A Look Back: Newt Gingrich’s Most Outlandish Policy Positions
Newt Gingrich is up 31 points in Florida, according to one poll, and he is openly predicting that he will be the Republican nominee for president.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, it’s worth revisiting some of the lesser-known areas in Gingrich’s record. In his three-plus decades in public life, the former House speaker has racked up an impressive record not only of flip-flops, but also of policy positions that are profoundly unorthodox, some would say outlandish.
This is by no means a comprehensive list – if I’m missing any Gingrichian gems, email me or leave a comment.
1981: Gingrich co-sponsors a measure in the House “to provide for the therapeutic use of marijuana in situations involving life-threatening or sense-threatening illnesses and to provide adequate supplies of marijuana for such use.”
A year later, he writes a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association reiterating his view: “We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source.” He later disavows the stance.
1994: As part of his push for welfare reform, Gingrich proposes that states end aid to poor single mothers and their children be sent to orphanages that would be built with the saved money. Responding to criticism of the plan by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Gingrich cites a 1938 Hollywood film.
“I’d ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the Mickey Rooney movie about ‘Boys Town,’” he says.
1995: Gingrich proposes the death penalty for those involved in the drug trade, drawing a parallel to the draconian policies of Singapore and Malaysia.
“We want to stop all drug traffic. If you bring in a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, we will execute you,” he says during a book tour (via the San Diego Union-Tribune on Nexis).
But Gingrich’s Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 ultimately goes nowhere. Asked by Yahoo News in November if he stands by this position, Gingrich responded, “I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure.”
2005: Gingrich calls for “universal but confidential DNA testing” as part of healthcare reform, according to an account in a South Carolina newspaper. (Via National Review)
2005: During the Ward Churchill affair, Gingrich suggests tenure should be abolished at state universities.
“We ought to say to campuses, it’s over … We should say to state legislatures, why are you making us pay for this? Boards of regents are artificial constructs of state law. Tenure is an artificial social construct,” he says. “Tenure did not exist before the twentieth century, and we had free speech before then. You could introduce a bill that says, proof that you’re anti-American is grounds for dismissal.”
2006: Gingrich suggests the U.S. should pursue a counter-terrorism strategy that would curtail terrorists’ free speech rights, predicting “a serious debate about the First Amendment.”
“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,” he says. (Via NR)
2009: In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) police conference, Gingrich declares an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack to be one of the gravest threats to U.S. national security. He cites a fictional thriller to bolster his case:
“What I’m about to say to you is from my heart, and from everything I’ve learned in almost fifty-one years, we are on the edge of catastrophic problems. If you get a chance, read my friend Bill Forstchen’s novel, One Second After, which describes the fate of a small town, after an electromagnetic pulse attack.”
2010: Gingrich argues that the United States should not allow construction of the “ground zero mosque” because Saudi Arabia does not allow construction of churches or synagogues – effectively endorsing Saudi-style religious discrimination.
“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”
2011: Angered by the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gingrich says he’d like to empower the president to fire judges.
“I would do no more than eliminate Judge Berry in San Antonio and the Ninth circuit. That’s the most I would go for,” he says. “But let me say this because I think this has to be part of our national debate. That’s not a rhetorical comment. I believe the legislative and executive branches have an obligation to defend the Constitution against judges who are tyrannical and who seek to impose un-American values on the people of the United States.”
2011: In an appearance at Harvard, Gingrich challenges child labor laws, floating the idea of replacing pricey unionized janitors with kids:
“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school,” he says. “The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
By: Justin Elliott, Salon, December 2, 2011
Gingrich Presidential Run Inspires Fear And Loathing In Top GOP Circles
Sure, Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls. But the blunt truth about Newt is that the people who know him best and have worked with him in Washington want him nowhere near the White House or the top of the GOP ticket — and in the end, that’s likely to doom his chances.
Check out the new National Journal “Insiders” survey out this morning, whichi s particularly devastating to the disgraced former Speaker. This is from a regular panel of well-connected Republican operatives. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so savage by these folks against a same-party politician:
“Winning the presidency is all about discipline, focus, and organization,” said one Republican Insider, “none of which are strong suits for Gingrich.”
