Posted on 02/12/2008 9:11:20 PM PST by CutePuppy
Gingrich Talks 'Real Change'
By Kevin Mooney and Josiah Ryan
CNSNews.com Staff Writers
February 12, 2008
Watch video interview with Newt Gingrich.
Exclusive Interview (CNSNews.com) - Republicans should reject red vs. blue campaign models for a positive vision for America that appeals to the nation's natural center-right majority on key issues, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) declares in his latest book and in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service.
In "Real Change: From the World that Fails to the World that Works," Gingrich explains that the divide in America is not between red and blue states but between red, white, and blue America and far left elitists hostile to American values and American culture.
In his interview with Cybercast News Service on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., Gingrich detailed that conflict and presented, for example, his perspective on the "bigoted anti-religious judiciary" and the proper response that should come from average Americans. He also commented on entitlements, immigration policy, and multiculturalism, and offered advice for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is expected to win the Republican nomination for president. The interview follows here:
Cybercast News Service: Whenever I go looking for examples of bad policy I turn to my home state of New Jersey and, sure enough, there is an example here in your book of school officials who prevented a student from reading his favorite story in class because it came from the Bible. ... Mr. Speaker, how did we evolve to this point where the elites and especially the judiciary became so hostile to the very worldview that made the United States possible?
Newt Gingrich: Well, I think a broad, vast majority of the American people kept tolerating judicial arrogance and didn't realize the trend line: that every time you were reasonable, they would take one step further toward being unreasonable. And so we've been in about a 45-year period that goes back to the 1963 decision to outlaw school prayer - which was, I think, clearly unconstitutional and wrong - and we have tolerated a court system which has been more and more arrogant and more and more out of touch. Now, I think with President Bush's nominations there is some hope of the courts beginning to drift back. And if we could keep a conservative in the White House, I think we might be able to actually calmly change the direction of the courts. But when you look at how bad the Ninth Circuit court is, for example, it would probably be more appropriate to abolish it and start over. The Ninth Circuit is the least representative court in the United States.
Cybercast News Service: The concept of separation of church and state, you spent quite a bit of time on that recently. As you know, it comes from the letter Jefferson wrote, it doesn't actually appear in the language of the First Amendment, I'm wondering ...
Newt Gingrich: Well, Jefferson's language, which had not been interpreted by anyone for 170 years to mean anything significant, was seized upon by Supreme Court justices who were determined to create a secular society. The wall of separation they want to build is between the historic America that has always been there and a new radical secular society.
Jefferson, two days after he signed the letter to the Danbury Baptists, got in a carriage and went up from White House to the Capitol and went to church in the U.S. House of Representatives. He loaned the Treasury building to be a church. He signed legislation paying for missionaries to the Indians in the Northwest Territories. If you go to the Jefferson memorial, you will see three of four walls on the memorial that have quotes that refer to God. He wrote the passage that says "we are endowed by our creator." That's Jefferson's language. And it's very important to understand, they really meant that your rights come from God, and you are sovereign, and you loan power to the government, which is different than any other society in the world.
Cybercast News Service: What sort of advice would you have for families, for young people who have their religious freedom challenged? There seems to be a mindset that they don't want to spend the money to take on the ACLU?
Newt Gingrich: Well, I would say first of all, they should elect board members to their school boards who are prepared to take on the ACLU. Second, they should get their congressman to change the law so the ACLU doesn't get money out of the taxpayers every time they file one of these lawsuits. Third, in a worst case environment, they should be prepared to home school their children or take out and send them to private school. People do not have to accept their children being brainwashed into a secular world just because the bureaucracies are out of control.
Cybercast News Service: Another challenge you take on is the question of entitlements, which is festering, and President Bush tried to give it a push with Social Security, and it got no where. It seems the challenge though is, on the one hand the American people are philosophically conservative but operationally liberal in the sense that they like the idea of limited government, but they are still getting a lot of checks from the government.
Newt Gingrich: I don't know that they are operationally liberal. They are operationally practical. They want to know, "How is it going to work?" I think if the president had followed the Ryan-Sununu plan and had focused narrowly on people under 40 and then communicated that they would get three to five times as much money under a personal held, personal Social Security investment system, they would have liked it, because it would have been operationally better for them - not just theoretically - but they'd have more money. It seems to me if you can't put together a proposal that says 'how would you like more money' and get it understood, you shouldn't be in politics.
And so, I think what we're arguing is a better health system that is designed in a transformational way - such as done at the Center for Health Transformation - is actually better health with better outcomes with a longer life and lower costs. So, we're not saying let's have tradeoff between I can get you a cheap health system but you're going to die sooner. I think I can actually get you a wellness-prevention, self-management, early treatment system that is actually better for you, less expensive for the taxpayer, and leads you to live a longer life with better health.
