2nd UPDATE: At the bottom of this post I have a statement from Michael Reagan on this issue.

UPDATE: To be fair and countering my blistering commentary on Newt Gingrich below, friend and fellow blogger Professor William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection writes much the opposite with links to other articles defending Gingrich and separating out of context words written recently. Read it here. Make sure you also read what I had to say below, complete with videos. Thanks!

I’ve always been Conservative even growing up in a blue-collar Democrat voting family. Ronald Reagan was merely an extension of by political beliefs, both fiscal and social. Ronald Reagan made me feel good about American, he made America feel optimistic. Ronald Reagan was a leader. I yearn for the day when America has a leader like Ronald Reagan.

Which brings me to Newt Gingrich. I was nearly ready to endorse Gingrich as GOP nominee, while holding my nose. Of course, I’ve been close to endorsing Mitt Romney while also holding my nose. The problem is this – the GOP is not offering a candidate worth my vote. I like Rick Santorum but I don’t like the way he ran his campaign and don’t believe he has the money or organization backing to rise to the top.

I was recently asked – then who? My answer was Stephen Harper with tongue in cheek implying the best bet may be to ready the passports and move to Canada before tyranny continues and Barack Obama gets another term or we get more RINOs in Congress and the White House. I don’t believe Mitt Romney when he says he will repeal Obamacare as he changes positions so frequently it’s like the weather in and around Chicago.

Newt Gingrich has supported the individual mandate for healthcare, he sat on a park bench with Nancy Pelosi and supported cap and trade taxes as a cure for global warming that doesn’t exist. He attacked one of my favorites in Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) who really does produce bold plans and can express them better than anyone in Congress or the White House or in the current GOP campaign.

But now it has come to light that Newt Gingrich repeatedly attacked Ronald Reagan during the 1980s while President Reagan was leading the country and the Republican Party. There is no putting his words back in his mouth or spinning this way with charm and intellect. Ugh, ugh – no way, no how.

If you’ve watched the GOP debates than you heard Gingrich constantly wrapping himself around the Ronald Reagan mantle – his close relationship with the President, how he is a “bold Reagan Conservative.” Even telling anyone who will listen how he helped end the Cold War, end the Soviet Union, and create millions of jobs. President Reagan helped create an environment for entrepreneurs to create jobs – no President or Congressman ever creates job. Mr. Reagan would never take that kind of credit but Newt Gingrich is a professional at self praise. My mother always said – “Self praise stinks, have some humility.”

At the Reagan presidential library this fall, Gingrich boasted of how:

“I helped Reagan create millions of jobs while he was president.”

And after modestly acknowledging his own less significant role than Reagan’s, added:

“We helped defeat the Soviet empire.” Unmentioned by Gingrich then, or in any of the 2,414 debates during this campaign, was his 1985 criticism of President Reagan’s historic meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev as “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with (British Prime Minister) Chamberlain at Munich in 1938.”

In an interview on CNBC, Gingrich recently emphasized his close identification with the nation’s 40th president:

“I’ve done a movie on Ronald Reagan called ‘Rendezvous With Destiny.’ Callista and I did. We’ve done a book on Ronald Reagan. You know I campaigned with Reagan. I first met Reagan in ’74. I’m very happy to talk about Ronald Reagan.”

Indeed Mr. Gingrich is happy to talk about his “close relationship” with Ronald Reagan. What politician running as a “Bold Conservative” would not?

How about when Gingrich went to the House floor during the Gipper’s second White House term and declared the president’s Soviet policy a “failure.” Here is what Gingrich said:

“Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing and without a dramatic, fundamental change in strategy will continue to fail. … The burden of the failure frankly must be placed first upon President Reagan.”

As reported in the Congressional Record, Gingrich had found Reagan responsible for our national “decay”:

“Beyond the obvious indicators of decay, the fact is that President Reagan has lost control of the national agenda.”

Here is Gingrich in 1986:

“Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.”

Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.”

But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.”

Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

In 1988 Gingrich said George H.W. Bush Won’t Win If He Runs To Continue Reaganism:

These types of outright contradictions involving exactly what Congressman Gingrich in fact said during the time President Reagan was in office and exactly what Candidate Gingrich now offers as fictitious recollections associated with his unwavering allegiance to President Reagan reminds me of one of the past speaker’s personal broadsides in opposition to Washington DC.

