(for those of you who do not know, "Mo" is my nickname)
Music to read by:
If You Don't Know Me By Now - Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
"[I'm] the most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times."
- Newt Gingrich
"The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution. Under our [constitutional system] — either we're going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we're going to have to rethink our process of decision-making. [I believe in a] "very strong but limited federal government. I am for the United Nations."
- Newt Gingrich, Center for Strategic and International Affairs, 1995
In 1994, Gingrich described himself as "a
conservative futurist". He said that those who were trying to define
him should look no farther than The Third Wave, a 1980 book written by Alvin Toffler. The
book describes our society as entering a post-industrial phase in which
abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, and divorce are perfectly normal,
even virtuous. Toffler penned a letter to America's "founding parents," in which he said:
"The
system of government you fashioned, including the principles on which
you based it, is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if
inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare. It must be
radically changed and a new system of government invented---a democracy for the 21st century."
He went on to describe our constitutional system as one that "served us
so well for so long, and that now must, in its turn, die and be
replaced."
Are you with me so far? When asked what he believed in, he pointed
people to this Alvin Toffler guy. In fact, Newt wrote the forward to
Toffler's book, Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave. He's not just a fan, he's really, really into the Third Wave? Got it?
"And let me say to all of my friends on both sides of the aisle, we have every opportunity through reform to shrink the Pentagon to a triangle; we have every opportunity to apply the lessons of downsizing, the lessons of the information age. And just because something is in uniform doesn't mean it has to be saluted, but instead, we should be getting every penny for our taxpayers, and we in the Congress should be looking at long-term contracting as one way to dramatically lower the cost of defense."
- Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia, delivered to the United States Congress, Election of the Speaker, 7 January 1997
"The better they've done at making sure there isn't going to be an
attack, the easier it is to say there was never going to be an attack
anyway. It's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed
an attack to go through just to remind us."
- Newt Gingrich, 29 April 2008
“This is one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger…. It’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.”
- Newt Gingrich, at a book talk in Huntington, NY, April 2008
Gingrich: Gov. Should Allow Some Terror Attacks To Remind Us
"And
again, I'm going to be a little controversial. I would divide the FBI
into two agencies. I would have an anti-domestic crime FBI, which was
very cautious, very respectful of civil liberties. You are innocent
until proven guilty. And I would have a small, but VERY aggressive
anti-terrorism agency. And I would, frankly, give them extraordinary
ability to eavesdrop and my first advice to civil libertarians is simple: don't plot with terrorists."
- Newt Gingrich, 29 April 2008
"We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we're unfortunate. We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of its weren't it for the scale of the threat.
And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively now develop the appropriate rules of engagement."
- Newt Gingrich, one of the 71 co-sponsors of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987 a/k/a the codification of the Fairness Doctrine, which was defeated in the Senate, 27 November 2006
“Well, I think if [members of the Bush administration] believe
they have enough evidence to convict [Jose Padilla], going through the
process of convicting him and holding him, I suspect, may be for the
rest of his life without parole would not be — would hardly be seen as a
loss. I think this administration is still wrestling with what are the
real ground rules for dealing with people who are clearly outside of
normal warfare? They’re not wearing a uniform. They’re not part of an
army. They are openly threatening to kill thousands or even millions of
people.”
- Newt Gingrich, 22 November 2005
“Why would you take a Nigerian national who just tried to blow up a plane over Detroit … Why would you take that person, put them in the American criminal justice system, give them an attorney, read them their Miranda rights?”
- Newt Gingrich, 4 January 2010
In 2009, Gingrich agree with Bill O'Reilly's call for Singapore-style
drug laws in America. In Singapore, the police can force anyone to
submit to an urinalsysis without a warrant. They're permitted to search
you without a warrant. And if you're seen in a building or in the
company of drug users, you're assumed to have been using drugs as well,
unless you can prove otherwise. Yes, you are guilty until you prove
yourself innocent. There is also a MANDATORY DEATH PENALTY for possession, manufacture, trafficking, and/or distribution of a certain amount of various drugs.
"I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure. Look at the level of violence they've done to society. You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there's nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, 'These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.' If you're serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a strategy that makes it radically less likely that we're going to have drugs in this country.
Places like Singapore have been the most successful at doing that. They've been very draconian. And they have communicated with great intention that they intend to stop drugs from coming into their country."
But, in 1981, Gingrich introduced a bill to the House floor that sought “to provide for the therapeutic use of marihuana in situations involving life-threatening or sense-threatening illnesses and to provide adequate supplies of marihuana for such use.”
- September 16, 1981, H.R.4498, 97th Congress, 2D Session
Here he was in 1982:
"We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and
patients have a right to employ marijuana legally, under medical
supervision from a regulated source. The medical prohibition does not
prevent seriously ill patients from employing marijuana; it simply
deprives them of medical supervision and access to a regulated medical
substance. Physicians are often forced to choose between their ethical
responsibilities to the patient and their legal liabilities to federal
bureaucrats."
Gingrich would explain his shift in position in an interview with journalist Hilary Stout in 1996.
"See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality... That's why you get to go to jail and I don't."
- Newt Gingrich, Wall Street Journal, 8 August 1996 (reminds me of this: “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.” - So explained Gingrich to Wife #2, who was confused that he was dumping her for his mistress the day after giving a speech on family values.)
