A newly surfaced video shows that no less a figure than Nancy Reagan asserted that President Ronald Reagan passed the “torch” of Reagan conservatism to Newt Gingrich — belying efforts by Mitt Romney supporters to cast Gingrich as anti-Reagan.
And Reagan’s eldest son Michael has endorsed Gingrich, voicing strong support for the former House speaker’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Romney supporters have launched a last-minute attack on Gingrich seeking to impugn the former House speaker’s close working relationship with President Reagan and his dedication to Reagan conservatism.
But efforts to cast Gingrich as anti-Reagan are doomed to fail, political observers say.
“There is something truly obscene about the full-blown assault on Newt Gingrich’s strong Reagan conservative history from and on behalf of Mitt Romney, who unabashedly ran away from the Reagan legacy and conservative principles in his 1994 Senate campaign and 2002 gubernatorial campaign,” William A. Jacobson, associate clinical professor at the Cornell Law School, writes on the Legal Insurrection website.
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Nancy Reagan stressed Gingrich’s close relationship with Reagan in the video of her 1995 speech at a dinner honoring Ronald Reagan: “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.”
See Nancy Reagan video below.
And Michael Reagan said in his Jan. 20 endorsement of Gingrich: "Newt exemplifies the conservative principles my father championed — strong national defense, lower taxes and smaller government.
"In the 90’s Newt's leadership brought us the Contract with America which changed Washington. I’m confident Newt can do it again.”
One attack on Gingrich as anti-Reagan comes from Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration who also served in the Reagan administration.
In an article published Wednesday by National Review, Abrams says that Gingrich’s claims of being a Reagan conservative are “misleading at best.”
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Abrams does acknowledge that Gingrich “voted with the president regularly,” but says that he “spewed insulting rhetoric” at some of Reagan’s policies to defeat communism.
Jacobson points out that Abrams’ assertion is based on a single speech Gingrich gave on the House floor in 1986, and he does not link to the full speech.
“Much of the anti-Newt conservative media accuses Newt of ‘insulting’ Reagan,” Jacobson writes. “It is part of a smear campaign that started when Newt surged in Iowa.”
The fact is, Gingrich was a strong supporter of Reagan in Congress, and a key figure in implementing his platform.
In an article written shortly before the South Carolina primary, Jeffrey Lord wrote in The American Spectator: “Newt Gingrich was part of the Reagan Revolution’s Murderers’ Row. And anybody who was in Washington in the day . . . knew it.”
Time after time after time in the Reagan years, Gingrich “was out there again and again and again for Ronald Reagan and conservative principles,” Lord notes.
“Whatever happens, quite unlike the picture Romney is trying to paint of his prime opponent in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was very much present and accounted for on the Reagan team.
“Quite to the contrary of the Romney message, Newt Gingrich was in fact one of Reagan’s Young Lieutenants.”
The fact is, Romney “ran away” from the Reagan legacy, as Jacobson noted.
In a debate during Romney’s unsuccessful 1994 Senate campaign, he said: “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”
Two years earlier, Romney had backed Paul Tsongas, a liberal Democratic senator, over Reagan’s Vice President George H.W. Bush for president.
And as governor of Massachusetts, Romney instituted the healthcare reform known as Romneycare, a step toward socialism that Ronald Reagan would surely have abhorred.
Gingrich, meanwhile, has remained loyal to the Reagan legacy and frequently depicts his race against Romney as pitting a “Reagan conservative” against a “Massachusetts moderate.”
Jacobson concludes: “Nancy Reagan had it right, as does Jeffrey Lord. Newt was part of the Reagan revolution and he was the heir to that legacy, not alone, but as someone to whom the torch had been passed.
“That torch never was passed to Mitt Romney, and if it had been, he would have rejected it.”
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