Cybercast News Service: Is it fair to say entitlements are no longer the third rail, not quite as radioactive?
Newt Gingrich: I think that if you describe it correctly, it's actually a big advantage. I think we did a series of surveys at AmericanSolutions.com - just go to AmericanSolutions.com and click on research. And we found that 90 something percent of the country thought you had to fix Social Security. People understand - the average American understands - that these inherited New Deal, World War II entitlement structures that were based on an industrial society 60 years ago have to be fundamentally re-thought for a world market, very mobile, longer-living society.
Cybercast News Service: As speaker of the House, you had a balanced budget, and you spend time in your book talking about how we got there, how we got back. It seems to me one thing that has been overlooked, even though you exerted downward pressure on spending and took a lot of heat in the news media, the Republican Congress was re-elected, unlike the past Congress. What kind of lessons can be drawn from this?
Newt Gingrich: Yes, I think the fact that we keep our word, the fact that we implemented the Contract with America, the fact that we passed welfare reform, we passed the first tax cut in 16 years, we passed four consecutive years of a balanced budget and paid off $405 billion in federal debt - I think all of those things came together to convince people that for the first time since 1928 they ought to re-elect Republicans. I think one of the great disappointments of 2006 is that Republicans clearly lost their way - they've forgotten that we are the party of taxpayers. We pay for the pork. We are not grateful for pork. We expect reform. We don't like corruption. To some extent they acted like Democrats and thought we'd re-elect them anyway.
Cybercast News Service: Mr. Speaker, you spend a lot of time, some time, on immigration policy. It has been a divisive topic here. It's been a problem for John McCain. You've identified the multicultural ideology as a severe challenge. Would you say the challenge is more of our internal failures, such as the multicultural ideology as opposed to immigration per se? How do you think that debate should be framed?
Newt Gingrich: I think there's an interaction. I think the fact that the elites don't like American civilization, don't like American values, don't like English, further increases the anxiety about immigration. I think the American people are very comfortable with legal immigration. It is a lie to say American people are xenophobic or anti-immigrant, but they want it to be legal. They want the immigrants to have a desire to become American. They have a pretty good sense of what they mean by American.
Eighty-seven percent of the American people favor English as the official langue of government. That's a majority of Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Latinos. Only the elites are opposed. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted against English as the official language of government. The American people would actually like to increase the number of H1 and H2 visas. It's the labor unions that oppose it. A biometric card that probably has a retinal scan and a thumb print that is outsourced to Visa or Mastercard or American Express because they don't believe the government can possibly deal with fraud in the system.
And I will go a stage further and say the American people feel deeply that to enforce the law people who are here illegally should go home to get their guest worker card and should apply at home. I think it's a practical feeling. It's a sense we went through an amnesty with Simpson-Mizzoli. It didn't work. We amnestied 3 million people when we were told it would be 300,000. If we have another amnesty now, it will send a signal to the planet to sneak into the America. And it cheats everyone who obeyed the law. And I think Americans feel very deeply, including Americans who are first-generation, that the person who has been obeying the law and doing everything to get in legally, should not have leapfrogged over them people who have been breaking the law being here illegally.
Cybercast News Service: Is there any way our legal channels of immigration can be liberalized, so to speak, so that someone who is willing to follow the rule of law doesn't have to jump through hoops?
Newt Gingrich: Yes, absolutely. In fact, this administration has been destructive, because at the very time they don't enforce illegality, they have been raising the cost of becoming a citizen. So, they are making it more expensive to do the very thing we want you to do while they are not enforcing the law for the thing we don't want you to do.
Cybercast News Service: Mr. Speaker, will conservatives coalesce behind Sen. McCain to be the GOP nominee, and how much of your own support are you willing to throw behind him?
Newt Gingrich: Well, I think if Sen. McCain becomes the Republican nominee, we should support him, if for no other reason than for Supreme Court nominations.
Cybercast News Service: Is he a conservative?
Newt Gingrich: He's a moderate conservative. He's not a movement conservative, but he's a moderate conservative, nut a lot of the level of energy he gets out of conservatives will be based on, who does he pick for vice president? What's his platform like? What issues does he campaign on this fall? And I think he has a long way to go to generate the level of enthusiasm and energy that he's going to need to win.
I think "but he's a moderate conservative, nut a lot of the level of energy he gets out of conservatives will be based on, who does he pick for vice president..." --- should be now ?
Nonsequitur: noun, A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it.
Example: “Well, I think if Sen. McCain becomes the Republican nominee, we should support him,”
Bunk. The American people would like to stop all immigration twenty years ago.
