Posted on 05/16/2011 7:03:41 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Some Other Gingrich Flip-Flops: Libya, Dede Scozzafava, and Cap-and-Trade Newt the Erratic. John McCormack May 16, 2011 9:24 AM
On April 20, Newt Gingrich said he would have voted for Paul Ryan's Medicare reform and praised it as just a "first step" toward fixing our health care system. In a Facebook post hours later, he edged away from his full embrace of Ryan's plan.
On May 15, Gingrich ripped Ryan's plan as "radical change," "right-wing social engineering," and just “too big a jump.” Hours later, his spokesman acknowledged there's "not much daylight between Ryan and Gingrich" in the substance of Medicare reforms they each support.
This isn't the first time this year that the former speaker of the House has changed his position on a big issue in a matter of weeks. Around the same time that Gingrich was on NBC blasting the Medicare plan he supported three weeks ago, George Will was on ABC's This Week criticizing Gingrich for flip-flopping on war against the Libyan regime.
"Newt Gingrich’s problems are so far beyond just his multiple marriages and all that," Will said. "His ethanol love affair right now. On the 7th of March he said, 'Let’s go get Qaddafi.' On the 23rd of he says, 'I never favored intervention.' He did it on television. … He’s one of these people who says that to understand Barack Obama you need to understand his 'Kenyan anti-colonial mentality.' This is just not a serious candidate."
Will was (accurately) paraphrasing Gingrich. Here's the video of the flip-flop on Libya:
Of course, not all of Gingrich's flip-flops take place over a matter of weeks--sometimes he's waited months, or even years, to change his position. Gingrich fully backed liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava in the 2009 upstate New York congressional race until she dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat. Gingrich laid low for a while and then coneded in February 2010 it was wrong of him to endorse Scozzafava.
"She had some positions that were far more radical than I realized at the time," he said. But Scozzafava's liberal record was out there for all to see, as I reported at the time.
And Gingrich can't claim he wasn't reading THE WEEKLY STANDARD back then. In April of 2009, he testified before the House against cap-and-trade and cited this TWS article during his testimony.
But in 2007 Gingrich favored "mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system." In 2008, he even produced a video with Nancy Pelosi on the urgent need to stop global warming:
The good news for Gingrich is that almost the entire 2012 field has flip-flopped on cap-and-trade. The bad news is that he can't say the same about his flip-flops on Medicare reform, Dede Scozzafava, and the Libyan war.
And they say Romney is a flip-flopper?
Newt = Core Values?
THe Dede Scozzafazza did it for me.
Likewise for Santorum and the endorsement of snarlin Arlen over Pat Toomey.
Crossed them both off my list.
I trust McCain more than Gingrich, and I don’t trust McCain at all.
Next and best Newt flip-flop will be:
“I’ve changed my mind and decided not to run.”
Newt is admittedly a Moderate, however leans more to the left than to the right. Often weak and indecisive, a fine talker...........
The ad with pelosi did it for me.
Sounds to me that he was infected with Beltway Fever. Is this even the same man that lead the House that pushed Welfare reform?
Newt is looking to sell books and increase his speaking fees. Nothing more.
Even the Weekly Standard is tossing this clown overboard.
Don’t forget his pro-global warming legislation commercial where he snuggled up with Nancy Pelosi.
He looks like John Wayne Gacey in that pick!
Just trying to jar some memories.
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