Gingrich talks about his “bold solutions” at CPAC 2012

Former Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich was the last one of the three GOP presidential candidates to address the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, February 10, 2012.

The former Speaker of the House spent most of his 30 minute-speech attacking the “Washington establishment.” Incidentally, not many Congressional Republicans have been supportive of Gingrich’s candidacy, instead endorsing his main rival former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

The Speaker made it clear on Friday that there’s nothing surprising about Washington’s resistance to a possible Gingrich presidency.

“For the Republican establishment managing the decay is preferable to changing the trajectory, because changing the trajectory requires real fights, it requires a real willingness to rollup sleeves and to actually take on the Left,” he said. “And that’s why the Republican establishment, whether it’s in 1996 or in 2008, can’t win a presidential campaign because they don’t have the toughness, they don’t have the commitment and they don’t have the philosophy necessary to build a majority in this country.”

Gingrich went on to explain how the establishment Republicans reject any “bold ideas” because they see “America that can’t: tied up in bureaucracy, tied up in red tape, tied up in incompetence, tied up in interest groups.”(continued)

I thought his speech was OK, having finally gotten to watch it on replay. At times it was “brilliant”. He had some good ideas. At other times it was rediculous. He had some bad ideas. That’s Newt, full of ideas, full of ways he can fix government, full of ways he can use government to fix our lives, full of ways government will somehow make things better for all of us.

His attack on unemployment insurance was odd. He’s correct that 99 weeks is too long, but he attacked the people receiving the money, saying they were being paid to sit around doing nothing. You are supposed to prove you are searching for work to take unemployment. And for the first 26 weeks, you receive unemployment BECAUSE you had been working, and your employer paid into an insurance fund precisely to pay you if they laid you off.

I wish Gingrich had more clearly attacked government for extending the payments, than making it sound like the workers who had been laid off were lazy. I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it took me off his message.

I’d also prefer a 0% corporate tax to a 12.5% tax. OK, apparently some foreign country is 12.5%. That’s Newt the idea guy, buried in details and trying to over-analyze anything. Why should it be 12.5%, and not 10%, not 15%,? Just say get rid of the tax, because it is all passed on anyway.

And his comment that GE would “pay their tax” got applause, but I don’t want GE to have to pay “their tax”, I want all companies to not pay tax the way GE didn’t.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.