Gingrich: Reagan Began Turning Around ‘Terrible Economy’ Within 3 Hours
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at a campaign town hall at the Art Trail Gallery, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, in Florence, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
(CNSNews.com) – GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told supporters in West Columbia, S.C., on Tuesday that President Ronald Reagan “inherited a terrible economy and began turning it around within about three hours.”
Gingrich said unlike President Obama, Reagan “understood that the trick was not to spend your whole first term blaming the past but to create the future.” Reagan’s campaign slogan when he ran for re-election was ‘Leadership that is working,’ Gingrich said.
“I think as of the present moment, it’s going to be relatively hard for President Obama to suggest this is working. I was told by somebody that they were shifting from ‘Yes, we can’ to ‘Why we couldn’t’ as their slogan,” Gingrich said at a town hall meeting at the South Carolina Farmers Market.
Gingrich said the White House press secretary called him on Tuesday to object to comments the former House speaker made about Obama “being the best food stamp president in American history.”
“First of all, as a matter of statistical fact, President Obama is the most effective person at putting people on food stamps in American history. Now that’s just a fact. Second, what seemed to really rattle the White House is that I suggested that the president’s policies might have something to do with this – it wasn’t just random bad luck,” Gingrich said.
The press secretary said the Obama administration “he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression,” Gingrich said. “I think that’s fair,” the Republican candidate added.
“But let me be very clear just so the White House can understand this: When the president adopts a stimulus package of hundreds of billions of dollars that nobody has read, and then discovers to his great surprise two years later – as he himself put it – that the shovel-ready jobs weren’t shovel ready, and the stimulus fails but leaves us $800 billion deeper in debt, at some point, he has to take responsibility,” Gingrich said.
“That was his plan, his proposal, and it failed. When the president adopts an anti-American energy policy against developing energy, I mean, they claimed at one point they were lifting the moratorium in the Gulf and replacing it with a permit system, but they weren’t issuing any permits. Now, you know, we just have to explain to the White House: the American people aren’t that dumb,” he added.
Gingrich called Obama “an anti-American energy” president, “who goes off to Brazil, congratulates the Brazilians on developing oil offshore, tells them how glad he is we could guarantee $2 billion of equipment purchases – much of it from a George Soros-backed company – and then goes on to say that he really wants America to become Brazil’s best customer.”
“Now I thought he had it exactly backwards. We do not send the president of the United States around the world to be a purchasing agent for foreigners. We send the president around the world to be a salesman for American goods and services,” he said.
Gingrich urged Obama and his press secretary to travel to Charleston, S.C., “and look at the Boeing plant they tried to close.”
“I mean, every time you turn around, this is an administration which is against American business, against American jobs, against American energy, and then they seem surprised that they’re putting people on food stamps, and think it’s just an act of nature. You know, this must have been the food stamp winter,” Gingrich said.
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