Newt Gingrich Is No Ronald Reagan

Gingrich dropped Reagan’s name at least 50 times in the presidential debates.

• FACT: Gingrich: “The Reagan recovery, which I participated in passing, in seven years created for this current economy the equivalent of 25 million new jobs, raised federal revenue by $800 billion a year in terms of the current economy, and clearly it worked. It's a historic fact.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH 6/13/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “You know, you've been asking about divided government.  This coming Saturday is the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan signing the Kemp-Roth tax cut which was done with divided government.  I was part of that effort in the House when the Democrats were in control.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 8/11/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “[L]ike Ronald Reagan, who had 13 senior staff resign the morning of the New Hampshire primary and whose new campaign manager laid off 100 people because he had no money, because the consultants had spent it, like John McCain, who had to go and run an inexpensive campaign because the consultants spent it, I intend to run on ideas.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 8/11/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “So the fed is certainly -- going back as Reagan did to sound money is certainly a key part of how you get back to prosperity.  And the Fed is the primary villain in failing to have a sound money policy.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 8/11/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “But let me just use my time for a second, if I might, Brian. I served during the Reagan campaign with people like Jack Kemp and Art Laffer. We had an idea for job creation. I served as a freshman -- or as a sophomore helping pass the Reagan's jobs program. At newt.org, I put out last Friday the response to the Obama stagnation. The fact is, if you took the peak of the Reagan unemployment, which he inherited from Carter, by last Friday, going month by month, under Ronald Reagan, we'd have 3,700,000 more Americans working.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, 9/7/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I think we have to find a way to get to a country in which everybody who's here is here legally. But you started by referencing President Reagan. In 1986, I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which in fact did grant some amnesty in return for promises. President Reagan wrote in his diary that year that he signed the act because we were going to control the border and we were going to have an employer program where it was a legal guest worker program. That's in his diary. I'm with President Reagan.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, 9/7/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “There are three good ways. The Ronald Reagan technique put 3,700,000 more people back to work as of last Friday. You reduce government spending. You raise government revenues enormously. The committee of 12 ought to be looking at, how do you create more revenue, not how do you raise taxes.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, 9/7/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Now, Ronald Reagan -- when I was a very young congressman, Ronald Reagan taught me a great lesson if you have Democrat in charge. And that is to go to the American people on principle, have the American people educate their congressmen. He used to say, ‘I try to turn up the light for the people so they will turn up the heat on Congress.’ When we passed welfare reform, half the Democrats voted yes because they couldn't go home having voted no. And on a principle basis, I'd be glad to work with Democrats in any office, but I'd do it on principle, not on compromising principle.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Florida State Fairgrounds, Tampa, FL, 9/12/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Well, next Thursday in Des Moines, I'm going to outline a 21st century Contract with America. And it's going to be far bolder, far deeper, far more profound than what we did in 1994 or what I helped Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan do in 1980. It's important to remember, this month, in the Reagan administration, September 1983, we created 1,100,000 new jobs. Obama's socialist policies, class warfare, and bureaucratic socialism, we created zero in August.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Orlando Convention Center, Orlando, FL, 9/22/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Just very straightforward. Callista and I did a film on Ronald Reagan. There's a very painful moment in the film when he looks in the camera and says, ‘I didn't think we did this. I'm against doing it.’ I went back and looked. The truth is, we did. It was an enormous mistake. And he thought the Iranian deals with a terrible mistake.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Las Vegas, NV, 10/18/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I think most of us are for tax policies that lead to jobs is because we have had two cycles in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan, and the Contract with America, both of which had the same policy: lower taxes, less regulation, more American energy, and have faith in the American job creator as distinct from the Saul Alinsky radicalism of higher taxes, bigger bureaucracy with more regulations, no American energy, as the president announced again today in his decision on offshore, and finally class warfare.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, 11/10/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “First of all, as maximum covert operations-- to block and disrupt the Iranian program-- in-- including-- taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable. Second, maximum-- maximum coordination with the Israelis-- in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran. Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher did in the Soviet Union, of every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down. And I agree entirely with Governor Romney, if in the end, despite all of those things-- the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Spartanburg, SC, 11/12/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Well, in a number of ways. As I said earlier, I would-- I would explicitly adopt the Reagan/John Paul II/ Thatcher strategy towards Iran. I would do the same thing towards North Korea. I would adopt a very strong policy towards the United Nations of-- dramatically taken on its-- its absurdities. I would explicitly repudiate what Obama's done on Agenda 21 as the kind of interference from the United Nations that's wrong.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Spartanburg, SC, 11/12/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Well, I think that there's a clear record, I worked with Ronald Reagan in the early '80s and his recovery program translated into today's population of about 25 million new jobs in a seven-year period. As Speaker of the House, I worked with-- President Clinton and he followed with a very similar plan.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Des Moines, IA, 12/10/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “[S]ometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States with the courage to tell the truth, just as was Ronald Reagan who went around his entire national security apparatus to call the Soviet Union an evil empire and who overruled his entire State Department in order to say, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Reagan believed the power of truth restated the world and reframed the world. I am a Reaganite, I'm proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it's at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Des Moines, IA, 12/10/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I've been around long enough that I remember at this exact time in 1979 when Ronald Reagan was running 30 points behind Bill Clinton -- behind Jimmy Carter. And if people had said, "Gosh, electability is the number-one issue," they wouldn't have nominated him.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, 12/15/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I think on the conservative thing, it's sort of laughable to suggest that somebody who campaigned with Ronald Reagan and with Jack Kemp and has had a 30-year record of conservatism, is somehow not a conservative?” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, 12/15/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I want to start by reinforcing what Governor Romney just said. Leadership is the key. When you have a Sal Alinsky radical who is a campaigner in chief who doesn't do the job of president, because he's too busy trying to run for re-election, the constitution can't work. I helped Ronald Reagan when Tip O'Neil was speaker to get enough votes to pass the Reagan program despite a Democratic majority.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, 12/15/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Now you can earn that support. You can win a communications argument. Reagan was very, very good at that. But the only point I was making on "Meet the Press" is when you are going to have a major change, you have to communicate with the American people in order to ensure that they are for you.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, 12/15/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Candidates, Ronald Reagan famously espoused his 11th Commandment: Thou shall not...” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Sioux City Convention Center, Sioux City, IA, 12/15/11)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I was very honored today to have Bud McFarlane come to introduce me at our veterans rally. Bud was for five years Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, and I worked with him in the ‘80s on the strategy to defeat the Soviet empire.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH, 1/7/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “But I do think there’s a difference between a bold Reagan conservative model and a more establishment model that is a little more cautious about taking the kind of changes we need.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH, 1/7/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I think what Republicans have to ask is who's most likely in the long run-- to survive against the kind of billion dollar campaign the Obama team is gonna run.  And I think that a bold Reagan conservative with a very strong economic plan is a lot more likely to succeed in that campaign than a relatively timid Massachusetts moderate who even The Wall Street Journal said had an economy plan so timid it resembled Obama. So I think you've gotta look at, you know, Massachusetts was fourth from the bottom in job creation under Governor Romney.  I-- we created 11 million jobs while I was Speaker and I worked with governor-- with President Reagan in the entire recover of the 1980s.  That is they-- there's a huge difference between a Reagan conservative and somebody who comes out of the Massachusetts culture with an essentially moderate record who I think will have a very hard time in a debate with president.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, “Meet the Press,” 1/8/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I think every president who works with the leader of every opposition knows they're working with somebody who wants to make them a one term president.  I mean-- you know, that-- that's the American process.  I worked with Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s.  Tip O'Neill was speaker.  