At the 2008 Republican Convention in Minnesota, I had the pleasure of interviewing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
http://www.winningthefuture.net/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4490142.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426221,00.html
While most of the debate was on the record, a question I asked him off the cuff, while eliciting a hilarious response, was off the record. Ironically, this occurred while Speaker Gingrich was doing an interview with Greta Van Susteren, who hosts “On the record.” It as during a commercial break, and before my formal interview with him. Later on, when I asked him about it, he made his request, and I let him know that I had no interest in knifing him. While Speaker Gingrich is controversial to this day, there is no doubt that many reporters wanted to destroy him simply because he was a conservative that successfully implemented a conservative agenda. Therefore, the off the record question will be partially redacted. The answer will not get the Speaker into any hot water as long as the question itself is partially redacted. I prefer this method since his answer was too funny to ignore.
With that, below is the on the record portion of my interview with Speaker Newt Gingrich.
1) Who are your 3 political heroes?
NG: “George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan.”
2) What are the defining issues of the 2008 Presidential campaign?
NG: “Reform, peace, prosperity, and the fight for freedom. We have to improve the way we govern and reform the governing process if we are going to tackle the big issues such as terrorism.”
3) How would you like to be remembered 100 years from now? What would you like people to say about Newt Gingrich the person?
NG: “As a citizen who loved his family and loved his country.”
4) Can you please explain to (names redacted) the importance of Israel?
NG: “No. I have tried for years. Now I only focus on solving what is reasonable and achievable.”
5) The democrats have Barack Obama and John Edwards. Republicans have John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. Are the democrats bigoted against the follically challenged, and can we finally break the glass ceiling and elect a bald President?
NG: “That’s clever. Yes we can, but remember our history. We had Dwight Eisenhower, and he was bald.”
6) Do you have any thoughts to offer regarding Sarah Palin?
“There is zero doubt in my mind…absolutely no doubt…that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama. John McCain made a great pick in Sarah Palin.”
I would like to thank Speaker Gingrich for his time and geniality. I also should have known better than to try and get the follically challenged question past a historian. Before entering politics, Newt Gingrich was a history professor. He has a deep love of animals, and has often expressed his desire in the past to be a zoo keeper. Actually, given the state of Congress, that was what he did as House Speaker from 1994 through 1998.
I would also like to thank Speaker Gingrich for being what his former press secretary Tony Blankley described him to me as…”the second tranche of the Reagan Revolution.”
Speaker Gingrich is a conservative in the truest sense of the word. Like me, he was not happy with the bailout package. He wants republicans to get back to the principles of Edmund Burke, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.
I would second that notion, and say that for those who do not know their history that far back, or are too young to remember President Reagan, we should at least go back to 1994. The republican party needs another Contract With America, and needs to implement every plank.
The Congress needs to go back to the conservative principles of Newt Gingrich.
eric
I am totally with you on that, g. In fact, Newt, to me, is the current leader of the conservative movement. I was excited to think that he might run for President… and wish he still had.
I can’t take Newt Gingrich very seriously anymore. He’s an important figure in modern American politics, true, but he’s also a metaphor for all that’s wrong with our politics today, and how obsolete people like him have become. He is irony upon irony. He envisions a Lord of the Flies sort of world, but he and his ilk would never survive a day in such a world, unless of course they were lucky enough to be born rich. He claims to be a historian, yet he has the inane gall to place Ronald Reagan, of all rather people, up there in historical significance with some of the most important people in modern history. he stands by a system proven so dramtically failed and complains about the methods of cleaning up the messes his failed ideas have wrought. He downright lies, right in any ear willing to listen – Palin is qualified? Even more qualified? No educated person would really believe such a thing, and no one who wants to be taken seriously by a serious person would either. He is a hypocrit, decrying the decline of “family values” while particpating wholeheartedly in the decline.
It’s time ol’ Newt went out to pasture. He’s nothing but an old, worn-out hat covering the old, worn-out empty head that was the “Republican Revolution.”