“In this cold and ruthless city,” he once said, “the center of hypocrisy is Capitol Hill.”

Newt Gingrich is quite clearly an authority regarding both topics. Bold hypocrisy, indeed!

Ronald Reagan’s eldest son Mike Reagan has issued a statement lambasting Mitt Romney and his supporters for claims that Romney’s Republican presidential rival Newt Gingrich was a strong critic of President Reagan. Michael says such claims are false.

“I am deeply disturbed that supporters of Mitt Romney are claiming that Newt Gingrich is not a true Reaganite and are even claiming that Newt was a strong critic of my father.

“Recently I endorsed Newt Gingrich for president because I believe that Newt is the only Republican candidate who has both consistently backed the conservative policies that my father championed and the only Republican that will continue to implement his vision.

“It surprises me that Mitt Romney and his supporters would raise this issue — when Mitt by his own admission voted for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale who opposed my father, and later supported liberal Democrat Paul Tsongas for president.

“As governor of Massachusetts, Romney’s achievement was the most socialistic healthcare plan in the nation up until that time.

“Say what you want about Newt Gingrich but when he was Speaker of the House he surrounded himself with Reagan conservatives and implemented a Ronald Reagan program of low taxes and restrained federal spending.

“Newt’s conservative program created a huge economic boom and balanced the budget for the first time in more than a generation.”

“I would take Newt Gingrich’s record any day over Mitt Romney’s.”

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I’ve already discussed the Keystone XL pipeline situation here and here. It’s apparent the Obama administration has a problem with the oil and natural gas industry although they are deemed safe to the environment through mountains of impact studies and create thousands of new jobs.

A little reported lawsuit in which the US Attorney for North Dakota hauled seven oil and natural gas companies into federal court for killing 28 migratory birds that were found dead near oil waste lagoons last year has been ruled upon. Wind production companies were not found within this suit and not presumed “guilty” of similar circumstances. Imagine that.

Continental Resources was accused of violating the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act because “on or about May 6, 2011 in the District of North Dakota” the company “did take [kill] one Say’s Phoebe,” of the tyrant flycatcher bird family. Brigham Oil & Gas is accused of killing two Mallard ducks. The Class B misdemeanors carry fines of up to $15,000 for each dead bird and up to six months in prison.

Now, about the wind industry, which the environmentalists and Barack Obama are wild about. Each year the wind industry kills not 28 birds, or even a few hundred, but some 440,000, according to estimates by the American Bird Conservancy based on Fish and Wildlife Service data. At the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area Northern California, some 5,000 wind turbines each year kill scores of golden and bald eagles, which are highly protected under federal law. In fact, according to the September 13 draft of its new “Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would give the wind industry “assurances” of law enforcement discretion if it adheres to certain safeguards and then inadvertently kills birds.

Gas and oil had been prosecuted under the “Migratory Bird Act.” The criminal charges carried fines and potential prison sentences. A recent ruling by US district Judge Daniel Hovland contrasted “incidental and unintended” deaths during “legal, commercially-useful activity” with “hunting and poaching.”

The court rejected US Attorney Timothy Purdon’s “expansive interpretation of the law” because it “would yield absurd results”:

If the government’s case carried the day, “many everyday activities become unlawful—and subject to criminal sanctions—when they cause the death of pigeons, starlings, and other common birds.”

The court wrote that among the potential felonious bird-killing habits are cutting brush and trees, planting and harvesting crops, driving a vehicle, owning a building with windows and . . . “owning a cat.” The court noted that cats kill “hundreds of millions” of birds each year and cars kill 60 million, while windows kill 97 million to 976 million. In short, every American could be an unwitting criminal bird killer.

What we have here is “selective prosecution” by the Obama administration. Judge Hovland also pointed out that windmills kill “roughly 39,000 birds annually.” No lawsuits can be found against the windmill industry under the Migratory Bird Act.

Although I thought the Dodo bird was extinct it appears Obama and his ilk are the reincarnation of the bird. At least in name.

