Newt Gingrich has been claiming large heaps of credit for working alongside Ronald Reagan to achieve a laundry list of big ideas from ending the Soviet empire to revolutionizing the economy. The problem, according to critics and the release of records, is that Gingrich’s version of history doesn’t quite jibe with recollections from the president himself, those around him or journalists who covered that period of time.
Check out Mark Shield’s Newt Rewrites His Reagan Connection in which the author writes the following:
At the Reagan presidential library this fall, Gingrich boasted of how “I helped Reagan create millions of jobs while he was president.” And after modestly acknowledging his own less significant role than Reagan’s, added, “We helped defeat the Soviet empire.” Unmentioned by Gingrich then, or in any of the 2,414 debates during this campaign, was his 1985 criticism of President Reagan’s historic meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev as “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with (British Prime Minister) Chamberlain at Munich in 1938.”
…Newt went to the House floor during the Gipper’s second White House term and declared the president’s Soviet policy a “failure.” Here is what Gingrich said: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing and without a dramatic, fundamental change in strategy will continue to fail. … The burden of the failure frankly must be placed first upon President Reagan.”
Meanwhile Elliot Abrams’ who was part of the Reagan administration writes in his piece Gingrich and Reagan:
As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.
During one of the recent debates Mitt Romney also pointed out that Gingrich’s claim of close Reagan ties did not make their way into the president’s diaries. Check out What Reagan Thought of Newt from Fred Barnes which includes the only mention of Gingrich in the diaries which contains a not-so-positive note of their meeting.
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Tags: Election 2012