In 1996, Gingrich introduced the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 (H.R. 4170) in the House of Representatives, which sought to “provide a sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances,” 25 September 1996. Such a penalty would almost certainly be unconstitutional. If a child rapist-but-not-murderer cannot be sentenced to death, there is no way that the Court would uphold a death penalty for drugs based solely on quantity. There would have to be an indentifiable death and the burden of proof for a typical homicide case would be on the government.
“I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly
discouraged you from growing marijuana and their techniques with dealing
with it would have been rather more violent than our current
government.”
- Newt Gingrich, 4 January 2012, except both Washington & Jefferson grew marijuana on their Virginia plantations.
In 1990, Newt voted for the Gun Free School Zones Act, which would not have kept guns out of the hands of the Columbine, University of Texas, Virginia Tech mass murderers or even the anti-war demonstrator, who fired a gun during a campus protest that set off the Kent State riot. Among others, the Act would have prohibited law-abiding citizens living and establishments doing business within a school zone from possessing guns. It would have criminalised -- at a Federal level -- the carrying of an EMPTY gun in a briefcase by a person using the sidewalk in front of school on his or her way to a legal appointment. He voted for the Domestic Violence Offenders Act a/k/a "The Lautenberg Amendment, which would strip an individual convicted of domestic violence of his Second Amendment rights ... for even a misdemeanor ... forever ... even if he later became a model citizen.
He also supported "an instant
background check, based on thumb prints, to determine whether the buyer
was a convicted felon or someone with dangerous mental behavior, rather
than a background check process instituted by the Brady law." Aside from the fact that nobody has to submit fingerprints to
exercise any other Constitutional rights, there’s a problem: This
measure would require the Federal government to keep a record of every
buyer’s thumbprint, creating a national registry of gun owners. This
would violate the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA)- a law signed by Ronald Reagan to prohibit the federal government from maintaining exactly such a database (current NICS records have to be destroyed after 90 days to comply with FOPA).
In 2002, the Bush administration sought to expand
the food stamp programme to all legal immigrants, who had previously been
excluded by Congressional Republicans during the 1996 welfare reforms.
The Bush proposal extended food stamps to 363,000 more people.
“I strongly support the president’s initiative. In a law that has reduced welfare by more than 50 percent, this is one of the provisions that went too far. In retrospect, it was wrong. President Bush’s instincts are exactly right.”
“So, we’re gonna help the poor? Truth is, we don’t know how
to help the poor. We’re gonna experiment and experiment and experiment
until we break through. It
makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.”
- Newt Gingrich, Newsweek, December 2011
"I
am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I
fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health
Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at
HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am
against any effort to impose a federal mandate on
anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe
unconstitutional."
- Recorded statement by Newt Gingrich, from the GOP candidate’s Web site.
"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."
- Newt Gingrich, GOP debate in Manchester, N.H., 13 June 2011
"Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for
health care.... I've said consistently we ought to have some
requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond."
- Newt Gingrich, Meet The Press, 15 May 2011
Gingrich Called for ObamaCare Mandate in May 2009
The Gingrich Group's most prominent project was the Center for Health Transformation, a for-profit outfit Gingrich launched in 2003 that works with clients to "drive transformation" within the health care system. The centre promotes numerous programmes, including its "Insure All Americans" initiative. This proposal—posted on the Center for Health Transformation’s website since at least 2008—blends a variety of health care reform ideas: incentivising consumers to focus on wellness and prevention, promoting Health Savings Accounts, shifting the focus of Medicare and Medicaid toward managing chronic diseases, and requiring physical education five days a week in schools (and removing junk-food vending machines). And there's this:
That's right: A mandate...in 2008...oh, and "death panels"!!!
“A health care system that is driven by robust comparative clinical evidence will save lives and money.”
- Newt Gingrich with John Kerry and Billy Beane, How to Take American Health Care From Worst to First, New York Times, 24 October 2008
Here he is in 2007:
"In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more,
including passing legislation to: establish a national health insurance
marketplace by giving individuals the freedom to shop for insurance
plans across state lines; provide low-income families with $1,000 in
direct contributions to a health savings account, along with a $2,000
advanced tax credit to purchase an HSA-eligible high-deductible health
plan; make premiums for these plans tax deductible; provide tax rebates
to small businesses that contribute to their employees’ HSAs; extend
and expand grant funding to high-risk pools across the country; and require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond. [Emphasis added.]"
“Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance.
Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying
insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to
pay for their care when they need it. An 'individual mandate' [should be applied] when the larger health-care system has been
fundamentally changed.”
- Newt Gingrich, Des Moines Register, June 2007
In 2011...2009...2008...in 2007...in 2006:
“The 21st Century System of Health and Healthcare will partner with you first to prevent illness and then to care for you as a patient if you become ill.”
- Newt Gingrich, Saving Lives & Saving Money, 2006
In an April 2006 memo, Gingrich called MittCare "the most
exciting development of the past few weeks." Gingrich also said the law
has "tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health
system." The memo also noted shortcomings in the Massachusetts law. Gingrich
said the state's many regulations prohibited insurers from offering
cheaper plans that would make coverage affordable. But Gingrich
went on to note that that "we agree entirely with Gov. Romney and
Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance
coverage for all Americans."