JMJ
Just for fun, JMJ, are there any areas in which you think Palin is more qualified than Obama? And why do you think Obama is more qualified if he was in committees that could have pursued information, but he didn’t call meetings? His answer that the committee met as a whole rings a little hollow if it wasn’t doing what he wanted and you remember how Conyers didn’t let a little thing like protocol keep him from trying to make a point.
Joshua, have you actually heard Palin speak? Have you heard Obama speak? have you heard Palin in an interview? Have you heard Oabam in an interview? have you read anything of Palin’s? No. She hasn’t written anything. Have you read anythong of Obama’s? Palin has a BA in communications from the university of Idaho. Obama is a graduate of Columbia and Harvard and was president of the Harvard law review – and he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama spent eight years in the Illinois state senate representating Chicago’s South Side. Palin was the mayor of a small Alaskan town and still managed to leave it with a 20 million dollar debt as the “hockey mom” thought a town of less than 10,000 needed a sports complex. Obama is a senator from Illinois, a state with a population of 13 million, wide ethnic and class diversity, and a massive infrastructure. Sarah palin is the governor of Alaska, a state with a population of 700,000, mostly white and native, with a large number of seasonal and temporary residents. Obama ran for and won the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Sarah Palin was picked to assuage Christian America, the small number of disaffected Hillary voters who will vote for anyone with ovaries, and to take cover from the media with a candidate with no past, no history, no resposibility, no experience. She’s can’t do interviews because she spouts nonsense, lies, and cheap political talking points.
JMJ
I see I’ve been editted. Palin was not picked to assuage “Christian America,” she was picked to assuage Radical Rightwing Christian America. And she was picked out of the blue. She was not on a single serious short-list that I know of.
And I honestly believe her supporters are suffering severe cognitive dissonance and are truly and deeply fooling only themselves – this includes our good host. You can believe this woman is qualified to be president of the Uinted States – and that qualification is the only qualification for a vice-president – if you like, and you can also believe in the Spaghetti Monster. If you don’t believe me, ask George Will, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer… see what they say.
JMJ
It is a sad fact that people put down others that are different from them, because they don’t understand them, and make them feel insecure. Below was my response to Kathleen Parkers latest columns posted on her last;
“Sometimes a duck is just….a duck.
I have two points:
The Palin interviews were designed to show her in a bad light. First, she received extreme treatment from both Gibson and Couric. I wouldn’t even have noticed, if not for having seen so many interviews done by the MSM where they ask a politician a question, the answer would not even relate to the question but be a pontification on something else important to the pol….and then my jaw would drop when the interviewer would….let it slide! Never ever have I seen any of them insist THREE TIMES that the pol answer more than they did. This was quite a stunning tell of the lack of respect they held for her- along with the scowling looks they gave her – compared to the pass they give others. Second, the editing that was done, according to many reports of what was left out, clearly skewed one’s impressions of her answers. As someone in the communication media, I am surprised you would fall for that. REGARDLESS of her true coherency, or knowledge, on all subjects, their obvious agenda driven manipulation in both cases negates any possiblility of accurate impressions on both counts.
And then, I wonder why you used the term ‘manipulator’ about her ‘charm’? There are people in this world who just are charming and gifted communicators by nature. Why do you have to shade that with something sinister? Maybe a duck is just a duck here.
In total, I resist the attempts by everyone who is the slightest bit uncomfortable by who she is, to put her in some ‘box’, so they can write her off as insignificant. Why is it that there is not room at the table for every kind of personality? Why must people vilify those of us who are not in lock step defined by society’s artificial parameters of what a person must be?
I find Ms. Palin delightful in her difference, and even more delightful in her comfort WITH said differences. That is not that I worship at her feet, and feel she is the saviour of world! I do find it telling that, the same characteristics in Obama are lauded, while in Palin, they are excoriated.”
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Oddly, j, l totally agree with something you just said…paraphrased .”.. I honestly believe his supporters are suffering severe cognitive dissonance and are truly and deeply fooling only themselves … You can believe this man is qualified to be president of the Uinted States if you like, and you can also believe in the Spaghetti Monster.”