No other nation on Earth has ever withstood a foreign tsunami like we have had since 1965, except maybe Rome just before the Barbarian tribes overran it.
Lukewarm (adj) : Temperature between warm and cool; not very enthusiastic (about a proposal or an idea).
Example: “Well, I think if Sen. McCain becomes the Republican nominee, we should support him, if for no other reason than”...
Conservatives are not moderates!!!!!!!! End of discussion and/or BS.
Heh.
I’ve read the American Solutions platform and their survey findings. A lot of good, solid recommendations. Some of them are so sensical, you wonder why they haven’t been accomplished before. Gingrich has laid some excellent ground work for tackling important issues facing this country.
We often concentrate too much on irrelevant issues (like post-facto "official endorsements" which are like "official dinners" that everybody hates but must attend) and discard the substance. His real solution was regarding the future of conservatives within or especially from outside of the framework of Whig/Republican Party and Washington, and particularly and definitely not wait for GOP "Central Committee" to [be in the position to] make a choice for them at elections time and present them with the fait accompli, the way it was done in 2007 (à la Henry Ford's "you can choose any candidate as long as he is not really conservative") and presenting a false choice of 4-5 unacceptable candidates, from which we can only chase least worst and can't even agree on which one that was.
That kind of work should have started even before November 2006 route, and GOP conservatives sat on their butts waiting for GOP to learn their "lesson", which they did - they blamed conservatives for "sitting out" and their loss, and went to look for votes in "warmer climes", i.e. in exactly opposite direction from what conservatives expected. That was obvious on domestic front immediately, yet conservatives did nothing except trying to simply stem the damage and threatening to abandon certain politicians (rightly so), but not really working to change anything so the threats were taken as empty "cutting nose in spite their face" ones.
Something beats nothing almost every time (except bluffs on rare occasion in poker), and we had nothing and did nothing to get something to replace "nothing" since 2006. What Newt said was a call to action he had tried to sound before, if anybody cared to listen to him without nitpicking and parsing and/or concentrating on his personality or some of his "history" (whether real or imagined or taken second-hand from the biased sources or simply misunderstood, but nonetheless irrelevant to the subject he was discussing).
We can ignore once again what he is rallying us to do, or what he is trying to do with his organization (because it's Newt, "he only cares about himself", "he only does something if it benefits Newt" etc), and find something in his speech or in him personally to attack, or we can ignore his lukewarm (at best) "endorsement" of McCain (if anyone can really call it that - he didn't call him a "leader", just "nominee" which is, sadly, accurate).
His rallying was not for McCain, but for developing a conservative organization (not Republican organization, and separate from GOP if need be) working at the state and local levels, we can own the GOP apparatus, and that's the places where the leaders come from and rise to the top.
Or we can concentrate on the one throwaway phrase he felt obliged to say under the circumstances, without spending the time or energy to try and convince anybody of it, but which somehow "confirms" for us the worst we feel about Newt himself. When someone is loved he can say or do nothing wrong no matter how big it is; when someone is hated (like Newt) he can say or do nothing right, no matter how small it is.
I feel having to vote for McCain is repugnant (and counterproductive) and will not even try and convince anybody to do what I can't convince myself to do, yet I can't blame Newt for saying this where he said it when he said - it was not his main point in this speech and didn't detract one bit from the substance and description of "rules of engagement" by conservatives regarding GOP - i.e., takeover ... again ... and after that, don't let go of it ... again...
Newt does get it, and explains how to get there... do we? Or we'll just keep playing the blame game, and leave the leadership development to other interested parties - leaders, after all, are made, not born - and our leaders have to be nurtured and promoted by us. Then, and only then, we won't be "Bob Dole'd" or "McCain'ed".
We often concentrate too much on irrelevant issues (like post-facto "official endorsements" which are like "official dinners" that everybody hates but must attend) and discard the substance. His real solution was regarding the future of conservatives within or especially from outside of the framework of Whig/Republican Party and Washington, and particularly and definitely not wait for GOP "Central Committee" to [be in the position to] make a choice for them at elections time and present them with the fait accompli, the way it was done in 2007 (à la Henry Ford's "you can choose any candidate as long as he is not really conservative") and presenting a false choice of 4-5 unacceptable candidates, from which we can only chase least worst and can't even agree on which one that was.
While I don't necessarily disagree, Newt's fix is still limited to working within the party. So he wants to bypass the leadership. Does he have any idea how many states have tried that? My own state has tried it and the RP swooped in and changed the leadership to defeat the effort.
Newt should know better than this. If he doesn't, he's essentially worthless to us. And that was my point. None of the leaders of the RP get it, and get it well enough to recognize that it is futile to work within the party any longer.