In 2011...2009...2008...in 2007...in 2006...in 2005 (with Hillary Clinton, no less):
"Some aspect of the working poor has to involve transfer of finances. To ask people in the lowest paying jobs to bear the full burden of their health insurance is just irrational, it’s not going to happen…One of my conclusions in the last six years, funding the Center for Health Transformation, and looking at what our system is, unless you have 100 percent coverage, you can’t have the right preventive care and you can’t have a rational system.
[...]
If I see someone who’s earning over $50,000 a year, who has made the
calculated decision not to buy health insurance. I’m looking at someone
who’s absolutely as irresponsible as anybody who is ever on welfare….I’m
actually in favor of saying, whatever the appropriate income is, you
ought to either have health insurance, or you ought to post a bond.
But we have no room in this society to have a free rider approach if
you’re well off economically to say we’ll cheat our neighbors."
- Newt Gingrich, Healthcare Cease Fire, 2005
“Large risk pools…should be established so low income people can buy insurance as inexpensively as large corporations.”
- Newt Gingrich, Winning the Future, 2005
In 2011...2009...2008...in 2007...in 2006...in 2005...in 2003:
"I think government, and this may surprise you since I am a conservative, I think government HAS to lead because government is the largest, single purchaser in the system. In particular, of the Medicare bills, a very important centre of this because Medicare is the largest, single purchaser in the entire system, including all of government, and for government not to lead guarantees you don't have the ability to change the because no private corporation has the purchasing power or the ability to reshape the health system.
In this sense, I guess that I am a Theodore Roosevelt-Republican because I believe that government can lead and that regulatory leading is okay. Roosevelt set up the Food and Drug Act* so I think that it is legitimate for the government to take the leading role. I like having the private sector deliver within a framework set by the government. So, I like knowing that the government has made sure that the airplane that I get on is safe, but I am very happy to let a private company run the airplane. I am happy to walk into McDonald's knowing that the water is drinkable and the beef is actually beef, but I am happy to have a private company providing the food. I don't want a government-run commissary, but I do like having the government as regulator.
The second place that I come from is as an Eisenhower Republican. Eisenhower proposed in 1955 the Interstate Highway System and it was initially an anti-nuclear war national defence system. All of those roads that you used to go on vacation and all of the roads that our trucking industry uses to deliver things inexpensively was designed as a national security thing.
I would suggest that you can take the Eisenhower model and apply it to biological threats and building bio-communication and you can justify a substantial investment in information technology just like Eisenhower and I suggest that you can decide on best outcomes and patient safety just like Theodore Roosevelt -- and I say this as a Republican because a lot of my conservative friends will say, "Oh, my gosh, how can you be saying this?" and I think that is to misread the history of the last 100 years of the United States.
Government HAS to take a leading role and when you look at what is going to happen to Medicare, the government also has the biggest stake, and the taxpayer has the biggest stake. Look at the staggering increase in the number of people who will be on Medicare, 39.6 million in 2000 to 76.8 million in 2030. Almost everyone in this room is younger than the Baby Boomers, I want you to think about the tax burden you are going to have in 2030 if we don't find a way to dramatically improve Medicare. Medicare goes up. In fact, there's a number...according to the Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it will become 25% - Medicare and Medicaid - will become 25% of the Federal budget in 2009.
So, anybody who hopes to ever get back to a balanced budget, you had better think about transforming healthcare. It is impossible to get to a balanced budget without transforming the health system. I don't care what you do."
- Newt Gingrich, 2003
In 2011...2009...2008...in 2007...in 2006...in 2005...in 2003...in 2000:
"The time has come for Congress and the president to act on behalf of all
Americans. It is time to stop defending inefficiency and to drag health
care into the 21st century by insisting on modern management and
information systems...Don Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has worked for years to spread the word that the same systematic approach to quality control
that has worked so well in manufacturing could create a dramatically
safer, less expensive and more effective system of health and health
care.”
- Newt Gingrich, High-Tech Cure for Medical Mistakes, Washington Post, 2 August 2000
In 2011...2009...2008...in 2007...in 2006...in 2005...in 2003...in 2000...in 1993:
“I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance --
individuals having health insurance and being required to have health
insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will
give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure
that everyone as individuals have health insurance.”
- Newt Gingrich, Meet The Press, 3 October 1993
And, a Federal health insurance mandate is just the start of it!
"Demand that physical education be part of the school curriculum…The only
place many kids can get supervised daily activity is in school. PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS IS UNDER A FEDERALLY MANDATED GUIDELINE. ALTHOUGH IT STATES THAT SCHOOLS ARE TO PROVIDE PHYSICAL EDUCATION CLASSES THREE TO FOUR TIMES PER WEEK, THE ONLY STATE HOLDING TO THIS GUIDELINE IS THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. DEMAND IT."
- Newt Gingrich, Saving Lives & Saving Money, p. 155, 2006
“The soft drink companies should be challenged to produce healthy
alternatives or to expect to have reduced access to young people as a
market.”
Music to read by:
2 Faced by Louise*
"In Teddy White’s “The Making of The President” from 1960, you will find a description of Theodore Roosevelt and an active conservatism. That is the model I’ve had in my mind for 28 years.
For example, we now have a great concept in tenant management and
ownership of low-income housing. That empowers citizens, and says
“You’re not just a client, you’re a citizen. You have real
responsibility and real authority.” If you’re truly going to be a
citizen, you have to have both opportunity and responsibility."
- Newt Gingrich, 1989
"I am Teddy Roosevelt."
