Newt vs. Newt

Gingrich's most outrageous foreign-policy flip-flops.

BY URI FRIEDMAN, JOSHUA E. KEATING | DECEMBER 9, 2011

Newt Gingrich's emergence as the front-runner among the Republican presidential candidates has created a virtual cottage industry around chronicling his flip flops, whether through Ron Paul attack ads or analyses dissecting the "difference between MittFlops and NewtFlops." Gingrich, for his part, has fought back, regularly updating a section on his website dedicated to setting his positions on the issues straight. But given his back-and-forth record, it's not an easy task. Here are six instances in which Gingrich shifted his position on pressing foreign-policy issues.

PUTIN'S RUSSIA

"Putin really is a generation beyond the first reformers of the post-Soviet era. He understands that the future of Russia is inside some kind of capitalist system. He understands that Russia is not going to be a global competitor. Now, he's more authoritarian than I might like. But again, this is a country in dramatic transition. And when you look back 12 or 13 years, even his authoritarianism is remarkable, more open as a society than anything one could have dreamed as late as 1987 or 1988. So I think there you're likely to see an emerging continuing American-Russian friendship." - Feb. 28, 2002

"Putin represents a dictatorial approach that's very violent, it was violent in the Chechnyan situation, it is violent in, for example, stealing investment money back from oil companies in the Soviet Union -- Russia -- the former Soviet Union. Putin was a KGB agent and he has a lot of KGB behaviors. They went out of their way in the last week to take on a small neighbor and crush that neighbor militarily. It's a signal that he intends to assert authority around the periphery of Russia. - Aug. 16, 2008

Gingrich has a longstanding interest in the question of Russian democracy. In his memoir, Bill Clinton recalls that in 1993, the speaker was "passionately in favor of helping Russia, saying it was a "great defining moment" for the United States and that we had to do the right thing. "Newt was trying to 'out-Russia' me," wrote Clinton. But in a 2002 speech in Melbourne, Australia, Gingrich appeared taken in by the new Russian president and his promises of reform. In the summer of 2008, when Russia went to war with Georgia, Gingrich's take was drastically different. To be fair, he was hardly alone is his initial optimism about Putin. His remarks in 2002 came just a few months after President George W. Bush looked into Putin's eyes and famously "got a sense of his soul."

JONATHAN POLLARD

"I think it would be a tremendous mistake for the United States to start putting traitors on the negotiating table as a pawn, and I hope the administration will now say they will not, under any circumstance, release Pollard," - Oct. 24, 1998

"I am prepared to say my bias is towards clemency, and I would like to review it. He's been in [jail] a very long time. But we are pretty tough about people spying on the United States. And I also have a study under way to compare his sentence with comparable people who have been sentenced for very long sentences for comparable deeds." - Dec. 7, 2011

Gingrich appears to have had a change of heart about Pollard, a former civilian Navy intelligence analyst convicted of selling classified information to Israel in 1985 and currently serving a life sentence. Gingrich's original comments were made during the 1998 Wye River negotiations, when then-President Clinton offered to review Pollard's status as part of a land-for-security deal between Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat. Israel has long requested Pollard's release.

WATERBOARDING

"I think it's something we shouldn't do.... Lawyers I respect a great deal say it is absolutely within the law. Other lawyers say it absolutely is not. I mean, this is a debatable area." - April 26, 2009

"Waterboarding is, by every technical rule, not torture. Waterboarding is actually something we've done with our own pilots in order to get them used to the idea to what interrogation is like. It's not -- I'm not saying it's not bad, and it's not difficult, it's not frightening. I'm just saying that under the normal rules internationally it's not torture." - Nov. 29, 2011

Back in 2009, shortly have the release of memos from Bush's Office of Legal Counsel on waterboarding, Gingrich said he did not support the practice, though he refused to say whether or not it was torture. He did, however, describe himself as "exactly where Senator McCain was" on the practice. Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, has always been vehemently opposed to waterboarding.

But in last month's foreign-policy debate, Gingrich was not so equivocal, saying that waterboarding is not considered torture under international law. (The U.N. doesn't agree.) McCain has said that he's "very disappointed" by the support for waterboarding among this year's candidates. 

LIBYA

"Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Qaddafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more like they were to survive, [and provide] help to the rebels to replace him.... This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with." - March 7, 2011

"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." - March 23, 2011

Gingrich initially opposed using military force in Libya, arguing in late February that if the United States simply made it clear to the Libyan military that "they had friends" in America, "you'd be surprised how rapidly they would shift sides" and "replace Qaddafi." He called for the United States to unilaterally impose a no-fly zone over Libya days later, only to criticize President Obama's intervention weeks after that. Gingrich rejected claims that he'd flip-flopped, explaining that what he opposed was the White House scuttling non-military options by declaring that Qaddafi must "go," only to then predicate the intervention on "humanitarian" grounds rather than the removal of Qaddafi.


