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05 February 2012
Newt Gingrich has done an absolutely masterful job at using rhetoric during debates and speeches... To mislead the voters.
Rick Santorum has, on several occasions, attempted to remind those voters of the real Newt. Gingrich has a history of supporting the same things Romney does, especially in regards to an individual healthcare mandate
But in a May 15, 2011 interview on NBC's Meet the Press with host David Gregory, Gingrich admitted he has long sought an individual mandate by government:
Gregory: Now, I know you've got big differences with what you call Obamacare. But back in 1993 on this program this is what you said about the individual mandate. Watch.
Video of Gingrich in 1993: I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.
Gregory: What you advocate there is precisely what President Obama did with his healthcare legislation, is it not?
Gingrich: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care.... I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.
But really, that's not all. Gingrich has supported Wall Street and Mexican bailouts in addition to NAFTA.
Newt Gingrich campaigned on behalf of the misnamed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), saying on the House floor on September 22, 1993: "What we're being told is that free trade with Mexico would devastate the U.S. economy. With its low wages, Mexico would unleash a flood of cheap imports into our markets. There would be a mass exodus of U.S. factory jobs, as hordes of American companies fled across the border.... All this is scare talk."
Yet within a year, American banks were in over their heads in loans to the Mexican government and President Clinton decided to bail out the Mexican peso with U.S. taxpayer dollars using the federal government's Exchange Stabilization Fund. The argument against putting $20 billion on the line, Clinton argued, was that U.S. banks would be devastated by the Mexican government defaulting on loans.
All during the crisis, Gingrich kept silent, except for writing a protest letter that complained Clinton hadn't disclosed all the details of the bailout. The problem with Gingrich's silent acquiescence in favor of the Mexican bailout was two-fold: He favored bailing out a foreign currency, the peso, on behalf of Wall Street, and he did it through unconstitutional means. Conservative Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor argued that Clinton had tapped a fund authorized by Congress to bail out the U.S. — not the Mexican — economy and had violated the U.S. Constitution. Rep. Taylor said in a speech on the House floor on February 10, 1995 that "if you take the time to read our nation's Constitution, it is very clear in article I, section 9 which says the Congress shall have the power to coin money. 'No money shall be spent from the Treasury without an appropriation by the Congress.' And yet what the President did was completely contrary to that.... The reason it was not brought before Congress is because both sides, the Democrats and the Republicans, knew that had it been brought before Congress, Congress would have voted it down, and that is the greatest outrage of all, that the will of the majority as expressed through their elected representatives was never heard."
Taylor stressed that Gingrich had conspired in secret to let Clinton do exactly this: "We know that Speaker Gingrich knew; we know that President of the Senate, Senator Dole, knew. We know that the President knew.... This deal was cut with the Speaker, with the President, with the President of the Senate, in secret, without the approval of Congress to bail out the peso, but most importantly, to bail out Wall Street, the same people who just 15 months ago said `We have to have NAFTA.
But, wait! That's not all! If you order the new and improved Newt you will also get his support of TARP!
With Gingrich's historical support of Wall Street bailouts, it shouldn't be surprising that he also said he would have voted for the TARP bailout. Gingrich condemned TARP in strong words on Fox News September 28, 2008, calling it "an appallingly bad plan" that would be "an engine of corruption," but then told ABC's George Stephanopoulos the same day that "I suspect were I still in Congress in the end George is right and I probably would end up voting reluctantly yes because I think you are given no choice."
Gingrich subsequently endorsed the concept of a Wall Street bailout in a Human Events column, while calling his plan a "work-out rather than a bailout." Gingrich's plan, he wrote October 1, 2008, would still involve government loans to insolvent Wall Street banks. "The taxpayers should be asked to extend these institutions a line of credit until they can get back on their feet, rather than blindly acquire these institutions' toxic paper. This is the essential difference between a workout and a bailout." But Gingrich's plan was a difference from TARP only in Madison Avenue marketing terms, not a difference in principle.
The Wall Street Journal had this to say about Newt Gingrich
In its "Professor Cornpone" op-ed, the Wall Street Journal suggested of Gingrich, "The Georgian has been campaigning in the tea party age as a fierce critic of spending and government, but his record on that score is, well, mixed."
There's so much more to this story at TheNewAmerican.com. Newt and his brand of "fake conservatism" is a major reason for the issues this country now faces. While he campaigns as a reformer, he neglects to mention his role in creating this mess.
If you're going to vote, take the damn time to research the candidate you're voting for.