Newt’s already been to the right of Rick and never wavered. The “issues” you’re talking about are trumped-up campaign spin, half-truths and lies, the kind of stuff that could be pinned on any public figure through selective quotes and misquotes. And if you aren’t aware of Santorum’s liberal economic votes and his general financial misbehaving then you just haven’t done your homework...like his “issues” on right-to-work, his cut-taxes-and-spend agenda that drove up the debt in the 2000s, his tax-dodging residency issues, his “charity” where about 2/3rds of the money went to him and his buddies.
Nevertheless I believe that no one person is right all of the time, never changes a single position and never makes mistakes. The most important factor is what the person’s policies are for the future and how much we can trust them to fulfill them. On that front, Newt is far and away the best candidate because his policies are boldly conservative and smart, and based on the Contract with America in 1994 we know he will fulfill every promise he makes to the voters.
Get the corrected record on Newt below...
http://www.newt.org/answers#Lobbying
Lobbying – Newt has never engaged in lobbying, period. Newt made a decision after resigning that he would never be a lobbyist so that nobody would ever question the genuine nature of his advice and perspectives.
Relationship with Freddie Mac
Recent reporting from Bloomberg News on the Gingrich Group’s consulting services for Freddie Mac confirms that Gingrich and his firm were not paid to lobby and that Gingrich never acted as an advocate to stop any legislation or regulation affecting Freddie Mac.
After leaving public office, Newt Gingrich founded a number of very successful small businesses. One of these small businesses, a consulting firm called The Gingrich Group, offered strategic advice on a wide variety of topics to a very wide range of clients. One of these clients was Freddie Mac. At no time did Gingrich lobby for Freddie Mac, or for any client, and neither did anyone in Gingrich’s firm. This prohibition against lobbying was made clear to all Gingrich Group clients. Nor did Gingrich ever advocate against pending legislation affecting Freddie Mac, as some articles have incorrectly alleged. In fact, recent reporting from Bloomberg News on the Gingrich Group’s consulting services for Freddie Mac confirms that Gingrich and his firm were not paid to lobby and that Gingrich never acted as an advocate to stop any legislation or regulation affecting Freddie Mac.
Furthermore, as the New York Times documents, Newt urged House Republicans to vote against the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. View Newt’s Freddie Mac consulting contract here.
Newt is in favor of efforts to increase home ownership in America but as a conservative believes they must be within a context of learning how to budget and save in a responsible way, the opposite of the lending practices that led to the financial crisis. You can watch a video from March 2008 of Newt warning about the danger of politicized decision making in the housing crisis here.
As part of Newt’s Jobs and Prosperity Plan, Newt advocates breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and moving their smaller successors off of government guarantees and into the free market.
http://www.newt.org/answers#Mandate
Mandate to Purchase health insurance
Newt opposes Governor Romney’s health insurance mandate, and Newt opposes President Obama’s health insurance mandate. Newt believes mandates to buy health insurance are wrong on principle, and in the case of the Obamacare health insurance mandate, unconstitutional as well.
With respect to President Obama’s health insurance mandate, Newt believes it is an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power. If the federal government can coerce individuals—by threat of fines—to buy health insurance, there is no stopping the federal government from forcing Americans to buy any good or service. It is a serious and unconstitutional infringement of individual liberty.
With respect to Governor Romney’s mandate, we have observed that it doesn’t achieve its goal of providing low cost catastrophic coverage for the uninsured. The intractable problem we have learned from experience with health insurance mandates is this: once you have a mandate, the government has to specify exactly what coverage must be included in insurance for it to qualify. This introduces political considerations into determining these minimum standards, guaranteeing that nothing desired by the special interests will be left out.
In the 1990s, Newt and many other conservatives, such as the Heritage Foundation, proposed a mandate to purchase health insurance as the alternative to Hillarycare. However, the problems outlined above caused Newt to come to the principled conclusion that a mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, unworkable and counterproductive to lowering the cost of healthcare.
Today, Newt carries the banner in fighting for the repeal of Obamacare and advocates for a “patient power” replacement that will create a free market framework for healthcare, provide affordable, portable, and reliable healthcare coverage, and establish a healthcare safety net focused on those truly in need. This system moves us towards the goal of healthcare for all with no unconstitutional mandate of any kind.
http://www.newt.org/answers#GlobalWarming
Global Warming/Cap and Trade
Newt does not believe there is a settled scientific conclusion about whether industrial development has dramatically contributed to a warming of the atmosphere.
