What happened to "the civil rights issue of the 21st century"?

Who's with Newt? EEP?

A week ago, race baiter Newt Gingrich was at the White House, lecturing Obama about education being the "civil rights issue of 21st century." He's one of the three top leaders and spokesman for the "no excuses" EEP education policy coalition, along with Joel Klein and Al Sharpton. Now Gingrich is joining conservative wing-nuts Limbaugh and Tancredo ("National Council of La Raza is equivalent to the KKK") in calling Judge Sotomayor a "racist".

So the question is: what brand of "civil rights" are Gingrich and his bedfellows in EEP really talking about? Fellow Republicans are running as fast as they can from Newt, hoping to salvage some credibility among Latino voters. But will Klein, Sharpton, Bloomberg, and Duncan (who spoke with Newt at the EEP White House rally) and the rest of the EEP leaders follow suit and repudiate?