“With Newt, we go to bed every night thinking that tomorrow might be the day he implodes,” said another Republican. “Not good for our confidence – or fundraising.” A third Republican stated plainly, “Gingrich is not stable enough emotionally to be the nominee — let alone, the president.”
“Bigfoot dressed as a circus clown would have a better chance of beating President Obama than Newt Gingrich, a similarly farcical character,” quipped a Republican.
“Come on,” sighed another GOP Insider, “the White House is probably giving money to Gingrich as we speak.”
What’s a bit unusual about Gingrich is that there probably is a sharp split between how Washington-connected party actors and those farther outside of Washington or with weaker connections to the national party network feel about him. That’s because he’s been out of office for over a decade, and has been treated as a campaign curiosity until very recently. So there’s been no reason for vetting information to spread from those who worked with him while he was in office to local activists, operatives, and politicians, many of whom weren’t even around when Newt resigned in 1998.
For them, the natural inclination is to assume the best about big-name Republicans, and to treat any negative stories about them as the usual garbage from the liberal media. That will change once they start hearing national conservative leaders calling Newt a “farcical character” and questioning his conservative bone fides, as Club For Growth’s Chris Chocola and others did in the Washington Post article on Newt’s policy positions this morning.
As more party actors hear negative things about Gingrich from sources they trust, they’ll quickly lose what little enthusiasm they currently have for him. After that, it will almost certainly filter down to rank-and-file voters. The Newt moment just is not likely to last very long. Too many top conservatives just want nothing to do with the guy. And for good reason.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, December 2, 2011
Dear Red America, Newt Gingrich Does Not Respect You
Ross Douthat offers a fleshed-out version of what a lot of conservative intellectuals are saying about Jon Huntsman: that the former Utah governor is genuinely conservative, more likely than anyone to prevail in a general election, and possessed of substantive policy answers to the nation’s most serious problems.
There’s just one problem.
“His salesmanship has been staggeringly inept. Huntsman’s campaign was always destined to be hobbled by the two years he spent as President Obama’s ambassador to China,” Douthat writes. “But he compounded the handicap by introducing himself to the Republican electorate with a series of symbolic jabs at the party’s base. He picked high-profile fights on two hot-button issues — evolution and global warming — that were completely irrelevant to his candidacy’s rationale. He let his campaign manager define his candidacy as a fight to save the Republican Party from a ‘bunch of cranks.’ And he embraced his identity as the media’s favorite Republican by letting the liberal journalist Jacob Weisberg write a fawning profile for Vogue.”
Summing up, Douthat comments that “This was political malpractice at its worst. Voters don’t necessarily need to like a candidate to vote for him, but they need to think that he likes them.”
Is he right?
If so, I have some information for the GOP base that should change how they feel about the relative merits of Huntsman and Newt Gingrich. Let me level with you, Red America: Huntsman does indeed believe that many of you are wrong about evolution and global warming. But he hasn’t shown anywhere near as much contempt and disrespect for you as Gingrich.
Yes, I know, you remember Gingrich as the man who conceived of the Contract With America. But there’s a lot more to him than that. This is a D.C. insider who thinks you’re dumb enough to believe that he got paid $1.6 million from Freddie Mac for his services as “a historian”; a man who ridiculed Freddie publicly after privately working to advance its favored policies; Gingrich still expects you to believe his disingenuous claim that he never engaged in lobbying for special interests; he is a man who tried in a televised debate to pretend that he hadn’t supported an individual mandate in health care, only to be successfully called out by an opponent; he is even someone who tried to tell you, with a straight face, that the breakup of one of his marriages could be blamed partly on how passionately he felt about America (he had an extramarital affair).
That’s just for starters.
So if any of you felt disrespected by Huntsman for forthrightly saying that he thinks you’re wrong about a couple of things, understand that it could be much worse. You could embrace a nominee who just lies to you when he thinks you won’t like hearing the truth. And who tells such audacious whoppers that part of him has to believe that we’re all stupid.
