Newt Gingrich has secured his place in history, for good or bad, and in a perfect world that’s where he’d stay; but this guy has an ego the size of a small planet. Newt’s convinced himself the country needs him and there are in fact people who’ll vote for him because they believe it too. They’re the same people who maintain a white knuckle grip on the fantasy of Ronald Reagan.
Gingrich has ridden the coattails of that legacy for 30 years and would like it to carry him all the way to the White House; but a look at his interviews and articles over the years leaves one wondering, was Reagan the only one who suffered from Alzheimer’s? Here’s a quick trip down (lack of) Memory Lane:
Real Clear Politics has the transcript from a 2007 interview with Hannity and Colmes where Gingrich said the Fairness Doctrine:
“…was the government censorship doctrine, and they want to re-impose government censorship”
Neither he nor his hosts mentioned that
“…when the FCC discarded the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms immediately voted for a bill to reinstate it.”
(Which Reagan vetoed.)
During the 2011 June debate on CNN, asked if the healthcare mandate should be a “litmus test” for GOP candidates he answered:
“If you explore the mandate, it ultimately ends up with unconstitutional powers. It allows the government to define virtually everything. And if you can do it for health care, you can do it for everything in your life, and, therefore, we should not have a mandate.”
Yet in his 2008 book, Real Change he writes:
“Individuals are expected to help pay for their care. Everyone should be required to have coverage. Those with very low incomes should receive vouchers or tax credits to help them buy insurance. Those who oppose the concept of insurance should be required to post a bond to cover costs.”
Sound familiar? Silly you. Gingrich clearly explains - his individual mandate isn’t really an individual mandate; it’s “a variation on it.”
Now you get it, right?
There’s this from The New Republic :
“In 2007, Gingrich supported “mandatory caps, a trading system inside the caps ... and a tax incentive to be able to invest in the new technology and to be able to produce the new technology.”
Sounds like cap-and-trade, alright.
But, in 2009, he called the same policy part of a “command-and-control, anti-energy, big-bureaucracy agenda.”
Discussing the President’s bailout with Bill O’Reilly in September, 2008 he complained
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had so many politicians beholden to them that, in fact, nobody was going to check them.”
He failed to mention that one of The Gingrich Group’s clients was Freddie Mac and according to their spokesman, Gingrich was hired
“…to provide strategic counsel on a range of issues that we’re facing related to policy and the industry.”
They might want to ask for their money back.
When asked by Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, in March of this year, what he would do about the Libya situation he stated,
“Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … It’s also an ideological problem. The United States doesn’t need anybody’s permission. We don’t need to have NATO…We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.”
And then on the Today Show two weeks later, talking about President Obama’s decision to take action… drum roll please…………
“…it is impossible to make sense of the standard for intervention in Libya except opportunism and news media publicity.”
“I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.”
And he says these things with a straight face!
Now in all fairness to Newt, his spokesperson Rick Tyler explained to the Daily Caller, why this was not a flip-flop:
“The Speaker has been consistent; the president has changed his mind.”
Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up.
At what point if any does the Republican/Tea party stand up and say to one of their candidates, “Go away, very far away, you’re making us look more ridiculous than even we’re capable of ?” Maybe it's when one dares to discuss climate change?
In 2008, Gingrich made a public service announcement with House Speaker Pelosi noting the dangers of global warming and the need to take action to solve the problem.
When WGIR’s Paul Westcott asked about that act of Conservative blasphemy, he explained
“Look I was trying to make the point that we shouldn’t be afraid to debate the left, even on the environment. But obviously it was misconstrued.” (Obviously) “That is probably one of those things I wouldn’t do again.”
No, really, Mr. Conservative/ Republican/ Tea Party/ 2012 candidate wannabe?
Next time consult the rules as laid out by your party’s climate minion:
“Republican presidential hopefuls can believe in man-made global warming as long as they never talk about it, and oppose all the so-called solutions."
Translation: How many times must we tell you knuckleheads, you will not have independent opinions, you will not voice them if you do, and this whole party’s gonna burn in hell anyway, so get used to the heat.
But the final word on political flip flops comes from Mr.Gingrich himself. Thanks to Think Progress (this discussion was originally about John Kerry):
Gingrich on Neil Cavuto, 9/17/04: “You can’t flip-flop and be commander-in-chief.”
Gingrich on Hannity & Colmes 9/27/04: “I think [ his] problem is one of identity… He can’t quite decide…I think what you’re going to see more likely with him is a kind of schizophrenia. And if the moderator’s at all serious with [him], and puts [him] on the spot as saying, now, you said a, and you said b. Which is it? I think [he's] got a big problem.”
Gingrich on Hannity & Colmes, 5/5/04: “I think maybe the pretzel should become the symbol of the [his] campaign, because he kind of twists himself into a pretzel trying to fit every group he shows up in front of and trying to appeal to each group on the national issues.”
To use one of Newt’s favorite self descriptions; how “profound”.