At some point, you have to wonder whether people realize that the worldwide web exists, that the “tubes” can so easily be followed to place today’s comments within yesterday’s context. Or, perhaps, if some people are so arrogant that they assume that reporters and others won’t have the ability to navigate those tubes to hold them to account for their serial flip-flopping, without hint of shame, on the most critical issues before us (before the US). Which, do you think, is the case with Newt Gingrich?
After all, when Newt opens his mouth today, all you need to do is look back a little to find yesterday’s Newt to debate and duel today’s Newt.
For example, does partisanship end at the ocean’s edge? Today’s Newt disagrees with yesterday’s.
Well, this past Friday, Newt Gingrich testified to the House Energy & Commerce Committee amid a marathon hearing on the Waxman-Markey . And, yet again, the Newts are dueling.
Courtesy of Media Matters‘ Gingrich Switcheroo, let’s lay out the dueling Newts.
The Gingrich Switcheroo
| Gingrich 2007:
Cap-And-Trade Advocate |
Gingrich 2009:
Cap-And-Trade Naysayer |
| GINGRICH THEN: A Cap-And-Trade System “Very, Very Good.” During a 2007 interview with PBS, Newt Gingrich said: “I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.” [PBS, 2/15/07] | GINGRICH NOW: Cap-And-Trade Costs Will Punish Americans. During his testimony in front of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “If enacted, this energy tax will increase the electricity bill of every American, increase the cost to drive a car, and increase the cost of doing business. This will punish every retired American, every rural American, and every person who drives to work, uses heating oil, or has electricity in their home.” [Gingrich Testimony, 4/24/09] |
| GINGRICH THEN: If Bush Had Instituted A Cap-And-Trade Policy “We Would Be Much Better Off.” During a 2007 interview with PBS, Newt Gingrich said: “If [President Bush] had instituted a regime that combined three things I just said — mandatory caps, a trading system inside the caps, as we have with clean air, and a tax incentive to be able to invest in the new technology and to be able to produce the new technology — I think we would be much better off than we are in the current situation.” [PBS, 2/15/07] | GINGRICH NOW: Cap-And-Trade Is “Fundamentally Wrong.” During his testimony in front of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “Imposing stunningly high taxes on an economy in the middle of a recession is fundamentally wrong, and guarantees that our economic competitors in the global marking will be in a dramatically better economic position. They recognize that artificially capping their economy is the wrong approach for developing their societies.” [Gingrich Testimony, 4/24/09] |
| GINGRICH THEN: Cap-And-Trade Incentives Could Stimulate Innovation. During a 2007 interview with PBS, Newt Gingrich said: “The caps, with a trading system, on sulfur has worked brilliantly because it has brought free-market attitudes, entrepreneurship and technology and made it very profitable to have less sulfur. So people said, ‘Wow, it’s worth my time and effort.’ Americans get incentives. Americans like winning. … What we ought to be doing is inventing a whole series of breakthrough mechanisms that create incentives for people to have a better environmental outcome in an economically positive way, to accelerate the transition to better and cleaner technologies.” [PBS, 2/15/07] | GINGRICH NOW: Cap-And-Trade Is An Extremist, Big Government Ploy That Will Devastate The Economy. During his testimony in front of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “These extremists would have you believe that to protect clean air and water, biodiversity, and the future of the earth, we have to buy into their catastrophic scenarios and sign onto their command-and-control, anti-energy, big-bureaucracy agenda, including dramatic increases in government power and draconian policies that will devastate our economy. But this is just extremism. […] It is possible that with the sound use of science and technology and the right incentives to encourage entrepreneurs, American principles can provide a better solution for the health of our planet than can environmental extremism.” [Gingrich Testimony, 4/24/09] |
Does Newt simply not realize how easy it is to check on what he’s said or does he simply not care? There is, of course, a third option: he simply doesn’t recognize that today’s Newt is recanting yesterdays. …