Newt Signs On to Globaloney

Newt Gingrich may have just removed himself as one of the leaders of the conservative movement with his appearance today on the Rush Limbaugh Show. How? When talking about various proposals he espouses admitted that he's signed on to the global warming hoax:

RUSH: No question about it. By the way, when I say Reaganism and we need to go back to it, I'm not talking about reliving the eighties. I'm talking about applying the existing core principles of conservatism because they work every time they're tried, to the existing problems that we have today. Now, you said on Stephanopoulos' show on Sunday -- I'm going to have to paraphrase because I don't have the transcript in front of me -- but you said something, if you were a candidate, I think you were speaking as a candidate, "I need to find a way to see to it you don't need as much home heating oil." That sounds like the way liberals talk to people, "I'm going to find a way you don't need so much home heating oil." And my reaction to that, was, where's the concept of growth? Conservation is all well and good but it's not going to grow us anything and it's not going to expand the economy. Plus, all this environmental stuff related to climate change is a bit of a hoax and everybody is jumping on board this bandwagon. Senator McCain is making it a central part of his campaign, and all these guys seem to want to use the offices of big government to make people think that they don't have to do anything for themselves. They have to sit around and just wait for these problems to be solved and things are going to be hunky-dory, and --

GINGRICH: Let me stick with the one you just mentioned because it's an important one. We have a section called The Platform of the American People, and these are all ideas, by the way, that have a majority Democrat, majority Republican, and majority of independent support. We say flatly, entrepreneurs are more likely to solve America's energy environmental problems than bureaucrats. If we use technology, innovation, and incentives, we do not need to raise taxes to clean up our environment. We talk about the notion, for example, and I don't know if you'd agree or not, but we support giving tax credits to companies that can cut carbon emissions as an incentive to cut pollution. We then go on to say that we ought to build more nuclear power plants; we go on to talk about the idea of developing more oil refineries in the United States, and we also say that we ought to look seriously at drilling for oil offshore and lay off the notion that it's a little bit irrational for us to be relying on Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran and Russia while blocking ourselves from even knowing whether or not offshore we have enough oil and natural gas not to need to rely on these guys. If you look at the Platform of the American People in here, I'll bet you will agree with 95% of it.

RUSH: I probably would, but the thing about dependence on foreign oil, there are a lot of myths about that. Our number one importer, we import most from Canada. Number two is Mexico. We're not totally dependent on Venezuela or the Saudis. There's so many myths about this. The carbon mess. Newt, this country is being sold down the river on a hoax! Carbon dioxide, you and I exhale it. There's no way we can cut that back. It's not a pollutant. This is a mechanism whereby liberals want to grow government and have people with less freedom, and I don't hear freedom or inspiration being talked about in this campaign. That's what Reaganism is to me, and it's not being discussed. We have too many Republicans running away from it, as though they are afraid of it. He won two landslides. It led you to capturing the House of Representatives in a huge landslide, and everybody wants to abandon it and apply policy today based on the liberals setting the table.

So we're reacting to what liberals want to do. If they say we got an energy problem, okay, we have to admit that and come up with a better plan instead of telling the American people, "Look, oil is the engine of freedom. It is and always will be, we're not running out of it, get used to it. The price of gas has gone up $2.80 in 40 years. Stop complaining." Instead, we want to respond to all these complaints, because the liberals do. We're trying to out-liberal liberals. We got candidates thinking they can win the presidency by picking off a couple liberals in New Hampshire, a couple liberals in Pennsylvania, California. That's not the way Reagan did this. You go to the country and you tell the American people they're the ones that make it work. You tell 'em how great they can be, that they're better than they even know they are. None of this is in our campaign right now, and it's frustrating as hell.

One of Rush's callers was even less enthusiastic about Newt's "carbon" talk:

RUSH: Greg in San Antonio, you're next, great to have you here.

CALLER: What in the cornbread hell is wrong with Newt Gingrich? Did I just hear him say cutting carbon emissions?

RUSH: You heard him say that, yes.

CALLER: I mean, I thought for years that this man was the anointed leader of the movement, and I gotta wonder where the hell he's coming from.

RUSH: Well, that, I think, in the call, that's what fired me up, that's when the blood started circulating. I'll tell you, look, I don't know how to -- I didn't have a chance to ask him --

CALLER: That was the only thing I picked up on, and I heard it, and I said, "Has he been listening, has someone been talking to him?" What in the world is going on, Rush?

RUSH: No, I'll tell you what -- look. Here's what it is. This is a guess. I'm going to tell you, it's the same thing, the same story I just told you about the auto industry. The American people are customers. And the American people want cars that don't pollute, and they want cars that get good mileage. That's understandable. But it's rooted in the fact that they've been sold and they have purchased a bill of goods on a climate change hoax to the point that they think the car they're buying is going to save the planet rather than being something they genuinely want. Okay, you look at a guy like Newt or anybody like him, he looks out, he surveys the American people, "Wow, these people are really buying the global warming stuff," and they're voters. And democracy happens. If a majority of people are made to believe that global warming is being caused by them, and you have politicians that want to get elected by them, then you respond to what those people think, instead of telling them how wrong they are and trying to educate them. This is what Newt Gingrich did, starting in the 1980s.

I haven't changed. I have remained rock-ribbed steady in my beliefs, principles, conservatism, and other things. But politicians look out and they see people buying this stuff, and they say, "Okay, well, I better come up with a carbon reduction proposal," because this is what people care about. I'm not saying I pander to people, but politicians do. They'll say whatever they have to to get elected. If a majority of people think that the sky is green, the politicians are going to tell them they're right somehow, rather than educate 'em. It's a really frustrating thing. Now, I can't compare myself to politicians, Mr. Snerdley, because getting an audience and keeping it is different than getting votes. The countryside is strewn with the carcasses of media people who thought they could get elected to anything. I have no desire to get elected to anything, I don't want to run. I don't want to ask anybody for a dime if I were to campaign. But that's beside the point. I'm just telling you, back to Reaganism. Back to conservatism. Conservatism doesn't bend and shape. It remains rock steady, and it tells people what is. But they're just -- I don't know. Guts are in short supply on the American political scene these days. Sad thing to note, but it seems to be true.

If Newt had any hopes of becoming a GOP nominee someday with conservative support, he probably just threw that away.