Tag: Newt Gingrich

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Newt Gingrich regarding first wife: “Not young or pretty enough to be First Lady”

Newt Gingrich, in trying to defuse one of his biggest political liabilities, has tried to say that he did NOT serve papers on his first wife while she was in the hospital receiving cancer treatment.

But new documents contradict that version of the story….

A confidant of the former House speaker told CNN that Gingrich said he dumped Jackie Battley — his one-time high school geometry teacher — in 1980 because she wasn’t “young enough or pretty enough” to be First Lady.

On his campaign website, he denies the much-retold story that he served his first wife divorce papers in the hospital where she had just had cancer surgery.

“It was (Jackie Battley) that requested the divorce, not Newt, and it was months before the hospital visit in question,” the campaign website says.

But newly revealed 30-year-old court papers posted on CNN’s website appear to contradict that.

In the papers, Battley asks the judge to reject her husband’s request for a divorce.

“Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,” her petition said.

“Defendant does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken.”

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Newt Gingrich to gay man: Vote for Obama

Scott Arnold

Newt Gingrich told a gay Iowan that he should vote for President Barack Obama when the man asked him about gay rights, the Des Moines Register reported.

Gingrich reportedly made the comment during an event Tuesday at Smokey Row coffee house in Oskaloosa.

“I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama,” said Scott Arnold, an adjunct professor of writing at William Penn University.”

Arnold, a Democrat, said he came to the event at Smokey Row coffee house with an open mind. But he wanted to ask Gingrich about how he would represent him as president after reading past comments the former U.S. House Speaker has made about gay and lesbians.

“When you ask somebody a question and you expect them to support all Americans and have everyone’s general interest. It’s a little bit frustrating and disheartening when you’re told to support the other side. That he doesn’t need your support.”

Gingrich recently pledged to two conservative groups that as president he would work against marriage equality by supporting a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and offering a vigorous defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

At an October campaign stop in Iowa, Gingrich said that gay marriage “is a temporary aberration that will dissipate.”

“It doesn’t inspire hope at all,” Arnold added. “And if that’s what he’s trying to do and that’s what he’s trying to say, that this is a collective effort if he’s elected president, yet he tells me to support the other side?”

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Poll: Newt Gingrich in free fall in Iowa

From Public Policy Polling:

Newt Gingrich’s campaign is rapidly imploding, and Ron Paul has now taken the lead in Iowa. He’s at 23% to 20% for Mitt Romney, 14% for Gingrich, 10% each for Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, 4% for Jon Huntsman, and 2% for Gary Johnson.

Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row. His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%. And there’s been a large drop in his personal favorability numbers as well from +31 (62/31) to +12 (52/40) to now -1 (46/47).

Negative ads over the last few weeks have really chipped away at Gingrich’s image as being a strong conservative – now only 36% of voters believe that he has ‘strong principles,’ while 43% think he does not.

Ron Paul’s ascendancy is a sign that perhaps campaigns do matter at least a little, in a year where there has been a lot of discussion about whether they still do in Iowa. 22% of voters think he’s run the best campaign in the state compared to only 8% for Gingrich and 5% for Romney. The only other candidate to hit double digits on that question is Bachmann at 19%. Paul also leads Romney 26-5 (with Gingrich at 13%) with the 22% of voters who say it’s ‘very important’ that a candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa. Finally Paul leads Romney 29-19 among the 26% of likely voters who have seen one of the candidates in person.

If this continues, watch for Gingrich’s lead in other early states to evaporate too.

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Gingrich tax plan cuts taxes by $600K for millionaires

Newt Gingrich has put forward a tax plan that will “allow Americans the freedom to choose to file their taxes on a postcard, saving hundreds of billions in unnecessary costs each year.”

However, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, the plan will also achieve another of Gingrich’s ends — giving millionaires a tax cut of more than $600,000 per year:

Gingrich’s plan would create an optional 15 percent flat tax with a per-person deduction of $12,000. He would drop the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent from 35 percent, allow businesses to write off capital expenses and eliminate taxes on capital gains and estates, according to his website.

People earning more than $1 million a year would receive an average tax cut of $613,689 in 2015, compared with what they pay now. That change would boost their after-tax income by 28.7 percent and put their average tax rate at 11.9 percent.

Under the plan, half of the entire benefit goes to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. The richest 0.1 percent of the country will receive a tax cut worth nearly $2 million each and every year. These tax cuts are in addition to what the wealthy are already receiving from their disproportionate share of the Bush tax cuts.

The end result of the plan would be millionaires paying a lower tax rate than middle-class families, as a millionaire would pay an 11.9 percent rate, while a family making $40,000-$50,000 would pay 12.7 percent.

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Ron Paul: Newt Gingrich no friend of the Tea Party

One of Ron Paul’s chief supporters – his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul – said Friday that Newt Gingrich stood opposed to tea party values.

“I got elected with a lot of the tea party support and the tea party movement,” Sen. Paul said on CNN “Newsroom.”

“The tea party was a lot about people unhappy with Republicans voting for bank bailouts. We thought they sold out our limited government views when they voted to send taxpayer money to big banks. Unfortunately, Newt Gingrich was right there with them being paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It goes against everything that the tea party stands for.”

The assault on Gingrich comes as Ron Paul, a three-time presidential candidate and Texas congressman, aired a blistering television ad in Iowa and New Hampshire that slams Gingrich for “serial hypocrisy,” saying the former House speaker had cashed in after leaving Congress by becoming a lobbyist.

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Obama: “Ask Osama bin Laden if I engage in appeasement”

At the Republican Jewish Coalition GOP presidential candidates forum this week, Mitt Romney claimed President Obama is ‘appeasing’ America’s enemies.

“Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy,” Mitt Romney said.

Newt Gingrich accused the Obama State Department of “appeasing our opponents.”

A reporter asked the President about the GOP attack line today during a White House press conference.

President Obama’s answer: “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 other out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement, or, whoever is left out there.”