CLIMATE CHANGE

"The weight of evidence [for global warming] over time [convinced me] that it's something that you ought to be careful about.... How do you design a pro-science and pro-technology strategy that lowers the amount of damage the human race does to the planet?" - Feb. 15, 2007

"I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring.... The earth's temperatures go up and down over geologic times over and over again. As recently as 11,000 years ago the Gulf Stream quit for 600 years. And for 600 years you had an ice age in Europe because there was no warm water coming up. And then it started up again. Nobody knows why it quit, nobody knows why it started up. I'm agnostic." - Nov. 9, 2011

Gingrich has a complicated relationship with climate change that stretches back to 1989, when he co-sponsored the Global Warming Prevention Act. The former House speaker expressed support for a cap-and-trade system in 2007 but turned against the scheme a year later, and has called his decision to appear with Nancy Pelosi in a 2008 ad urging government action on climate change "the dumbest single thing I've done in the last few years." Even with these shifts in position, however, Gingrich has consistently argued that conservatives must offer innovative, market-based environmental solutions and that there is evidence on both sides of the climate-change debate.

UNITED NATIONS

"The American people want an effective United Nations that can fulfill the goals of its Charter in building a safer, freer, and more prosperous world.... What was most striking was the extent to which we were able to find common ground, including on our most important finding, which was 'the firm belief that an effective United Nations is in America's interests'" - June 15, 2005 (report by task force co-chaired by Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell)

"We should be willing to say that if the U.N. is going to circumvent negotiations and declare the territory of one of its own members an independent state, we aren't going to pay for it. We can keep our $7.6 billion a year. We don't need to fund a corrupt institution to beat up on our allies." - Aug. 10, 2011

Gingrich condemned the United Nations this fall during the Palestinian bid for statehood, but back in 2005 he co-chaired a task force on U.N. reform -- a cause he has long championed. While the report did call for the abolition of the U.N. Human Rights Commission and criticized U.N. institutions for failing to protect victims of genocide around the world, Foreign Policy pointed out in August that the task force recommended remedying these issues in part by increasing funding for U.N. institutions.

Alex Wong/Getty Images; DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images; MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images; John Moore/Getty Images; PATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty Images; GILLES LEIMDORFER/AFP/Getty Images; Monika Graff/Getty Images

 

Uri Friedman and Joshua E. Keating are associate editors at Foreign Policy.

MICHELLE OWNE

7:50 PM ET

December 9, 2011

Biased

Hmm, a bit biased no? Writing requires better training than this I think

 

MCOMPTON

11:56 PM ET

December 9, 2011

Really?

-Are we supposed to believe that Newt could predict every aspect of Putin's character and future actions?
-Can an opinion change when the facts change?
-Or can a general principal sometimes have an exception based on specific circumstances?

This article pastes together quotes to make apparent contradictions, but with any careful reading there aren't any contradictions here and no flip flops. This is such a perfect example of poor journalism and media bias. Put the true context and facts in place and don't just try and sell a great story line.

 

GRANDEROHO

4:35 AM ET

December 10, 2011

I could see how you could

I could see how you could make that argument with Putin, maybe but his position on Libya for example was a clear flip flop to try to benefit politically, so no it's not bad journalism or media bias. If you like Newt you should look forward to these sorts of articles in my opinion, Newt is clearly well read and he needs to know when he's changed his position so dramatically and it's effects on foreign policy if he's going to be an effective commander in chief.

 

KATREENAKAIF

7:49 AM ET

December 10, 2011

Newt

"It's a comment I've heard before because I've covered the far right in the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community," he said. "But I was surprised to hear a mainstream Republican figure say it, and I've tried to research to find other mainstream Republican figures who said it. I've yet to find that."

In other excerpts of the interview posted online, Gingrich suggested there was a moral equivalence between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which he said both "represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel," and said the Obama administration's policies of "evenhandedness" are "out of touch with reality."

"If I'm evenhanded between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that's not even handed, that's favoring the terrorists," he said.

"It's a comment I've heard before because I've covered the far right in the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community," he said. "But I was surprised to hear a mainstream Republican figure say it, and I've tried to research to find other mainstream Republican figures who said it. I've yet to find that."

In other excerpts of the interview posted online, Gingrich suggested there was a moral equivalence between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which he said both "represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel," and said the Obama administration's policies of "evenhandedness" are "out of touch with reality."

"If I'm evenhanded between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that's not even handed, that's favoring the terrorists," he said.

"It's a comment I've heard before because I've covered the far right in the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community," he said. "But I was surprised to hear a mainstream Republican figure say it, and I've tried to research to find other mainstream Republican figures who said it. I've yet to find that."