He wanted to make Reagan a one term president.  We had to get 1/3 of the Democrats to vote for the Reagan tax cuts.  And we did.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, “Meet the Press,” 1/8/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Under Obama, 2011 was the highest price of gasoline in history.  It is a direct result of his policies, which kill jobs, raise the price of heating oil and gasoline, weaken the United States, increase our dependence on foreign countries, and weaken our national security in the face of Iran trying to-- close the Straits of Hormuz.  So the right president opening up in a Reagan tradition and using massive development of American energy-- there's 3.2% unemployment in North Dakota.  There's a hint here.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, “Meet the Press,” 1/8/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “As a young member of Congress, I worked with President Ronald Reagan. We passed an economic growth package. We created 16 million jobs. The American people within a framework that Reagan had established created 16 million jobs. As speaker I came back — working with President Bill Clinton, we passed a very Reagan-like program, less regulation, lower taxes. Unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent. We created 11 million jobs. Now, those are real numbers that people can verify out in the open.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, SC, 1/17/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “And the estimate by Martin Feldstein at Harvard is, who was Reagan’s chief counsel and economic advisors, was you actually reduce wealth inequality in America by 50 percent over the next generation because everybody becomes a saver and an investor and you have a universal investing nation.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, SC, 1/17/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “That bill was introduced by Claudine Schneider, who is a Republican from Rhode Island. It was introduced at a time when Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy was enforced. The Mexico City policy said no U.S. funding will be used to fund any activity that relates to abortion. So it is explicitly a falsehood to suggest that a bill introduced under Mexico City policy would have paid for China’s one-child policy. In fact, I have explicitly opposed it. I have a 98.6 percent National Right to Life voting record in 20 years. And the only vote we disagreed on was welfare reform, which had nothing to do with abortion. So I think it is an absurdity and it would be nice if Governor Romney would exercise leadership on his former staff and his major donors to take falsehoods off the air.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, SC, 1/17/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Well, it's a very simple question. How big a scale of change do we want in Washington? I started working with Governor Reagan in 1974. I helped with Jack Kemp and others the development of supply-side economics in the late '70s. I participated in the '80s in an enormous project of economic growth and, with President Reagan's leadership, the American people created 16 million jobs. With President Reagan's leadership, the Soviet Union disappeared.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Charleston, SC, 1/19/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Under Ronald Reagan, we had the right jobs, the right laws, the right regulators, the right leadership. We created 16 million new jobs. We then had two consecutive tax increases, one by a Republican, one by a Democrat. The economy stagnated. When I became Speaker, we went back to the Ronald Reagan playbook: lower taxes, less regulation, more American energy, and 11 million jobs showed up.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Charleston, SC, 1/19/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “Well, in 1980, when Ronald Reagan started the year about 30 points behind Jimmy Carter and when the Republican establishment described his economic ideas as ‘voodoo economics,’ Reagan just cheerfully went out and won the debate, won the nomination, and won the general election carrying more states than Herbert Hoover carried -- than Roosevelt carried against Herbert Hoover.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Tampa, FL, 1/23/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “No, I’m talking about using every asset available to the United States, including appropriate covert operations, to maximize the distance, what Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher did to the Soviet empire, bring together every asset we have to minimize the survival of the dictatorship and to maximize the chance for freedom in Cuba.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Tampa, FL, 1/23/12)
• FACT: Gingrich: “I met with Ronald Reagan for the first time in 1974. I worked with Jack Kemp and Art Laffer and others to develop supply- side economics in the late ‘70s. I helped Governor Reagan become President Reagan. I helped pass the Reagan economic program when I worked with the National Security Council on issues involving the collapse of the Soviet empire.” (Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, Tampa, FL, 1/23/12)

Reagan’s diary mentioned Gingrich only one time.

• FACT: “[R]eagan mentioned Gingrich only once in his published diaries. That’s true.” (FactCheck.Org, 1/20/12)

Reagan criticized Gingrich saying Newt’s ideas “would cripple our defense program.” Reagan rejected Newt’s ideas.

• FACT: “Met with a group of young Repub. Congressmen. Newt Gingrich has a proposal for freezing the budget at the 1983 level. It’s a tempting idea except that it would cripple our defense program. And if we make an exception on that every special interest group will be asking for the same.” (Ronald Reagan, diary entry from Jan. 3, 1982, The Reagan Diaries, published 1999, pg. 123)