To believe Obama is in ANY WAY qualified to be POTUS is JUST as wrong headed as you claim anyone supporting Palin is, with one difference; It is more DANGEROUS to put a man of his OBVIOUS socialist beliefs with his UTTERLY naive and inexplicable take on foreign policy in the seat of SO MUCH POWER, than it is to put Palin a heart beat away.
Please. This whole line of argument is totally beneath you, j. You are more intelligent than that. I can’t imagine why anyone with your intelligence would vote for such a man.
And before you ‘partisan up’ on me, know this….I look at all the nominated candidates in stunned disbelief and say ‘Is this the BEST America has to offer for our executive branch?.
Frankly, if I didn’t believe in God, I’d be putting pencils in my eyes at this point….
IOnce again I have to point out the QUALIFICATIONS foe President. 35 and born a US Citizen. That’s it unless you count getting enough electoral ro congressional votes to gain the office. No amount of pre-experience has been determinative in what kind of President people will be. Abraham Lincoln was a failure at just about everything he did including running for office before becoming President. THomas Jefferson never graduated from college. Herbert Hoover had one of the most extensive resumes before being elected as did the elder Bush.
Obama’s resume is thin at best and Hillary’s was practically non-existent, but that doesn’t meant they would not make good Presidents (there are other reasons I feel that way about them). Joe Biden has difficulty putting two truthful accurate sentences back to back. This is a man who was driven from his first Presidential run by PLAGIARIZING when talking about his own life. So don’t talk about what a wonderful candidate he is. Sarah Palin is not a complete moron as she has been caricatured. I find it especially amusing that many of these celebrities and reporters who denigrate her intelligence probably have less of an education than she does. It doesn’t take a college degree to become a news reporter or even an anchor and many don’t have one.
I’d also like to know why Republicans like Bush who have degrees from two Ivy League Schools are said to have only gotten their degrees by family influence, yet Democrats with degrees from those same schools who were caught cheating (Ted Kennedy) are considered geniuses who earned their degrees
I’t not “Republicans like Bush,” Parrot, it’s just Bush. There are plenty of deservedly well-educated GOPers out there. Bush just isn’t one of them. And real liberals, like myself, don’t hold people like Ted Kennedy all that high. He’s done some good things and he’s done some aweful things. Bush, on the other hand, has done some aweful things and some downright disgustingly nightmarish horrific things. It’s a matter of balance and scale. There are plenty of silverspooned morons out there – right, left, middle, partisan, nonpartisan, whatever. Bush happens to ne one of them. McCain seems to be a little on the not-so-bright side himself.
Palin is just plain cartoonish. “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” What a line. I heard so many 1920’s colloquilisms from Palin, I thought I would have invite my 95 year old grandma over to interpret for me. And the way she just dismissed questions. What is this lady like in the real world? I can see it now…
Palin: “I’m not going to answer that question.”
Department of Motor Vehicles Employee: “Ma’am, please, we just need to know if you want to be an organ donor or not.”
Palin: “Oh, yeah, right, so the mainstream ‘gotcha’ media can tell you what you just heard!”
DMV Employee: “Ma’am, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you want to be an organ donor or not?”
Palin: “I talk taxes want about.”
DMV Employee: sigh… “Ma’am, do you know what an ‘organ donor’ is?”
Palin: “Could you repeat the question?”
DMV Employee: “DO YOU KNOW WHAT AN OOORGAN DOOONOR IS?”
Palin: “I believe organ donor is to rid this world of terrorism.”
But I digress…
Obama’s resume is a little light for a would-be president. I’ll grant that. But at least he comes off like he’s intelligent, wise, patient, scolarly, witty, and statesmanly. At least that’s a good place to start. Palin’s resume on the other hand, is distubingly light. It is so light, gravity does not affect it. It is so thin, it is translucent. It is two dimensional. It’s a joke.
Carole, If you think Obama is dangerous, my advise to you would be to wear a helmet.
JMJ
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