In other excerpts of the interview posted online, Gingrich suggested there was a moral equivalence between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which he said both "represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel," and said the Obama administration's policies of "evenhandedness" are "out of touch with reality."

"If I'm evenhanded between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that's not even handed, that's favoring the terrorists," he said.

"It's a comment I've heard before because I've covered the far right in the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community," he said. "But I was surprised to hear a mainstream Republican figure say it, and I've tried to research to find other mainstream Republican figures who said it. I've yet to find that."

In other excerpts of the interview posted online, Gingrich suggested there was a moral equivalence between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which he said both "represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel," and said the Obama administration's policies of "evenhandedness" are "out of touch with reality."

"If I'm evenhanded between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that's not even handed, that's favoring the terrorists," he said.

Forty-four percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, and about as many - 46 percent - disapprove. His approval rating has remained fairly steady but below 50 percent since the spring of 2010, aside from an uptick in the spring of 2011 following the death of Osama bin Laden.

Since bin Laden's death, the president has received high marks for his handling of terrorism: In this poll, 57 percent approve. Voters are split on his handling of foreign policy overall, with 41 percent approving and 41 percent disapproving.

Views of how he has handled the economy is the obvious drag on the president's ratings: While just 33 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove. Similarly, just 35 percent approve his his handling of job creation while 58 percent disapprove. The last time Mr. Obama's approval rating on the economy was above 40 percent was in February of this year.

Views on the national economy remain very negative: Since early 2008, roughly three in four Americans (and sometimes even more) have said the economy is in bad shape. Now, 86 percent of Americans characterize the economy as at least somewhat bad, including 42 percent who say it is very bad.

Although the national unemployment rate recently dropped below 9 percent for the first time since 2009, Americans are skeptical that a recovery is on the horizon. Just 21 percent think the economy is getting better, and 39 percent think it is getting worse, up from 32 percent last month. Another 40 percent think the economy isn't changing.

When asked if Mr.Obama has made real progress fixing the economy, 68 percent say he has not, and just 28 percent say he has. And while 37 percent say the Obama administration's policies prevented the country from going into a deeper recession, just under half - 49 percent - say those policies did not do that.

In addition, more think the policies of the Obama administration have mostly favored Wall Street (42 percent) than mostly favored average Americans (38 percent).

But while they may disapprove of his handling of this issue, few Americans think the president is most to blame for the current state of the nation's economy. When asked to choose between the Bush administration, the Obama administration, Wall Street, and Congress, more Americans blame the Bush administration (22 percent) or Congress (16 percent) than Wall Street (12 percent) or Mr. Obama (12 percent), though 24 percent volunteer that a combination of all four is to blame.
Forty-four percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, and about as many - 46 percent - disapprove. His approval rating has remained fairly steady but below 50 percent since the spring of 2010, aside from an uptick in the spring of 2011 following the death of Osama bin Laden.

Since bin Laden's death, the president has received high marks for his handling of terrorism: In this poll, 57 percent approve. Voters are split on his handling of foreign policy overall, with 41 percent approving and 41 percent disapproving.

Views of how he has handled the economy is the obvious drag on the president's ratings: While just 33 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove. Similarly, just 35 percent approve his his handling of job creation while 58 percent disapprove. The last time Mr. Obama's approval rating on the economy was above 40 percent was in February of this year.

Views on the national economy remain very negative: Since early 2008, roughly three in four Americans (and sometimes even more) have said the economy is in bad shape. Now, 86 percent of Americans characterize the economy as at least somewhat bad, including 42 percent who say it is very bad.

Although the national unemployment rate recently dropped below 9 percent for the first time since 2009, Americans are skeptical that a recovery is on the horizon. Just 21 percent think the economy is getting better, and 39 percent think it is getting worse, up from 32 percent last month. Another 40 percent think the economy isn't changing.

When asked if Mr.Obama has made real progress fixing the economy, 68 percent say he has not, and just 28 percent say he has. And while 37 percent say the Obama administration's policies prevented the country from going into a deeper recession, just under half - 49 percent - say those policies did not do that.

In addition, more think the policies of the Obama administration have mostly favored Wall Street (42 percent) than mostly favored average Americans (38 percent).

But while they may disapprove of his handling of this issue, few Americans think the president is most to blame for the current state of the nation's economy. When asked to choose between the Bush administration, the Obama administration, Wall Street, and Congress, more Americans blame the Bush administration (22 percent) or Congress (16 percent) than Wall Street (12 percent) or Mr. Obama (12 percent), though 24 percent volunteer that a combination of all four is to blame.
Forty-four percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, and about as many - 46 percent - disapprove. His approval rating has remained fairly steady but below 50 percent since the spring of 2010, aside from an uptick in the spring of 2011 following the death of Osama bin Laden.

