From Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier Thursday, January 26, 2012
On Gingrich’s relation to Reagan in light of Nancy Reagan’s remark in 1995 that “Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive”:
Let’s try to clear out the underbrush.
Nancy Reagan is right that the torch was passed from Reagan to Newt. But that speaks to what Newt did in the ’90s, not to what he did in the ’80s.
On the other hand, there’s been an attack on Newt that he criticized Reagan. To which I say: “So what?” Reagan wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t the Pope. He wasn’t unerring. He made mistakes. He admitted the arms-for-hostages was a mistake. Everybody at some point attacked Reagan on different issues. So that I think is irrelevant.
What is relevant is Gingrich’s repeated the claim: “I worked with Ronald Reagan in the ’80s to do x, y, and z, including to bring down the communist empire.”
Well, that is preposterous. First of all, foreign policy is presidential. The Congress has almost no say. If it has any, it’s the Senate. It’s not the House. If it’s in the House, which has almost no say, it would be the majority party. Gingrich was a member of the minority party in the House all through the Reagan years, which has nothing to say about almost anything. He wasn’t even in the leadership. He had no role whatsoever in the destruction of the Soviet Union. That was done by Reagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, George Schultz, Margaret Thatcher, the Pope, Helmut Kohl, Andrei Sakharov, and others. Newt is not on the list. And the fact he keeps saying this is a… delusional sign, a sign of grandiosity.
If that is the issue, he [Gingrich] loses. If the issue is, was he a Reaganite in spirit, I think he has a good defense on that.
On Bob Dole’s attack on Gingrich and support for Mitt Romney:
I’m not sure that this will persuade a single Newtonian. The reason is Dole didn’t do that well in ‘96. He is exactly what the Gingrich people would say is what Romney is: He’s the next in line, he’s the establishment favorite, he’s somebody who doesn’t have the kind of fire and energy and ideological fervor that Gingrich had.
So I’m not sure that the Romney people using it — as I’m also not sure that Romney trying to fight on the ground of Reaganism — is a good idea. Because if anybody was not a Reaganite, it surely is Romney….
Essentially, he [Gingrich] brought Reaganism into the ’90s. And on that claim, if that is the one he makes a stand on, he is right.
Who makes up the “Republican establishment”?
Karl Rove is the president. We meet every month on the full moon. I’ve explained this. At the Masonic Temple. We have the ritual: Karl brings the incense, I bring the live lamb and the long knife, and we began . . . with a pledge of allegiance to the Trilateral Commission. That is how it works.
On Pres. Obama’s speech on energy policy, delivered yesterday at Buckley Air Force Base:
In the speech, he . . . said “I’m for an all-out, all-in, all of the above energy policy.”
You know, I thought I was cynical before Obama, but he is turning me into a Diogenes. This guy is saying all of the above.
Here is the guy who just two weeks ago vetoed Keystone, which is a sort of a slam dunk. There is no possible reasonable objection to it other than his political needs.
There is the guy whose EPA has essentially shut down drilling in the Gulf to the point where a judge in Mississippi had to reprimand the administration for not obeying his orders on releasing that [restraint].
We’ve got oil in Alaska and we’re doing nothing about that.
In coal, the EPA is shutting down mine after mine with regulations that the mines can’t meet, which is not going to do anything to help the global warming. The Chinese are building a coal plant a week. We are exporting our coal jobs and mines to China.
So when he says I’m for all of the above and he obviously is not, I think it’s incredibly disingenuous, but he says it with a straight face.