Politicians & Pundits: Newt Gingrich

Gingrich: Obama “Is A One-Sided Apologist For Islamic Extremists While He Is Attacking Christianity”

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From a September 25, 2012, appearance by Newt Gingrich on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

GINGRICH: For 10 days after the Benghazi attack, the Obama administration denied it was a terrorist attack.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (HOST): That’s a different issue.

GINGRICH: No.

VAN SUSTEREN: That is a profoundly different issue.

GINGRICH: But after Carney that morning said, ‘Okay everybody now concedes it’s a terrorist act,’ the same afternoon, Obama went back to the, ‘Oh, it’s really caused by the film.’ I think it’s because he wasn’t coordinating.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, he was talking about the film today, which was sort of interesting. He’s talking about the video before the U.N. in his speech and talking about how, you know, we don’t insult the—we should not tolerate insulting religions, yet there was no mention of the fact that Ahmadinejad is going to be speaking tomorrow on the holiest day of the Jewish faith, Yom Kippur, so that he spoke about the insult to the Muslim world with this video, but he neglected to talk about the insult to Jews, while he’s dissing the prime minister of Israel.

GINGRICH: Well, it’s worse—From an American perspective, it’s worse than that. Obama spent I think three paragraphs on a nutcake film that nobody had seen. Meanwhile, in the same city as Cardinal Dolan, who has openly said the Obama administration’s waging war on the Catholic church. Now why is Obama fixated on appeasing Muslims while attacking Catholics? And why is that not a topic that ought to be on every network talk show? I mean here’s a president who is a one-sided apologist for Islamic extremists while he is attacking Christianity in his own country. It’s pretty bizarre.

Newt Gingrich Claims You’re Better Off Being Uninsured Than On Medicaid

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From Newt Gingrich’s August 9, 2012, appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal:

NEWT GINGRICH: The key difference is no corporation, including federal employees, is big enough to control medicine in America. You have a very wide range of choices. And if you look at the Federal Employee Health Benefit Act, it’s actually a good model for thinking about how to have a large number of choices. What worries those of us who have looked at various national health systems is putting power in the hands of bureaucrats so that they start making decisions. For example, should—There’s a recent argument about whether or not you should have a particular test for men that relates to prostate cancer. One of the leading experts on prostate cancer in America said this government bureaucratic decision made by a committee that had no cancer expert on it, had no prostate expert on it, this decision sounded good in theory but in fact would lead to the premature death of 10 to 15 percent of the men who get prostate cancer. So I want to stick with you having the right, and your doctor having the right, to practice appropriate medicine for you, and then I want to find ways to maximize the number of people who have health insurance. But if you look at Medicaid, which has been a government-run program, there aren’t many people who will voluntarily get on Medicaid and there have been studies that indicate that the uninsured have better health outcomes than the people on Medicaid because Medicaid tends to be so badly run.

Newt Gingrich: CBO “Is An Engine Of Socialism”

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From Newt Gingrich’s August 9, 2012, appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal:

NEWT GINGRICH: This baseline thing is crazy. Basically what— Imagine your children convinced you that they had a baseline of getting a two-dollar-a-week increase in their allowance, and they deserve, therefore, in a normal month of four weeks, they deserve an eight-dollar increase to be even. And you say to them, “Well, you know, I haven’t gotten a pay raise, how about if I give you two dollars?” And they say, “Why are you cutting me six?” So you’re saying, “I’m giving you a two-dollar increase,” say “No you’re not, because my baseline is to get eight.” And I hope that I’m not– I’m doing this without a blackboard, so I hope all of our viewers can follow me. This is why I want a complete reform of the Congressional Budget Office, which is an engine of socialism and big government. The Congressional Budget Office has these models of what they call baseline budgeting which basically says if you don’t increase it by this amount, it’s a cut, even if it’s an increase. Now if you think about it, there’s no family in America, there’s no small business in America, that has a baseline budget like that. Normally if you spent a hundred dollars last you and you spend a hundred and five this year, it’s an increase. The Congressional Budget Office could score that as a fifteen-dollar cut if they have a baseline that’s bigger. So you put your finger on a very sophisticated point about why Washington is so hard to govern, and reforming the Congressional Budget Office is a significant step towards getting it governed, and if Republicans control the Senate in January, I hope that they will sit down with the House Republicans and insist on a director dedicated to fundamentally overhauling and changing the Congressional Budget Office.

Conservatives Turn A Cold Shoulder To Climate Science

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Agreement among climate scientists and scientific organizations that the globe is warming and humans are contributing to it is nearly unanimous, and the hard evidence to back up that position is readily available. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the highest they’ve been any time in the last 400,000 years; arctic ice is melting; and the global temperature has been steadily increasing, with all ten of the warmest years since recordkeeping began occurring within the last 12 years. As recently as 2008, the political consensus roughly mirrored the scientific consensus on the reality of climate change, but thanks to a concerted effort from corporations and industries that stand to benefit financially from lax oversight of emissions, the conservative establishment has slowly embraced climate change skepticism, with some flat-out denying that warming is occurring and others merely hedging on whether or not it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Many National Conservative Figures Are Climate Skeptics – A Change From 2008

In 2008, Both GOP And Democratic Candidates Believed In Global Warming. From the New York Times: “In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions.” [New York Times, 10/15/11]

By 2012, GOP Presidential Candidates Were Skeptical Of Climate Science. From the New York Times: “But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue. In the crowded Republican presidential field, most seem to agree with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that ‘the science is not settled’ on man-made global warming, as he said in a debate last month. Alone among Republicans onstage that night, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. said that he trusted scientists’ view that the problem was real.” [New York Times, 10/15/11]

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