"I am a "Realpolitick Wilsonian."
"It
makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.”
- Newt Gingrich, Newsweek, December 2011
But Newt’s admiration for Teddy pales before the deference he shows his cousin, FDR. In his 1995 book, To Renew America,
Newt called Franklin Delano Roosevelt “probably the greatest president of the
20th Century.” In subsequent speeches, Gingrich drops the “probably.”
The irony is that
the same man who has slammed Barack Obama for being a “food-stamp
president” should be such a passionate admirer of FDR, who created the
first federal food-stamp programme in 1939. (The programme was suspended
during wartime in 1943, only to be revived by John F Kennedy after he
took office in 1961.)
"If you truly believe in representative self-government, you
can never study Franklin Delano Roosevelt too much. HE DID BRING US OUT
OF THE DEPRESSION. (No he didn't, as Christina Romer as shown). He did lead the Allied movement in World War II. (He did, but, unfortunately, we are dealing with the fallout of his paternalism in the ME). HE WAS CLEARLY, I THINK, AS A POLITICAL LEADER, THE GREATEST FIGURE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. (A Georgia Reagan Republican?)
And I think his concept that we have nothing to fear but fear itself,
THAT WE'LL TAKE AN EXPERIMENT, AND IF IT FAILS, WE'LL DO ANOTHER ONE --
AND IF YOU GO BACK AND READ THE NEW DEAL, THEY TRIED AGAIN AND AGAIN. (How
is this self-government? Further, if Newt had bothered to read the
private writings of FDR's own cabinet members and advisers, he would
know that the spaghetti theory of government was a disaster in
practise). They didn't always get it right, and we would have
voted against much of it, BUT THE TRUTH IS WE WOULD HAVE VOTED FOR MUCH
OF IT. (Considering the fact that FDR Brain Trust member,
Rexford Tugwell, credited Herbert Hoover as the real father of the New
Deal, I guess we can say that Newt is a lot like Hoover, too)."
- Speaker Newt Gingrich, 4 January 1995
"I’m an Eisenhower Republican."
- So sayeth the "Reagan Republican," who will soon be fighting with Obama over who gets to be Millard Filmore
"I am a Rockefeller Republican."
- Newt Gingrich, 1989
"There is almost a new synthesis evolving with the classic moderate wing
of the party, WHERE, AS A FORMER ROCKEFELLER STATE CHAIRMAN, I'VE SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE, and the conservative/activist right wing. You have
work being done by the Heritage Foundation as well as by such moderates
as Tom Petri. Petri has extraordinarily broad support for his living
wage concept, which represents an empowerment/citizen choice replacement
for the bureaucratic/corrupt, liberal welfare state."
- Newt Gingrich, 1989
“I am much like [Ronald] Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher.”
- Newt Gingrich, 16 November 2011
Gingrich is prone to make a sweeping statements and predict that they are givens. He is also prone to grandiosity on a scale that few other than Obama have reached. Other than Obama, how many politicians have you ever seen compare themselves to Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight David Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Clay, Charles de Gaulle, Abraham Lincoln, the Duke of Wellington, Marion Barry, Ho Chi Minh, William Wallace, Moses, Pericles, a Viking (and not the Minnesota kind either), Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Vince Lombardi, Sam Walton, Ray Kroc, and those are just a few of names of people that join Newt in his Lamed Vav Hall of Fame, which aren't just 36 special people in the world at one time, but the top special people in the history of world civilisation.
Mark Steyn once wrote of Newt that he is “A lead zeppelin with more baggage than the Hindenburg.” He should have added "and a bigger ego than the entire Panzergruppe 4."
"It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy [Iraq] after
June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to
recognise it."
- Newt Gingrich, April 2006, arguing against "The Surge"
“It’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in
the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism. I
recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur
private enterprise and economic development.”
- Newt Gingrich, Window of Opportunity, 1984
"The opportunity society calls not for a laissez-faire society in which the economic world is a neutral jungle of purely random individual behaviour, but for forceful government intervention on behalf of growth and opportunity.”
- Newt Gingrich, Window of Opportunity, 1984
“The government provided railroad land grants to encourage widespread
adoption of what was then the most modern form of transportation to
develop our country. The Homestead Act essentially gave away land to
those willing to live on it and develop it. We used what were in effect
public-private partnerships to bring telephone service and electricity
to every community in our nation. All of these are examples of
government bringing about public purposes without creating massive
taxpayer-funded bureaucracies.”
- Newt Gingrich, Window of Opportunity, 1984
"So while we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs [Government-Sponsored Enterprises], I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself."
- Newt Gingrich, Freddie Mac interview, 2007
“I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading
system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive
program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there
that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly
support...If he had instituted a regime that combined three things I just said --
mandatory caps, a trading system inside the caps, as we have with clean
air, and a tax incentive to be able to invest in the new technology and
to be able to produce the new technology -- I think we would be much
better off than we are in the current situation.”
- Newt Gingrich, PBS' Frontline, 2 February 2007
"[O]ur federal government should take the lead on this vital issue, an
effort that may require strong incentives to encourage enterprise and
drive the formation of private-public economic partnerships. Future presidents will surely find a
way to vet their bold proposals with an appropriate subset of
environmental and economic gurus so our national leaders are better
prepared to deliver workable and effective environmental policies."
