” I worked with President Reagan to change things in Washington.  We helped defeat the Soviet empire.”  says Newt Gingrich liberally on the campaign trail.

Among the waterfall of questions that surround Gingrich’s career in and out of government, his “partnership” with President Reagan, as a brand new Congressman, seems sometimes overstated.  Former Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, Elliot Abrams speaks out today and remembers Newt Gingrich differently:

“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 Hilter met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

It is statements like this, that make many fearful of Gingrich returning to the national stage.

Instead, the visionary President Reagan charted a friendship and a course which would free Europe and bring down the weakening Soviet Empire.

And more:

“The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “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.”

Kitchen Cabinet women may still find Newt Gingrich to be their choice of conscience, but it is important to weigh carefully the weapons his candidacy gives the Left.

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Filed under: Featured, Inside The KC, Politics by Sonja Eddings Brown, Jan 25, 2012