Newt Gingrich Was For The Libyan No-Fly Zone Before He Was Against It
VAN SUSTEREN: What would you do about Libya?
GINGRICH: Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … It’s also an ideological problem. The United States doesn’t need anybody’s permission. We don’t need to have NATO, who frankly, won’t bring much to the fight. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.
GINGRICH: The standard [Obama] has fallen back to of humanitarian intervention could apply to Sudan, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, to Syria this week, to Yemen, to Bahrain. … The Arab League wanted us to do something. The minute we did something, the Arab League began criticizing us doing it. I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot. I think that the problems we have in Pakistan, Egypt — go around the region. We could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places.
I would not have intervened.
I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.
I realize that it isn’t really a surprise when a politician does this, but, really, don’t these guys realize that YouTube exists?
I’m SHOCKED, SHOCKED!! Newt is a hypocrite.
HA-HA. James and I might disagree about the Libyan No Fly/No Drive Zone, but I guess we all agree about Newt Gingrich. ON Twitter, ten minutes ago, I nominated Gingrich as the politician most likely to declare Libya a “quagmire.” Moron.
I think it is unfair to repubs that this tool is branded as a “serious Republican”. I’ve seen no indication that he has any following in the public whatsoever. He, like a lot of people (Al Sharpton springs to mind) is sort of a go-to-guy type of blowhard, guaranteed to say anything he can to help some hapless host, who in turn is staring at hour upon hour of bloviation he needs to make “exciting” or risk having to go back to reporting to earn a living.
Gingrich has always been a mediocrity who was somehow hailed as a great thinker by an obviously uncritical GOP.
He’s a creep. Always was a creep. Always will be a creep.
Where is the hypocrisy? The positions may seem contradictory, but you need to consider the context. The first statement was made when Obama had not committed to a no-fly zone. The second statement was made after he had. Therefore there is perfect consistency – Newt is opposed to whatever it is the Obama does, or doesn’t do.
This is precisely the same standard that nearly everyone on the right has taken for the past two years – where is the problem here?
Man, usually political hypocrisy is at least dressed up with some “After careful deliberation, I have changed my mind” or “While a NFZ is a good idea, it has been poorly executed.”
Not Newt! He just finds out what the White House is doing and then says the exact opposite.
I’m starting the clock for when Steve Plunk comes on to defend Gingrich….
Therefore there is perfect consistency – Newt is opposed to whatever it is the Obama does, or doesn’t do.
This is precisely the same standard that nearly everyone on the right has taken for the past two years – where is the problem here?
Bravo, Tano! You have nailed it.
What can you expect from a guy who calls himself Newt? That’s a point where Nixon’s mother had it right when she told her little boy: “Don’t ever let anyone call you Dick”.
Actually, I think Gingrich is of a generation that doesn’t realize how easy it is to catch these types of things and publicize them now.
So, among all the negatives I see that the Internet has wrought on our political system, one positive is that politicians may actually become less hypocritical as time passes and the new guard realizes that “on the record” statements ARE on the record and will come back to haunt them.
Former Squeaker of the House Gingrich has covered himself in so many splendored coats of hypocrisy that he appears to be operating under a self-serving adjustment to the dictum Barry Goldwater issued in his 1964 acceptance of theRepublican nomination for president: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.”
A slight adjustment of words well depicts Newt’s covering fire:
“Hypocrisy in the defense of your own ass is no vice. Truth in the face of its exposure is no virtue.”