Since bin Laden's death, the president has received high marks for his handling of terrorism: In this poll, 57 percent approve. Voters are split on his handling of foreign policy overall, with 41 percent approving and 41 percent disapproving.

Views of how he has handled the economy is the obvious drag on the president's ratings: While just 33 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove. Similarly, just 35 percent approve his his handling of job creation while 58 percent disapprove. The last time Mr. Obama's approval rating on the economy was above 40 percent was in February of this year.

Views on the national economy remain very negative: Since early 2008, roughly three in four Americans (and sometimes even more) have said the economy is in bad shape. Now, 86 percent of Americans characterize the economy as at least somewhat bad, including 42 percent who say it is very bad.

Although the national unemployment rate recently dropped below 9 percent for the first time since 2009, Americans are skeptical that a recovery is on the horizon. Just 21 percent think the economy is getting better, and 39 percent think it is getting worse, up from 32 percent last month. Another 40 percent think the economy isn't changing.

When asked if Mr.Obama has made real progress fixing the economy, 68 percent say he has not, and just 28 percent say he has. And while 37 percent say the Obama administration's policies prevented the country from going into a deeper recession, just under half - 49 percent - say those policies did not do that.

In addition, more think the policies of the Obama administration have mostly favored Wall Street (42 percent) than mostly favored average Americans (38 percent).

But while they may disapprove of his handling of this issue, few Americans think the president is most to blame for the current state of the nation's economy. When asked to choose between the Bush administration, the Obama administration, Wall Street, and Congress, more Americans blame the Bush administration (22 percent) or Congress (16 percent) than Wall Street (12 percent) or Mr. Obama (12 percent), though 24 percent volunteer that a combination of all four is to blame.

Thanks

Travel quotes

 

MANYHOT0

1:20 AM ET

December 11, 2011

Newt n newt

Don't really know this before. It's a good reading article. Newt vs. newt.Newt is upstanding member of the long American tradition of traducing the darkie. What's sad is Obama's role in selling out the same. Like this.
Jailbreak iPhone 4S

 

DAVECASE

10:26 PM ET

December 11, 2011

Republicans in disarray

I think the Republicans are in a bad way if they are having to rely on Newt Gingrich. There's nothing new about Newt he's just another establishment face but ehy seem to determine to pick 'anyone but Romney'. What's Romney ever done to them? Pretty soon they'll be a twisting Sarah Palin's arm to try and get her to run. Obama must be having a quiet chuckle to himself. It's pretty obvious though that the stock market is not too bothered by 4 more years of the Democrats in power.

 

CONTATOCA

9:36 AM ET

December 12, 2011

you could...

i Agree in If you like Newt you should look forward to these sorts of articles in my opinion, Newt is clearly well read and he needs to know when he's changed his position so dramatically and it's effects on foreign policy if he's going to be an effective commander in chief....thanks ! massagistas

 

MJACOBSON

2:58 AM ET

December 13, 2011

Go Newt Go

I love Newt. He tells it like it is, even if it means flip flopping like a little girl.

He means well, and with his firm dedication, marching forward, backwards, left, and right, he is a really good leader for the new free world.

Now, I wouldn't want him to feed my purple cow, because who knows what goes into the feed at Newt's farm. It certainly makes for entertaining politics, and for playing the flip flopping candidate, he's a better actor than even Obama.

 

ELI

6:36 PM ET

December 18, 2011

Newt Gingrich's emergence as

Newt Gingrich's emergence as the front-runner among the Republican presidential candidates has created a virtual cottage industry around chronicling his flip flops, whether through Ron Paul attack ads or analyses dissecting the "difference between MittFlops and NewtFlops." Gingrich, for his part, has fought back, regularly updating a section on his website dedicated to setting his positions on the issues straight. But given his back-and-forth record, it's not an easy task. Here are six instances in which Gingrich shifted his position on pressing foreign-policy issues. Search for best local deals.

 

MASSAGENS TANTRICAS

8:39 AM ET

January 5, 2012

.....Truth

His foreign policy insights reflect his racism, Kenya and Obama's anti-colonialism, and his desire to please the powers that be, Israel and AIPAC, and his racism, upstanding member of the long American tradition of traducing the darkie. What's sad is Obama's role in selling out the same.
aeronaves ar condicionado

 

CHANGS

12:48 PM ET

January 11, 2012

Newt supporst Newt

Gingrich's policies will change according to what best fits Gingrich's needs of the moment.

Since he is trying to get elected he will he will say whatever it takes to win the election. If he loses the election attempt he will go back to saying whatever he is paid to say by those paying him.

Values have no real meaning to him, they are simply a property to be assumed as needed, as insurancethat he will achieve what ever goal he is currently aiming to achieve.

Chang S