Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday defended his
1990s adversary former President Clinton, arguing that Clinton’s Democratic convention speech
was actually a condemnation of President Obama’s record.
Gingrich attributed 80 percent of the post-convention bounce
Obama received to Clinton, but he said the underlying theme of Clinton’s speech
was “eerily anti-Obama.”
“Here’s Clinton saying, I reformed welfare because I worked
with Republicans — you didn’t Mr. Obama,” Gingrich said on CNN’s “State of the
Union. “He didn’t say it that way, but think about it.
"I had the longest period of economic growth in history. You
didn’t Mr. Obama,” he said. “I got to four balanced budgets by working with
Republicans. You didn’t Mr. Obama.”
Gingrich said the speech was a condemnation of the fact that
Obama “learned nothing” from the 2010 “shellacking” when Republicans retook the
House, compared to Clinton bringing in Dick Morris in 1994, implementing his triangulation strategy and winning re-election in a rout.
Gingrich, who fought Clinton through two government
shutdowns, also defended Clinton’s record as president to attack Obama.
“The economy worked, people had jobs,” Gingrich said. “What
it does is it actually shrinks Obama. You have a real president and then you
have this guy who’s a pretend guy.”
Gingrich said that Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney is in about the same position former President Reagan was in 1980, and
predicted that it was disappointed Obama voters, not angry ones, who would
ultimately swing the election to Romney.
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