I hope he's wrong.
Gingrich: Obama More Like Carter Than Reagan Tuesday, February 10, 2009 2:36 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is still wrestling with what sort of leader he’ll become, and so far he’s closer to the confusion and disorganization of Jimmy Carter than to the steady discipline of Ronald Reagan, according to Republican former house speaker Newt Gingrich.
Speaking last week at the Washington, D.C. premiere of “Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny,” a documentary produced by Citizens United and the Young America’s Foundation, Gingrich said Obama “is a remarkably bright, very, very skillful politician who has risen far too rapidly to have the kind of deeply formed positions that Reagan had.
“[Reagan] was governor of California for eight years, and by the time he became president he’d spent 16 years as a national figure,’ Gingrich added. “He came in with a clear policy, a clear program and he knew precisely what he intended to do.”
As for Obama: “Certainly the behavior over the last week or ten days is much closer to a Carter kind of confusion,” Gingrich said.
By way of example, Gingrich lashed out at Obama’s stimulus package saying Reagan would never have supported such a bloated spending plan.
“I think that President Reagan would have noted that for the same amount of money you could give every American a tax holiday for seven months,” Gingrich said. “They would pay no income tax, no social security tax, and no Medicare tax. The self-employed would pay no matching and the small business would pay no matching, and the scale of such a tax break would do dramatically more for the economy than anything that politician and bureaucrats are spending could possibly do.”
Gingrich didn’t limit his criticism to the current administration, however.
“First of all, President Reagan would have opposed George W. Bush’s three spending bills last year,” the former congressman and author of the Contract With America, said. “He would have opposed the $180 billion stimulus package in the spring, which failed. He would have opposed the $345 billion housing package in the summer, which failed. He would have opposed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout in the fall, which failed.
“Then having spent $1 trillion $200 billion, he would have enthusiastically opposed a $900 billion spending bill in January and February, and would have pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office has come out now and said it would actually leave the economy worse off after three years and not better off.” Gingrich added.
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http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/newt_gringrich_on_reagan/2009/02/10/180207.html
