­ing in pas­sage of the cyn­i­cal­ly titled Work Oppor­tu­ni­ty and Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Act of 1996. It was a bipar­ti­san project, to be sure, but wel­fare reform was deeply root­ed in a con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy that blames poor peo­ple for their plight.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, then as now, con­ser­v­a­tive cham­pi­ons of wel­fare reform ‑even as they invoked the ​“dig­ni­ty of work” – showed no inter­est in sub­stan­tive strate­gies to help the poor tran­si­tion from wel­fare. Instead of man­dat­ing high­er wages for the new entrants into the work­force, con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans dou­bled-down and refused to raise the min­i­mum wage. In fact, between 1997 and 2007 (for 10 years!), GOP ide­o­logues ensured that the min­i­mum wage remained at an uncon­scionable $5.15 per hour.

Gingrich’s dis­tort­ed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of poor peo­ple – a crowd pleas­er on the cam­paign trail – is a car­i­ca­ture deeply embed­ded in the con­ser­v­a­tive psy­che. Accord­ing to this nar­ra­tive, an out-of-con­trol black cul­ture is impli­cat­ed in the devalu­ing of the work eth­ic and loss of moral val­ues. In this world­view, black moral decay – not dis­ap­pear­ing work, low wages, or poor­ly fund­ed schools – caus­es urban pover­ty, job­less­ness and ​“social pathology.”

For con­ser­v­a­tives, the solu­tion is not to demand good-pay­ing jobs, but to offer moral tute­lage to poor chil­dren by (Gingrich’s plan) get­ting rid of ​“tru­ly stu­pid” child labor laws and union­ized work­ers and hire chil­dren instead. But what would dis­placed par­ents do, espe­cial­ly if they have to feed, clothe and edu­cate their scab­bing chil­dren? Where is the jobs plan for parents?

It is tru­ly the height of detach­ment for a politi­cian to wor­ry about chil­dren who do not work rather than work­ing con­di­tions for par­ents (wages, health and pen­sion ben­e­fits). Iron­i­cal­ly, it is the unions Gin­grich detests who are best-posi­tioned to improve those work­ing conditions.

To Gin­grich, the crimes and moral laps­es of elites are not root­ed in their cul­ture; they are iso­lat­ed and under­stand­able occur­rences. But this excul­pa­to­ry nar­ra­tive goes fur­ther, and posits that because they are ​“job cre­ators” wealthy elites should be exempt­ed from the nor­mal rules of account­abil­i­ty. Con­ser­v­a­tive attacks against the Frank-Dodd law and its Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau – set up to police the bank­ing indus­try – exem­pli­fy the impulse to cre­ate impuni­ty for elites.

The right’s intel­lec­tu­al­ly and moral­ly bank­rupt world­view – under­pinned by the cus­tom­ary bro­mides about tax cuts, deficit reduc­tion and small gov­ern­ment – is why there has been no seri­ous pro­pos­al by the GOP to address pover­ty and revive the Amer­i­can mid­dle class. Con­ser­v­a­tives are pris­on­ers to a set of ideas whose only pur­pose is to serve cap­i­tal. Address­ing pover­ty would require con­ser­v­a­tives to break with those ideas.

Pover­ty has always been a dif­fi­cult sub­ject for con­ser­v­a­tives. The only way they know how to talk about it is to scold, demo­nize and stereo­type the poor – and their advo­cates (wit­ness the sav­aging of ACORN). But the loud­er the calls for ​“per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty” for the poor, the less­er the will­ing­ness to demand account­abil­i­ty from cor­po­ra­tions; and the more bom­bas­tic the hom­i­lies about Chris­tian­i­ty, the mean­er the rhetoric against ​“the least of us.” With so much ener­gy invest­ed in demo­niz­ing, one won­ders when these good Chris­tians actu­al­ly pray for the poor.

Obliv­i­ous to the para­dox, con­ser­v­a­tives want poor peo­ple to appre­ci­ate ​“the dig­ni­ty of work” while demean­ing work (and work­ers) by dri­ving down wages. That is exact­ly what hap­pens when unions are mar­gin­al­ized, the min­i­mum wage is held down and cor­po­ra­tions out­source jobs – often with the help of polit­i­cal enablers and indus­try groups. The U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, a con­ser­v­a­tive busi­ness asso­ci­a­tion, actu­al­ly assists cor­po­ra­tions seek­ing over­seas locations.

It would be a remark­able irony – even a sil­ver lin­ing – if the buf­foon­ery of Newt Gin­grich, who built his polit­i­cal career on demo­niz­ing the poor, helped res­cue low-income Amer­i­cans from their invis­i­bil­i­ty. Occu­py Wall Street has deserved­ly been cred­it­ed with spark­ing a debate about ris­ing inequal­i­ty. But per­haps we are also indebt­ed to Newt Gin­grich for his small con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er dis­turb­ing, to this over­due conversation.