- Newt Gingrich, A Contract With the Earth, 2007
"We should, for example, offer prizes for the development of high gas
mileage cars and other carbon-reduction challenges.... We should
therefore create a program of carbon-reduction tax credits. One such tax
credit idea is to incentivize the creation of new energy production
technologies that reduce carbon loading."
- Newt Gingrich, We Can Have Green Conservatism -- And We Should, 23 April 2007
"I agree entirely with whatever criticism the
senator (Kerry) wants to make in general about the absence of American
leadership."
- Newt Gingrich, preemptively distancing himself from Bush on global warming, 11 April 2007
"My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should
move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading
of the atmosphere. And do it urgently. Yes. If I can, let me explain partly why this is a very challenging thing
to do if you’re a conservative. For most of the last 30 years, the
environment has been a powerful emotional tool for bigger government and
higher taxes. And therefore, if you’re a conservative, the minute you
start hearing these arguments, you know what’s coming next: which is
bigger government and higher taxes. So even though it may be the right thing to do, you end up fighting
it because you don’t want big government and higher taxes. And so you
end up in these kinds of cycles. And part of the reason I was delighted
to accept this invitation and I’m delighted to be here with Sen. Kerry
is I think there has to be a if you will a “green conservatism” — there
has to be a willingness to stand up and say alright here’s the right way
to solve these as seen by our value system."
- Newt Gingrich, Gingrich-Kerry in Lincoln-Douglas Climate Debate, 11 April 2007
"I am not automatically saying that
coercion and bureaucracy is not an answer."
- Newt Gingrich, on how to combat climate change, 11 April 2007
Gingrich went on to say that acknowledging the scientific consensus
around climate change “is a very challenging thing to do if you’re a
conservative” because they associate environmentalism with “bigger
government and higher taxes.” Gingrich concludes by arguing it is time for “green conservatism.”
By the end of the debate, Lincoln/Kerry was embracing Douglas/Gingrich
as a global-warming ally, saying things such as "What we need to do is
what Newt just said."
"I'll lay odds if Newt Gingrich and I were responsible for making this happen, we could get in a room and in a week, we'd come up with a program and make it happen," Kerry ventured.
Gingrich nodded. Moments later, he held up his new friend's book again.
"I'm going to sell a few more books for you, John."
- Newt Gingrich, promising to sell John Kerry's This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future, 11 April 2007
"Professor Gingrich says his ethanol support is grounded in his
lifetime of studying history and intellectual problems, but what about
that $312,500 from the ethanol lobby? ... We've never suggested Mr
Gingrich has been bought off, though of course, there wouldn't be an
ethanol lobby to hire Mr Gingrich if there weren't politicians like Mr
Gingrich willing to prop it up with taxpayer dollars, tariffs and
mandates."
- Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2011
“Exercise a no-fly zone this evening … Provide help to the
rebels to replace [Qaddafi] … All we have to do is suppress his air
force, which we could do in minutes.”
- Newt Gingrich, 7 March 2011
“I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other
ways to affect Qaddafi … I would not have used American and European
forces.”
- Newt Gingrich, 23 March 2011
"Conservatives cannot cheer unions overseas and then be
blindly anti-union here at home. There are legitimate historic reasons
for workers to organize together, and there is a strong need for a
healthy, competitive, union, movement that helps improve the lives of
its members and the competitiveness of our country.
Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market
and the need to make American union members productive in the face of
world competition. Sadly, he is a distinct minority among union leaders."
- So sayeth Big Government Newt
"I suspect, were I still in Congress, in the end, I would probably end up reluctantly yes (voting for TARP)."
- Newt Gigrich, ABC's This Week, 28 September 2008
- Newt Gigrich, ABC's This Week, 28 September 2008
"What we're being told is that free trade with Mexico would
devastate the U.S. economy. With its low wages, Mexico would unleash a
flood of cheap imports into our markets. There would be a mass exodus of
U.S. factory jobs, as hordes of American companies fled across the
border.... All this is scare talk."
- Newt Gingrich, 22 September 1993
Yet within a year, American banks were in over their heads in loans
to the Mexican government and President Clinton decided to bail out the
Mexican peso with U.S. taxpayer dollars using the federal government's
Exchange Stabilization Fund. The argument against putting $20 billion on
the line, Clinton argued, was that U.S. banks (Citi, Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, and all of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, and Chucky Schumer's buddies on Wall Street) would be devastated by
the Mexican government defaulting on loans.
All during the crisis, Gingrich kept silent, except for writing a protest letter
that complained Clinton hadn't disclosed all the details of the
bailout. The problem with Gingrich's silent acquiescence in favor of the
Mexican bailout was two-fold: He favored bailing out a foreign
currency, the peso, on behalf of Wall Street, and he did it through
unconstitutional means. Conservative Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor
argued that Clinton had tapped a fund authorised by Congress to bail out
the American — not the Mexican — economy and had violated the Constitution. Congressman Taylor roared in a speech on the House floor on
10 February 1995 that "if you take the time to read our nation's
Constitution, it is very clear in Article I, Section 9, which says the
Congress shall have the power to coin money: 'No money shall be spent
from the Treasury without an appropriation by the Congress.' And yet
what the President did was completely contrary to that .... The reason it
was not brought before Congress is because both sides, the Democrats
and the Republicans, knew that had it been brought before Congress,
Congress would have voted it down, and that is the greatest outrage of
all, that the will of the majority as expressed through their elected
representatives was never heard."
