WaPo's Jonathan Capehart says Gingrich made an "unbelievably disgusting" "blanket condemnation of 'really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods.'"

But what did Newt say?

"Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday...

"They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal"....

Now, obviously, it's Newt's style to provoke people like Capehart, and, indeed, Capehart's denouncement of Newt in the pages of WaPo leverages Newt's message for him. Capehart lambastes Gingrich for his wealth and for his disrespect toward "the overwhelming majority of those children and their families who live their lives with far more integrity and far less cash than Gingrich ever will." Capehart is doing what he is hired to do, and he gets some cash for that.

Both Gingrich and Capehart probably care to some extent about poor children. It's impossible to say how much. There's nothing about Capehart's liberal orientation that guarantees that he's more caring, though it's liberal style to pose as if you are. It's conservative style to offer love in "tough love" form, and that's what we get from Gingrich.

Liberal style, Capehart stirs up emotion: What a bad, greedy man Gingrich is! He condemns and disrespects children! Conservative style, Gingrich risks that we'll think he's mean as he invites us to think beyond those initial reflexive emotions.

Capehart declines the invitation.