What shows more contempt and disrespect, telling someone you think one of their ideas is wrongheaded? Or lying to them over and over about your record, your character, and your business dealings?
Your call, Red America.
By: Conor Friedersdorf , The Atlantic, December 2, 2011
Is Newt Gingrich Just A More Bombastic Mitt Romney?
The Republican primary voters who continue to cast about for a presidential nominee not named Mitt Romney have lately alit on Newt Gingrich as their newest infatuation. Gingrich has plenty of appealing qualities, chief among them that he’s entertaining. But why, exactly, should conservatives prefer him to Romney?
Going down the list of conservative objections to Romney, every one applies equally, if not more so, to Gingrich.
* Support for health-care mandates:
Romney’s embrace in his Massachusetts health-care reform of a requirement that individuals buy health insurance, which he’s refused to repudiate, is his scarlet letter for many on the right; he says he opposes mandates at the federal level but that the provision was right for Massachusetts and promotes personal responsibility.
Gingrich, for his part, has long been a vigorous supporter of mandates — from the 1990s, when many conservatives championed the idea in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s health-reform proposal, to as recently as 2008, when he wrote in his book Real Change: “We should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor.” In a 2007 Des Moines Register op-ed, Gingrich specifically used the dreaded words “individual mandate,” saying, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance.”
It’s not clear when Gingrich’s position changed to his current vehement rejection of mandates. As recently as May he was speaking favorably about “some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond” — comments that were followed by a hasty retreat the next day: “I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and, I believe, unconstitutional.” In making that statement, Gingrich didn’t explain the dissonance with what he’d said the day before.
* Squishy on abortion:
Romney’s conversion (or flip-flop, depending on your point of view) from pro-choice as a Massachusetts politician to pro-life as a national one is well known. Gingrich has never been vociferously pro-choice, and, unlike Romney, he has now signed the pro-life pledge proffered by the Susan B. Anthony List, which asks candidates to promote anti-abortion legislation, make pro-life appointments and cut off federal funds for abortion providers.
But — as social-conservative purists like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann have lately been pointing out — in his days as the leader of a resurgent House GOP, Gingrich advocated a big tent. In 1990, for example, he said that rather than being strict abortion prohibitionists, the Republican Party ought to “be the party that on balance prefers the fewest abortions possible.” He supported some taxpayer funding of abortion, a stance that his campaign now says he has reversed.
* Squishy on immigration:
In the last debate, Gingrich made an emotional argument in favor of some sort of legalization process for some illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S., particularly those brought to the country as children. The resulting dust-up revealed that Romney’s stance, beneath his many evasions, isn’t materially different: He’d rather talk about securing the border, he doesn’t want lawbreakers to get special treatment, but he also is not in favor of mass deportation. In 2006, he told Bloomberg that he would not have illegal immigrants “rounded up and box-carred out.”
If immigration hawks are looking for a candidate who’ll take a tougher stance than Romney, though, Gingrich’s line in the debate showed he’s not their man. “I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, ‘Let’s be humane in enforcing the law, without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families,'” he said.
* Generally squishy — a flip-flopper:
This is the main knock on Romney, from left and right alike — that he changes his positions based on political expediency. While few politicians with long careers have been absolutely consistent, Gingrich has an especially rich history of reversing himself when something he said proved to be unpopular.
To take just a couple of recent examples, in 2008, when being “green” was fashionable, Gingrich recorded a television commercial for an Al Gore project in which he sat on a loveseat with Nancy Pelosi and declared, “We do agree our country must take action to address climate change.” Now that he’s running in a GOP primary that’s hostile to environmental regulation, he’s skeptical that anything needs to be done.
Earlier this year, when the Obama administration hadn’t taken action on the violence breaking out in Libya, Gingrich called for immediate imposition of a no-fly zone. When the administration took his advice, though, he was against it: “I would not have intervened,” he said. As one of his critics noted at the time, it was hard to see this swift reversal as anything other than blind partisanship — knee-jerk opposition to Obama’s stance, regardless of its policy merits.