Taylor stressed that Gingrich had conspired in secret to let Clinton
do exactly this: "We know that Speaker Gingrich knew; we know that
President of the Senate, Senator Dole, knew. We know that the President
knew.... This deal was cut with the Speaker, with the President, with
the President of the Senate, in secret, without the approval of Congress
to bail out the peso, but most importantly, to bail out Wall Street,
the same people who just 15 months ago said `We have to have NAFTA."
- Newt Gingrich, Vanity Fair, September 1995
"The opening days of the 105th Congress in January 1997 show how little interest Gingrich had in fighting Big Government. Upon being re-elected as Speaker, Newt Gingrich gave an acceptance speech based on promoting on what he envisioned as the new “great mission” for Republicans: Saving poverty-stricken children from hopelessness, violence, ignorance, racism, and drugs. Gone were the calls for a smaller government. Gone were the acknowledgements that the federal welfare state with its barracks-like public housing projects and top-heavy education bureaucracy was the biggest impediment to economic and social advancement for inner-city youth.
The lack of a conservative agenda led Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal to wonder if the Republican centerpiece for the next two years was a “Contract with Ambivalence.” Joe Scarborough of Florida, then a sophomore congressman, summed up the feelings of the hard-charging freshman class of 1994: “Quite a few members are obviously concerned over the direction that the leadership has taken in these first three months. We have a concern that our leadership remains shell-shocked from the government shutdown a year and a half ago. Most of us are ready for them to start leading again rather than sitting back and reading from Clinton’s song sheet.”
The first of many battles between Gingrich and the budget-cutters was over the funding for House committees. A bill the Speaker was pushing would have reversed the hard-won cuts of the previous year. In fact, the legislation would have trashed a key element of the Contract with America: in 1995, when the House cut congressional committee funding by a third, House leaders touted it as one of the first Contract promises kept.
“It should have come as no surprise that some of us were going to say no when they want to hire more Washington bureaucrats,” said budget hawk Mark Neumann of Wisconsin when he declared he would vote against the bill. “When we go out and tell our people we’re going to balance the budget, we can’t start with an increase in our own budget.” With all Democrats opposed to the bill, the swing votes came from eleven GOP budget hawks. It went down to defeat by a narrow margin of three votes.
Gingrich was furious. A few minutes after the vote, he announced an unusual mandatory meeting of all House Republicans in the caucus room right outside the House chamber. The session was going to begin with a roll-call and the Speaker threatened to send the sergeant-at-arms to round up any absent GOP congressman. Once the meeting started, Gingrich fumed.
He derided them for not being team players and threatened to delay a two-week recess until each of those members explained himself and until the leadership had enough votes to pass the committee bill.
Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma, former wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, pushed back. “The Speaker tonight talked about the eleven of us letting the team down. The more significant question and the question that never gets asked in Washington, D.C., is whose teams are we on?”
Many in the room began to nod their heads. The mood had turned against Gingrich. When he was done speaking, Largent received enthusiastic applause from most of the Republicans present. Gingrich never tried a stunt like that again.
Today, the nostalgia many seem to have for Gingrich’s days as leader of the House greatly clouds the reality of how conservatives actually felt about him after 1996. As Robert Novak reported at the time, on the first business day after the 1997 budget deal was announced the switchboard of the Republican national headquarters was swamped with calls from rank-and-rile GOP voters protesting the budget “sellout.” The 1998 election was seen then as a referendum on Gingrich’s attack-Clinton-but-spend–like-him strategy. Conservatives were already pondering whether a world without a Republican congressional majority would be all that bad. As George Will speculated in an October 1998 column, “it is unclear that having more Republicans in Congress would be good for either the Constitution or conservatism.” Two weeks before election day 1998, Gingrich grandiosely predicted that his new approach to governing would gain anywhere between 10 and 40 seats. Republicans actually lost three seats, narrowing their majority to five votes in the House. Gingrich stepped down from his Speaker post three days later."
“I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power."
In intellectual circles, he raised eyebrows; he drew inspiration not from theorists like Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek, but from futurists like Isaac Asimov and Alvin Toffler.
- Newt Gingrich to staffers, 1983
"If you're not in the Washington Post everyday, you might as well not exist."
- Newt Gingrich, 1989
"I'm unavoidable. I represent real power."
- Newt Gingrich, 1985
"It's not altruism! It's not altruism!
I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet.
And I'm doing it. Oh, this is just the beginning of a 20-or-30-year
movement. I'll get credit for it. As a historian, I understand how
histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me
and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that
glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two
generations or three from now, some serious, sober historian will write a
history that sort of implies I was whoever I was."
- Newt Gingrich, Washington Post, 1985
"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way
to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted
it to."
- Newt Gingrich, Vanity Fair, September 1995
"[My
ambition] is to be an old-time political boss in 20 years."
- Newt Gingrich, The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, 1974
"You have to understand that I am a
think tank, I can save the West, and when I come up with a new idea, we need to
move on it immediately."
- Newt Gingrich
"The opening days of the 105th Congress in January 1997 show how little interest Gingrich had in fighting Big Government. Upon being re-elected as Speaker, Newt Gingrich gave an acceptance speech based on promoting on what he envisioned as the new “great mission” for Republicans: Saving poverty-stricken children from hopelessness, violence, ignorance, racism, and drugs. Gone were the calls for a smaller government. Gone were the acknowledgements that the federal welfare state with its barracks-like public housing projects and top-heavy education bureaucracy was the biggest impediment to economic and social advancement for inner-city youth.
