Gingrich Takes Both Sides on the Same Issue

by Clyde Weiss  |  August 30, 2012

Newt Gingrich (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Former GOP Presidential candidate and House Speaker Newt Gingrich is teaching a series of seminars this week at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. At his self-described “Newt University,” the professor-in-chief called for a “fact-based campaign.” Fine, let’s start with the fact that Gingrich himself distorts the truth about public service.

First, Gingrich has long made it clear that he wants to shrink the federal government. So it’s no surprise that he would take another whack at public employees by asking, “How do we get to a smaller government?”

Ironically, Gingrich began by praising one of the federal government’s largest and most successful programs, the Apollo space program, which sent men to the moon. Covering Gingrich’s lesson, The Washington Post wrote:

He used the buildup to the moon landing as a metaphor for the capability of the American people. “We innovated every day” back then, Gingrich said. Now, he said, he wanted the same innovative spirit directed at a different goal: “And so, part of the [current] question is, ‘How do we get to a smaller government?’”

The Post noted that it was “not the most obvious metaphor, since Apollo itself was an enormous government program that cost at least $170 billion in modern dollars.”

If the federal government’s space program is Gingrich’s example of innovation – funded and directed by the government – then Gingrich should be singing the praises of creative public service, not denigrating it by taking up the tea party mantra of dangerously smaller government.