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One More Term - Mission Accomplished - Obama's Work in Progress

This evening, Americans that hear the State of the Union may view the process of the rhetorical leader having a talent for phantasm. Barack Obama is going to take the floor within the Capitol in hopes of laying the foundation for a political discussion based on his conditions – one in which he stands upon emotionally charged appeals, populism, as well as class warfare, not necessarily the actual unstable ground associated with his eroding track record. Looking back at him is a United States Senate, which has over the past 1,000 days neglected to complete a budget – a real shirking of their essential responsibility to remain rigorous stewards of the taxpayers’ money.

Obama definitely will depend on the potency of his particular words and phrases. Along with flourish, he’ll tell the tale of America by way of a progressive’s eyes – one in which “fairness” assumes a whole new interpretation, in which America’s foremost ideals tend to be dismissed, and where the reality with regards to a failed presidency will be ignored within the shadows of our country’s combined memory. Obama will communicate through the higher ground associated with his vaulted branch. The real question is whether or not the stature conferred through his office allows him to avoid the growing deficits, absolute depths associated with lack of employment, or even mile after mile regarding job-killing laws and regulations which his Administration has wrought upon the American public.

Prior to thinking about Obama’s record, consider first his particular personal message – in which economic populism stands out as the center of America’s principles, where the United States government needs to be the guarantor associated with equal outcomes and therefore “fairness” involving accomplishment must be determined through scores of bureaucrats inside the beltway of Washington DC. This is a design that Mr. Obama presented from a presentation recently in Osawatomie, Kansas, and it’s one he intends to revisit this evening. This particular perspective reaches the foundation associated with Barack Obama’s progressive ideology. It’s not, nevertheless, the philosophy which our nation had been created.

America is actually exceptional since it’s committed to the basic principle associated with common individual freedom: that all people are essentially equal naturally as well as equally endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This basic principle as well as the Constitutional design of law which enlivens this include the basis of the American Dream.

Precisely what is really significant regarding the United States would be that the scale of opportunity has become accessible to every person. Consequently, poverty has become significantly reduced. Far more significant, it’s no longer a perpetual problem where there isn’t any actual potential to free yourself from.

The “ladder of opportunity” prevails to ensure that individuals might utilize their God-given abilities and talents as a way to better themselves and engage in the American dream. This is the independence which makes the United States exceptional. Barack Obama, however, doesn’t symbolize this dream. Alternatively, as he makes obvious, he is convinced that it’s by way of federal government design in which modern society may progress – by means of far more federal government power, federal education services, economic restrictions, as well as national infrastructure spending, all financed through “fair” taxation upon “wealthy” Americans.

This kind of progressivism has its own origins within one hundred years of history and a hundred years of disappointment. However, the nation needn’t search back in the history of time to discover the facts. They merely need to observe Barack Obama’s track record associated with the last three years – the truth will certainly receive little mention in tonight’s speech.

Obama introduced a totally progressive plan by using his increase of the state with Obamacare, his trillion-dollar stimulus bill, the federal government takeover of the automotive sector, the expansion of regulations within the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform legislation, the Crony Capitalism from the Solyndra scandal, as well as the unlawful appointments to the unrestrained Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board. The end result: 13.1 million Americans continue to be out of work, job development continues to be abysmal and Obama’s assurance to transform the US economic climate is now unsatisfied.

At the same time, the Senate has generally acceded towards Obama’s platform while leaving unfinished the budgeting system over the past 1,000 days. Rather than respecting the citizen’s capital and placing it to the proper use, the Senate has chosen to pass short-term “business as usual” continuing resolutions, one after another, whereas federal government wasting continuously escalates, deficits are generally bursting, the nation’s credit standing is in peril, Social Security and Medicare have been in turmoil, and generations to come remain at risk.

Obama’s “populist” message is made to entice the American individuals – this is exactly what all American political figures attempt to accomplish. It’s reasonable, nevertheless to consider just how the American people have fared under the Obama’s progressive policies. It’s difficult to overlook the volume of jobless Americans, the sluggish economy, the business owners who are reluctant to develop and expand, all while job opportunities are diminished. It’s clear that Obama is not going to mention his “achievements.”

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