The lack of a conservative agenda led Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal to wonder if the Republican centerpiece for the next two years was a “Contract with Ambivalence.” Joe Scarborough of Florida, then a sophomore congressman, summed up the feelings of the hard-charging freshman class of 1994: “Quite a few members are obviously concerned over the direction that the leadership has taken in these first three months. We have a concern that our leadership remains shell-shocked from the government shutdown a year and a half ago. Most of us are ready for them to start leading again rather than sitting back and reading from Clinton’s song sheet.”
The first of many battles between Gingrich and the budget-cutters was over the funding for House committees. A bill the Speaker was pushing would have reversed the hard-won cuts of the previous year. In fact, the legislation would have trashed a key element of the Contract with America: in 1995, when the House cut congressional committee funding by a third, House leaders touted it as one of the first Contract promises kept.
“It should have come as no surprise that some of us were going to say no when they want to hire more Washington bureaucrats,” said budget hawk Mark Neumann of Wisconsin when he declared he would vote against the bill. “When we go out and tell our people we’re going to balance the budget, we can’t start with an increase in our own budget.” With all Democrats opposed to the bill, the swing votes came from eleven GOP budget hawks. It went down to defeat by a narrow margin of three votes.
Gingrich was furious. A few minutes after the vote, he announced an unusual mandatory meeting of all House Republicans in the caucus room right outside the House chamber. The session was going to begin with a roll-call and the Speaker threatened to send the sergeant-at-arms to round up any absent GOP congressman. Once the meeting started, Gingrich fumed.
“The eleven geniuses who thought they knew more than the rest of
the Congress are going to come up and explain their votes,” he said. It
was an unusual step and one that seemed to be motivated mostly by anger.
It even surprised the more senior members of Congress, none of whom had
ever heard of anyone being asked to explain their vote in this way to
the entire caucus. Gingrich’s goal was to humiliate, and he derisively
referring to the dissenting members as “YOU CONSERVATIVES,” as if they
were a distinctly different and unacceptable breed of Republican.
He derided them for not being team players and threatened to delay a two-week recess until each of those members explained himself and until the leadership had enough votes to pass the committee bill.
Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma, former wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, pushed back. “The Speaker tonight talked about the eleven of us letting the team down. The more significant question and the question that never gets asked in Washington, D.C., is whose teams are we on?”
Many in the room began to nod their heads. The mood had turned against Gingrich. When he was done speaking, Largent received enthusiastic applause from most of the Republicans present. Gingrich never tried a stunt like that again.
"He (Gingrich) told a room full of
reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made
him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One...Newt had been
careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the
shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity
began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child..The revolution, I can
tell you, was never the same."
- Former
GOP Congressman Tom Delay
Today, the nostalgia many seem to have for Gingrich’s days as leader of the House greatly clouds the reality of how conservatives actually felt about him after 1996. As Robert Novak reported at the time, on the first business day after the 1997 budget deal was announced the switchboard of the Republican national headquarters was swamped with calls from rank-and-rile GOP voters protesting the budget “sellout.” The 1998 election was seen then as a referendum on Gingrich’s attack-Clinton-but-spend–like-him strategy. Conservatives were already pondering whether a world without a Republican congressional majority would be all that bad. As George Will speculated in an October 1998 column, “it is unclear that having more Republicans in Congress would be good for either the Constitution or conservatism.” Two weeks before election day 1998, Gingrich grandiosely predicted that his new approach to governing would gain anywhere between 10 and 40 seats. Republicans actually lost three seats, narrowing their majority to five votes in the House. Gingrich stepped down from his Speaker post three days later."
“The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from
private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist
argument.”
- Newt Gingrich
“Give the park police more ammo.”
- Newt Gingrich, responding to a
reporter who asked what to do about the homeless a few days after the
police shot a homeless man in front of the White House.
“The problem isn’t too little money in political campaigns, but not enough.”
- Newt Gingrich on campaign finance reform.
“I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power."
- Newt Gingrich
"I believe in a lean bureaucracy, not in no bureaucracy. You can have an active, aggressive conservative state which does not in fact have a centralised bureaucracy. We have not seen an activist conservative presidency since TR."
According to Kit Wisdom, a leader of the Rockefeller Louisiana campaign and Gingrich's colleague on the 1968 campaign, “he was very into himself and in charge of everything” and his political philosophy was “in the middle." He was
antitax, and hawkish on defence, but a strong environmentalist and
advocate of civil rights. He courted black supporters and later told his
biographer, Mel Steely, that he felt “a moral obligation to support the
candidate who was intensely for integration.”
But while he may have felt a moral obligation, Gingrich also saw
political opportunity as a Republican in a South dominated by
conservative Democrats. He believed the future of the party in the South
was to be “the moderate, progressive alternative to the old-line
Dixiecrats,” according to former Republican Congressman, Vin Weber.
When Jimmy Carter proposed an Alaskan wildlife reserve, Newt Gingrich voted in favour, breaking with his party. His support for more federal
investment in transportation, science, space programmes and technology
rattled libertarians and free market conservatives; the Club for Growth,
an advocacy group, complained that Gingrich had “a recurring impulse
to insert the government in the private economy.”