That kind of work should have started even before November 2006 route, and GOP conservatives sat on their butts waiting for GOP to learn their "lesson", which they did - they blamed conservatives for "sitting out" and their loss, and went to look for votes in "warmer climes", i.e. in exactly opposite direction from what conservatives expected. That was obvious on domestic front immediately, yet conservatives did nothing except trying to simply stem the damage and threatening to abandon certain politicians (rightly so), but not really working to change anything so the threats were taken as empty "cutting nose in spite their face" ones.
Over the last fifteen years, we have lofted some decent Republicans in California to run for Governor. The result was that the California Republican leadership jetesoned those candidates. They did not support them. The national leadership didn't either. While the Democrat President came to California to support the Democrats a number of times, our guy came only once or twice for a few hours each time. Then when an effort was launched to replace the Democrat Governor, the leadership recruited Arnold Schwarzenegger to trump obviously conservative alternatives.
Conservatives simply cannot work within this party. We are public enemy number one within it.
Something beats nothing almost every time (except bluffs on rare occasion in poker), and we had nothing and did nothing to get something to replace "nothing" since 2006. What Newt said was a call to action he had tried to sound before, if anybody cared to listen to him without nitpicking and parsing and/or concentrating on his personality or some of his "history" (whether real or imagined or taken second-hand from the biased sources or simply misunderstood, but nonetheless irrelevant to the subject he was discussing).
Been there. Done that. Now what? Work within the party? That's Newt's sterling idea.
We can ignore once again what he is rallying us to do, or what he is trying to do with his organization (because it's Newt, "he only cares about himself", "he only does something if it benefits Newt" etc), and find something in his speech or in him personally to attack, or we can ignore his lukewarm (at best) "endorsement" of McCain (if anyone can really call it that - he didn't call him a "leader", just "nominee" which is, sadly, accurate).
Okay, this is the third paragraph where you have advocated we do something we have been trying to do for fifteen years. Do you want us to just settle for trying it for another fifteen years?
His rallying was not for McCain, but for developing a conservative organization (not Republican organization, and separate from GOP if need be) working at the state and local levels, we can own the GOP apparatus, and that's the places where the leaders come from and rise to the top.
Not if the GOP fights you every step of the way, and it does. We already have some exellent Republicans in the party in California. They are conservatives. When they band together in an effort to turn things around, they either get thwarted by the state or national leadership.
Newt isn't suggesting we leave the party or develop another. No, he advocates we vote for McCain and then get to work. Get to work to do what? We have already tried to work within the party. It is futile to do so.
Or we can concentrate on the one throwaway phrase he felt obliged to say under the circumstances, without spending the time or energy to try and convince anybody of it, but which somehow "confirms" for us the worst we feel about Newt himself. When someone is loved he can say or do nothing wrong no matter how big it is; when someone is hated (like Newt) he can say or do nothing right, no matter how small it is.
I am neutral on Newt. I like some of what he does and don't other things. Here he is just throwing out platitudes as far as California is concerned.
I feel having to vote for McCain is repugnant (and counterproductive) and will not even try and convince anybody to do what I can't convince myself to do, yet I can't blame Newt for saying this where he said it when he said - it was not his main point in this speech and didn't detract one bit from the substance and description of "rules of engagement" by conservatives regarding GOP - i.e., takeover ... again ... and after that, don't let go of it ... again...
Urging me to vote for John McCain is about as offensive as it could possible get. This man fought against conservatism and the party for the last ten years. He has an absolutely terrible history before that. I will never support him, and when some politico tells me I must, it destroys their credibility. It does not convince me to break down and vote for John. That isn't going to happen here, and it isn't going to happen in a lot of places this fall. The party has severely damaged it's validity to represent conservatism. In fact it is unfit to do so.
If the Republican party were trying to apply for a job, they would be so out of here. They don't meet the standards I require for represwnting and promoting conservatism. "There's the door", would be my comment. "Don't call me, I'll call you."
Newt does get it, and explains how to get there... do we? Or we'll just keep playing the blame game, and leave the leadership development to other interested parties - leaders, after all, are made, not born - and our leaders have to be nurtured and promoted by us. Then, and only then, we won't be "Bob Dole'd" or "McCain'ed".
Newt does not get it. He talks about a Declaration of Independence and then suggests we vote one more time for a butthead. Then he suggests we work within the party at the local and state levels to get things back on track.
The only thing is, the RP won't let anyone get things back on track. We've got 54 electoral votes out here and the party doesn't care enough about them to help us put in a conservative leadership in the state. Instead it tries to convince folks in the state that winner take all is a terrible policy and we would be every so much better if we would climb on board that Titanic.
I appreciate your thoughts, but 'been there done that'. Newt has nothing to offer here.
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