Newt absolutely opposes “cap and trade” as well as any system of taxing carbon emissions. He testified before Congress against it in 2009 and led a grassroots effort while the Chairman of American Solutions to block its passage in the House and Senate.
Newt believes that cap and trade would kill hundreds of thousands of American jobs, cause electricity and fuel prices to skyrocket, and make America poorer. In contrast, Gingrich believes the best way to protect the environment is through markets, incentives, and entrepreneurs, who quite often are deploying innovative new technologies.
As for the question of whether industrial development has dramatically contributed to a warming of the atmosphere, Newt has noted there is no settled scientific conclusion. Many scientists believe it is the case. Others do not. But this unsettled scientific question has nothing to do with the best approach to protecting our environment, which is always markets, incentives, and entrepreneurs creating better and more efficient products and services.
Q: So why did Newt do the ad with Nancy Pelosi in 2007 calling for action to address climate change?
Newt does not believe there is a settled scientific conclusion about whether industrial development has dramatically contributed to a warming of the atmosphere.
Through his entire career, Newt has supported pro-market, pro-entrepreneur, innovative solutions to our environmental challenges, which he believes are superior to the liberal pro-bureaucracy, pro-tax, pro-regulation approach to the environment.
Newt believes that conservatives cannot be absent from the conversation about the environment and instead that conservatives must offer and explain why conservative solutions are better. Unfortunately, the attempt to get that message out through the ad with Nancy Pelosi failed. On November 8, 2011, Newt told FOX News’ Bret Baier that doing that commercial with Pelosi was “probably the dumbest single thing I’ve ever done”.
Newt will continue to oppose the Democrats’ destructive cap-and-trade and carbon tax proposals, continue to support expanded domestic oil and gas drilling, and continue to fight for a fundamental replacement of the job-killing Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency.
http://www.newt.org/answers#TARP
TARP
Newt believes that the reckless, secretive and opaque way in which the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department administered the bailouts has been an affront to democracy.
Newt was appalled and disgusted at the amount of dictatorial power that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson tried to grab for himself at the outset of the financial crisis. However, he reluctantly supported a scaled-down plan after Paulson told the country that the world financial system was going to collapse without this emergency support.
Newt believes that the reckless, secretive and opaque way in which the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department administered the bailouts has been an affront to democracy. The Fed was picking winners and losers, using several emergency lending facilities to make all types of loans to connected parties, including to a bank owned by the Libyan government.
This is why broadly scaling back the role of the Federal Reserve and repealing the Dodd-Frank bill are two of the central pillars of Newt’s 21st Century Contract with America. The Fed will be fully audited and made more transparent to ensure the events of 2008 are never repeated, and getting rid of Dodd-Frank will once and for all end the destructive policy of “too big to fail.”
http://www.newt.org/answers#DREAM
Immigration/DREAM Act
In his 21st Century Contract with America, Newt pledges to control the southern border by January 1, 2014, waiving any regulations and pushing aside any bureaucracies that get in the way.
Newt is opposed to amnesty and has a clear record of vigorous opposition to the Bush era amnesty legislation.
Newt believes America must be a nation of laws. The first duty of the federal government is national defense, and it is inexcusable that we haven’t secured the border. In his 21st Century Contract with America, Newt pledges to control the southern border by January 1, 2014, waiving any regulations and pushing aside any bureaucracies that get in the way.
As we secure the border, we must make an aggressive and serious effort to deport all criminals, gang members, and any other threats to our society as quickly as possible. We must also tap into the ingenuity of the private sector to better validate who is in the United States legally.
Newt opposed the DREAM Act. However, he did agree with part of the legislation which allowed those who came to the United States illegally as children to serve in the U.S. Military to earn their citizenship, just as foreign nationals are today allowed to do the same.
Furthermore, Newt has proposed giving local communities the authority to allow those with long established roots in the neighborhood a legal residency status, but not citizenship. Newt believes local communities are at a better vantage point to determine if those there illegally should stay or go. Under this system, we will send home those who are not self-sufficient, who have no family or community ties and quickly deport those who have committed criminal and other destructive acts, while providing minimal disruption to families and communities.
Read Newt’s 10 step immigration plan here.
http://www.newt.org/solutions/immigration