In a 1984 interview
with Mother Jones Magasine, Gingrich was unapologetic.
“I believe in a lean bureaucracy, but not no bureaucracy.”
- Newt Gingrich, Mother Jones, 1984
Who said, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in
June 1994, this about GATT, "I am just saying that we need to be honest
about the fact that we are
transferring from the United States at a practical level significant
authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment. I
would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest
about the scale of change. This is very close to Maastricht [a key
European Union treaty], and
twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important
defining moment. This is not just another trade agreement. This is
adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s,
the U.S. Congress rejected. I am not even saying we should reject it;
I, in fact, lean toward it"?
- Newt Gingrich
In intellectual circles, he raised eyebrows; he drew inspiration not from theorists like Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek, but from futurists like Isaac Asimov and Alvin Toffler.
“I
call Newt an experiential conservative, as opposed to a deeply
philosophical conservative. He does not have a deeply held
philosophy, say, biblically based philosophy as some of us do.”
- Paul M. Weyrich, a conservative activist, PBS programme “Frontline”
The culture wars that energised Christian conservatives held little
interest for the new congressman from Georgia. “Newt’s basic inclination
is to let people be people — if it’s not against the law then it’s none
of our business,” says his biographer, Mr Steely, who taught history alongside Gingrich and later worked in his Congressional office. Former Congressman Joe Scarborough says that “Newt’s never been a conservative...He is an opportunist.” Senator Tom Coburn wrote about Newt in his book, Breach of Trust. Among other things he writes that “Gingrich talked a lot about the importance of listening, but he was often not interested in discussing our ideas” and "he was like a whipped dog who barked, yet still cowered, in Mr. Clinton’s presence.” Former Moderate Republican Sherwood L Boehler of New York says, “I always thought of Gingrich as darn near the ultimate pragmatist.” .
“I would never vote against my conscience. On the other hand, I also make it a
habit to have relatively few things I feel bitterly moral about.”
"I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much."
- Newt Gingrich
"I risk sounding not quite as right-wing as I should, but I’ve spent enough of my life fighting."
- Newt Gingrich, 2005
“I’ve got a problem, I get in those meetings and as a person I like the President. I melt when I’m around him. After I get out, I need two hours to detoxify. My people are nervous about me going in there because of the way I deal with this.”
- Newt Gingrich, to David Mariniss and Michael Weisskopf
* 2 Faced
(Who does she think she is)
(I dunno)
(Do you reckon they're real?)
(Nah)
(Hi, girls)
(Hi, Louise, you look great)
Ow, ow, twisted and deceitful
All those two-faced people
Taking me for some kind of fool
Ow, ow, pretending to be so nice
Let me give you my advice
I don't need you, ooh
Friends in disguise
Dressed up in lies
It's an act that you're playing
Ow, ow, first you recognise me
Then you criticise me, what's goin on
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Ow, ow, they're so narrow-minded
Truth is so one-sided
They're just counterfeits
Ow, ow, hot and cold you're blowing
Keep them walls closed
And who are you trying to kid, eh
Two-faced people are so shallow
Put yourself in my place
Ow, ow, the fairy tales you're spinning
Sounding so convincing
But I'm at a loss
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Poison words are spoken
My faith in you is broken
But I'll make it on my own
Ow, ow, twisted and deceitful
All those two-faced people
Taking me for some kind of fool
Ow, ow, they're so narrow-minded
Truth is so one-sided
But honey you're wrong
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Stop this hypocrisy
You're criticising me
'Coz I don't wanna be
With two-faced people, yeah
(Ya know, she's probably talking behind our backs right now)
(She probably is, she's like that)
(She's two-faced)
(You never know what she's gonna say, hahaha)
(I cant' believe you said that about me)
(Believe it, honey)
(I dunno)
(Do you reckon they're real?)
(Nah)
(Hi, girls)
(Hi, Louise, you look great)
Ow, ow, twisted and deceitful
All those two-faced people
Taking me for some kind of fool
Ow, ow, pretending to be so nice
Let me give you my advice
I don't need you, ooh
Friends in disguise
Dressed up in lies
It's an act that you're playing
Ow, ow, first you recognise me
Then you criticise me, what's goin on
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Ow, ow, they're so narrow-minded
Truth is so one-sided
They're just counterfeits
Ow, ow, hot and cold you're blowing
Keep them walls closed
And who are you trying to kid, eh
Two-faced people are so shallow
Put yourself in my place
Ow, ow, the fairy tales you're spinning
Sounding so convincing
But I'm at a loss
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Poison words are spoken
My faith in you is broken
But I'll make it on my own
Ow, ow, twisted and deceitful
All those two-faced people
Taking me for some kind of fool
Ow, ow, they're so narrow-minded
Truth is so one-sided
But honey you're wrong
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Stop your bitchin'
'Coz you're so sad
Bitchin' behind my back
Honey, I don't need that
So kick it to the curb
Because I heard you're two-faced
Tryin' to get in my place
Work too hard to make mistakes
So stop your bitchin' on me
Stop this hypocrisy
You're criticising me
'Coz I don't wanna be
With two-faced people, yeah
(Ya know, she's probably talking behind our backs right now)
(She probably is, she's like that)
(She's two-faced)
(You never know what she's gonna say, hahaha)
(I cant' believe you said that about me)
(Believe it, honey)
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