Although he currently receives only six percent of votes in those surveyed in the latest IBOPE/Zogby poll, Newt Gingrich is getting a lot of press over a recent endorsement. On Monday, the founder of Tea Party Nation, Judd Phillips, added his name and influence to the list of those backing the former Speaker of the House’s run for the Republican nomination for president.
Phillips explains his decision in a blog post published on the Tea Party Nation website. Said Phillips:
In choosing who is my candidate, there are some criteria I look at. First, the candidate must be electable. We can have the best candidate in the world but if they are unelectable, it does not matter. The candidate must be conservative… Finally, the candidate must have the vision to put forward plans to dismantle the massive government bureaucracy that we have seen grow under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Phillips goes on to praise Gingrich’s performance during the several debates with the other GOP candidates for that party’s nomination.
If you have seen the GOP debates, Gingrich has been the best debater. He does really well in that format and he looks Presidential.
In his post, Phillips makes the by-now nearly requisite comparison between his choice and Ronald Reagan.
Gingrich is the candidate who has the vision to fundamentally change the Federal Government. Gingrich has the unique capabilities to be the field general. He is the big idea man, much as Ronald Reagan was.
Aside from the favorable comparison to the hero of the Republican right, Phillips also draws distinction between Gingrich and the anti-Reagan Barack Obama.
Gingrich against Obama is a great contrast. He has a track record of accomplishments and has worked at the national level. Gingrich can rightfully claim credit for everything from welfare reform to balancing the budget. Obama can offer nothing against him…
When it comes to experience in government, Phillips is correct in asserting that Gingrich has …
got the experience. He has been in Congress and rose to the Speakership. When Gingrich entered Congress, the Republicans were a minority. The Democrats treated the Republicans with contempt and the GOP leadership was perfectly happy to be in the minority. Gingrich changed that. He was the man with the vision to make a Republican majority possible.
In the penultimate paragraph of his ode to Newt Gingrich, Phillips describes the candidate as the right candidate to not only help us take this country back from socialism, but roll socialism back.
The problem with that assessment is that it is not borne out by the policies pursued by Gingrich while he was a member of the House of Representatives.
In an excellent article written by Rebecca Terrell for The New American in 2009, Gingrich’s lack of constitutional bona fides are laid out succinctly:
Newt Gingrich served in Congress from 1979 until 1999. His first Freedom Index score (when it was known as the Conservative Index) was 84, but it nose-dived from there. He achieved his lowest scores as Speaker of the House. Gingrich consistently lost points for his propensity to support unconstitutional legislation.
1. Education Gingrich backed federal education funding from his earliest days in office, though the Constitution gives absolutely no authority over education to any branch of the federal government. He helped garner support to create President Jimmy Carters Department of Education in 1979. Since then educational spending has soared while educational standards have plummeted. Things got worse when he was Speaker. In 1996, then-Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour bragged that education spending went up under the Republican Congress as much as it went up under the Democratic Congress. That is a bit of an understatement since Gingrich’s Republican Congress increased education funding by $3.5 billion in 1996, the largest single increase in history.
2. Foreign Aid Gingrich voted numerous times throughout his 20 years in Congress to increase and expand unconstitutional foreign aid and trade. He supported both subsidized trade with the Soviets and federally funded loans to foreign governments through the Export-Import Bank. Between 1994 and 1995, Gingrich voted for $44.8 billion in foreign aid. He also helped push through federally funded loan guarantees to China. Today, that murderous communist regime is the largest holder of U.S. debt in the world.
3. NAFTA and GATT In 1993, Gingrich proved himself invaluable to Clinton and the Democrats in Congress when he garnered enough Republican support to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the precursor for development of an eventual North American Union, following the same trajectory that has occurred in Europe with the emergence of the EU. Gingrichs Benedict Arnold act helped to hand over the power to regulate foreign commerce, a power reserved in the Constitution to Congress alone, to an internationally controlled body, making Americas economic interests entirely at the mercy of the WTO.?? Gingrich knew GATT sounded the death knell for American sovereignty. In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee prior to the lame-duck session, he said, We need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority to a new organization…. This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected…. It is a very big transfer of power.
4. Contract With America Another con-game Gingrich played was the much-acclaimed Contract With America, the Republican Party’s supposed answer to big government. It turned out to be a public relations smokescreen to cover various unconstitutional measures that Congress planned to pass under Gingrich’s leadership. The Contract included a balanced budget amendment, which amounted to a Republican excuse to continue spending while claiming to fight for fiscal conservatism. If the government spent money only on constitutional programs, the deficit would take care of itself.
5. School Prayer Amendment The proposed balanced budget amendment was not Gingrich’s only attempt to change the Constitution. He also pushed hard for a school prayer amendment to allow Americas children to pray in schools.
6. Clinton’s GOP (Grand Old Pal) In 1995, Time magazine named Newt Gingrich Man of the Year, characterizing him as a states rights conservative and the Republican answer to Bill Clinton. The ironic thing about Time magazines 1995 claim is that in June of that year, Gingrich and Clinton both agreed at a debate in Claremont, New Hampshire, that they were not far apart in their views.
More recently, Gingrich has come under fire from conservatives for his outspoken support of the individual mandate of ObamaCare, for his call to expand the theatres of illegal wars to Iran and North Korea, and for his refusal to express regret for his support for Medicare drug coverage.
Although Phillips proclaims that he is thrilled to endorse Newt Gingrich to be the Republican nominee and the next President of the United States, he would be better served personally and he would better serve the patriotic Americans who belong to his organization if he would take the time to examine Gingrich’s record and realize that Gingrich has consistently voted to expand the size of government and is in no way the one upon whom constitutionalists can rely to take this country back from socialism.
