Gingrich Executes Stunning Backflip
Think Progress’s George Zornick catches Newt Gingrich executing a stunning reverse double backflip maneuver: Gingrich Criticized Obama For Not Intervening In Libya, But Now Criticizes Him For Intervening In Libya.
Gingrich on March 7:
Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening.
Gingrich on the Today Show, March 23:
GINGRICH: The standard [Obama] has fallen back to of humanitarian intervention could apply to Sudan, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, to Syria this week, to Yemen, to Bahrain. … The Arab League wanted us to do something. The minute we did something, the Arab League began criticizing us doing it. I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot. I think that the problems we have in Pakistan, Egypt — go around the region. We could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.
This isn’t even a flip-flop, it’s a total reversal — proving again that the most important priority for Gingrich (and the GOP in general) is to oppose absolutely anything and everything the President does, even if they have to trip over their own clown shoes to do it.
This kind of screwed-up thinking is amazingly common on the right wing these days, so Gingrich probably won’t suffer any damage among his supporters. But it’s about as naked as political hypocrisy ever gets.
The funniest part of all this thrashing is that Obama has completely tied the right wing in knots over Libya, just by acting like a President of the United States.