Gingrich has basically admitted this was the reason for his reversal on health-care mandates: In the 1990s, he told the New Hampshire Union Leader, the individual mandate “was designed to block Hillarycare.” Yet Gingrich maintains that Romney’s flip-flops are objectionable because they were for political reasons, while his have been authentic changes of heart: “I wouldn’t switch my positions for political reasons,” he said recently. “It’s perfectly reasonable to change your position if … you see new things you didn’t see.”
* Not all that conservative, deep down:
Many conservatives suspect that no matter how many conservative positions Romney espouses, deep in his heart he’s just not one of them. It’s a sense based on his record, his current policy proposals (such as an economic plan that gives suspicious emphasis to relief for the middle class), and his general tone and temperament. But Gingrich’s record is hardly that of a right-wing crusader.
The 1994 takeover of the House Gingrich engineered was an enormous victory for the Republican Party, one for which Gingrich is still justly revered in GOP ranks. But he didn’t do it by enforcing conservatism — he couldn’t have. Much of the “Contract With America” — which was, after all, designed to appeal to swing voters — was technocratic. For the landmark achievements he still touts, welfare reform and balancing the budget, Gingrich worked arm in arm — and compromised — with Bill Clinton.
This year, shortly after launching his candidacy, Gingrich didn’t win many Republican friends when he blasted the House Republican budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as “right-wing social engineering.” As Ryan said at the time, “With allies like that, who needs the left?” Gingrich quickly repented and now says, “Paul Ryan came up with some very good ideas.” But there’s ample reason to question the true colors of a politician who, early in his career, was a state chairman for the presidential campaign of Nelson Rockefeller — the emblem of liberal Republicanism that sought to halt the rise of conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. In a 1989 interview, Gingrich called this “the classic moderate wing of the party,” and said it was where he had “spent most of my life.”
So why are the anti-Romney conservatives flocking to Gingrich?
In conversations with Republicans — some Gingrich backers, some not — about why he’s more appealing than Romney, most acknowledge it basically comes down to style. Gingrich’s tone is that of an angry crusader, unlike Romney’s placid assurance. And because Gingrich has such a penchant to say whatever comes into his head, his inconsistencies tend to get chalked up to a lack of discipline rather than cold calculation.
As the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis put it:
Gingrich and Romney couldn’t be more different. Gingrich questions authority, challenges conventional wisdom, and disputes premises. He also has fun. He is winsome. He can be undisciplined. He enjoys politics, and seems to gain energy from engaging in the battles. Romney, on the other hand, is a consummate “adult.” He is highly disciplined. He plays by the rules, accepts reality as it is, and then — within those confines — sets about fixing things as best he can.
It’s also true that if Gingrich and Romney really are so similar on paper, voters might as well pick Gingrich. Perhaps that’s why Romney’s camp sees Gingrich as a threat and will seek to highlight the former speaker’s personal baggage.
But as Gingrich’s current surge enters the closer-inspection phase, many conservatives may discover their infatuation with him is based on equal parts bluster and mythology. In the words of conservative guru Erick Erickson, the RedState.com founder: “The conservative warrior people tend to think Gingrich is, often is not.”
By: Molly Ball, The Atlantic, December 1, 2011
Former Republican Senator: The GOP Presidential Field Is ‘Embarrassing’
Republican John Danforth, who served as a senator from Missouri for nearly 20 years and later as George W. Bush’s ambassador the United Nations, is not happy with the slate of Republican presidential candidates. “I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible,” he told KTRS in St. Louis yesterday. “It’s embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff,” he added, calling out audiences for applauding the candidates’ morbid boastings. Via Fired Up Missouri:
DANFORTH: What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. […]
It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.
Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest.
Since leaving public office, Danforth has often publicly criticized the Republican party, of which he remains an active and influential member, for drifting father and farther to the right. A year ago, he said that if Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) — the “most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy” — “is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.” As it goes, Dick Lugar is already facing a “tough primary challenge” from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), and several other Republicans are also thinking of entering the race.
By: Alex SeitzWald, Think Progress, December 1, 2011
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