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Former President Bill Clinton is offering some surprising praise for Newt Gingrich. The question in political circles is whether Clinton's positive words will help or hurt his old nemesis.
In an interview with Newsmax, Clinton said, "He's articulate and he tries to think of a conservative version of an idea that will solve a legitimate problem." As an example, Clinton cited the former House speaker's controversial remarks about immigration in last week's national security debate among Republican presidential candidates. Clinton commented that, "He said, 'OK, I don't want to legitimize immigrants who came here undocumented, illegally. On the other hand, a lot of those people have been here for years, they worked hard, they paid taxes, they've got kids in the schools, they're not criminals, we're going to have a hard time sending them all home, there's millions of them. So, I'd like to have a process where they could be here legally but not have a path to citizenship.' That sort of splits the difference between the immigration reforms proposed by President Bush and President Obama, which would give a path to citizenship and would be a version of what President Reagan did."[See a collection of political cartoons on immigration.]
Clinton also praised Gingrich for proposing a creative idea to improve Social Security: Letting workers choose to invest their Social Security funds privately, but providing that if the stock market drops, government would guarantee that workers would not receive less in retirement than they would have received under the traditional Social Security system. "See, that's a new wrinkle on this," Clinton said. "...I think he's doing well just because he's thinking, and people are hungry for ideas that make some sense."
Clinton fought repeatedly with Gingrich when they both were in office, but they also worked together on issues including welfare reform and cutting the deficit.
Bill Clinton Praises Newt Gingrich - Ken Walsh's Washington (usnews.com)
We've had a lot of talk coming out of many in the RNC that Newt Gingrich is not capable of attracting the independent vote. Bill Clinton--as President --with Newt Gingrich as speaker--in one of our best economies ever--were actually able to get things DONE--even though they had different political positions. Listening to Gingrich tonight--it's clear that even though they came from different sides of the isle they did and continue to respect each other.
Gingrich was asked what the difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is. Newt answered that Bill Clinton was a governor in a conservative state and was very experienced with working with conservatives--and able to see both sides before making a decision. Gingrich stated that Clinton was often chastised by the democrats in congress for meeting in the middle with republicans for solutions and was willing to listen and consider new ideas. Gingrich even mentioned one instance that if not for Bill Clinton one of his pieces of legislation would not have passed.
Whereas-Gingrich states-Barack Obama had no experience. He was a state senator in Illinois--and spent those 2 years there running for the U.S. senate--when he won the US senate seat he spent those two years running for President. During all this time he gained no experience in real legislation--and working with people of different political ideology. He had no accomplishments--except winning one after another election. He then added it's one thing to be radical--it's one thing to be incompetent--but when you have both--that's just to hard to take--while referring to Barack Obama.
Rasmussen poll--shows Newt Gingrich beating Barack Obama.
2012 Presidential Matchups - Rasmussen Reports™
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