Busy Week for Newt: Gingrich Weeps, Files VA Lawsuit to Be Put on Primary Ballot, & Says He’s Killed Chapter on Climate Change in Upcoming Book (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on December 30, 2011
Busy week for Newt Gingrich
Things have gone badly and oddly over the past few weeks for GOP presidential and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. His election polling numbers have fallen, although his donations have risen, he has filed a lawsuit to be placed on the Virginia primary ballot despite reportedly failing to secure enough signatures to be placed on the ballot, he wept today at the Iowa caucus as he recalled his late mother’s end-of-life illnesses, and in the latest in the “Newt Saga,” he says that he will be eliminating a climate change chapter in an upcoming book.
Busy week for the Newtman…
From National Journal, Gingrich Kills Chapter on Climate Change in Upcoming Book:
Newt Gingrich says he has killed a chapter on climate change in a post-election book of essays about the environment. But the intended author of the chapter, who supports the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change, says that’s news to her.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech, confirmed in an e-mail interview that she had been asked to write a chapter on climate change for the former House speaker’s book. She said was approached by former Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, Gingrich’s coeditor, at an annual meeting of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Asked to confirm her chapter was dropped, she replied, “I had not heard that.”
The climate-change issue arose on Thursday night at a Gingrich campaign stop in Carroll, when a woman expressed concern about the chapter. She said she had heard about it on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. As she began to tell Gingrich who the author of the piece would be, Gingrich interrupted. “That’s not going to be in the book,” he told her. “We didn’t know that they were doing that, and we told them to kill it.”
Hayhoe, whose husband is an evangelical pastor, recently wrote a book about climate change from an evangelical perspective. In an interview with Christian writer Jonathan Merritt, she left no doubt as to where she stands on the existence or the cause of the phenomenon.
“Among climate scientists—people who spend their lives researching our world—there is no debate regarding the reality of climate change and the fact that humans are the primary cause,” Hayhoe said in the interview. “It is primarily laypeople, such as talk-show hosts, or those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, who are perpetuating the idea that there is no scientific consensus.”
Limbaugh picked up on those quotes on Dec. 19, including Hayhoe’s poke at talk-show hosts. He called her “one of Newt’s experts” and said she believes in man-made global warming. That no doubt created heartburn for Team Newt.
From Rush’s Quick Hits page on his website on Newt and climate change:
Our old buddy Marc Morano, used to be our man in Washington on my TV show, and now is a global warming expert.
He’s got a blog that’s called Climate Depot, and here it is. Actually this piece is from the John Locke Foundation, Roy Cordato, but Marc Morano is mentioned in it, our man in Washington. Apparently, Newt has a book coming out in 2013, after the election. According to Morano, our man in Washington, according to the Climate Depot, Newt’s book in 2013′s gonna feature a chapter by a Texas Tech climate scientist named Katharine Hayhoe focusing on the science of climate change. Katharine Hayhoe believes in man-made global warming. According to Marc Morano, she is the author of Newt’s chapter on the climate in his forthcoming book in 2013 on the environment.
Katharine Hayhoe is one of Newt’s experts, and is a person who, when asked if the science was settled regarding global warming, she said, “Among climate scientists, people who spend their lives researching our world, there’s no debate regarding the reality of climate change and the fact that humans are the primary cause.” This woman is writing Newt’s chapter on climate change in the new book. She says, “It is primarily laypeople like talk show hosts who are perpetuating the idea that there is no scientific consensus.” Marc Morano, our man in Washington, claims that Newt’s new book has a chapter written by a babe named Hayhoe — no offense, Reverend Jackson — that man-made global warming is happening, caused by man.
More from National Journal:
In a recent Pew Research Center poll, only 43 percent of Republicans – and only 31 percent of conservatives – said they believe there is solid evidence of global warming. That compares to 77 percent of Democrats. So the topic is tricky for GOP presidential candidates.
That’s particularly true for Gingrich, who infamously sat down with Nancy Pelosi to film an ad calling for action on global warming (which he has since called “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in the last few years”). The former speaker has also shifted his position on cap-and-trade and has walked back previous comments that there is a “wealth of scientific data” that warming is taking place.
Flashback: This bone-headed global warming ad with Gingrich and Pelosi sitting cozily on a love seat aired three years ago, and he’s gotten grief for it ever since. Newt said in July 2011 that he regretted that decision, since he believes it was “misconstrued.”
He has said since making that ad that he’s not convinced that the climate change “junk science” (my quotation marks, not his, my addition of “junk”) and the shameless global warming hoax (again, my wording, not his) warrants any action.
Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich Commercial on Climate Change | 2008
Newt’s daughter, Jackie Cushman, on her dad crying today… reported by Daily Beast:
A few in the former House speaker’s media entourage—who have been frantically crisscrossing the first caucus state of Iowa in a two-bus caravan—were buzzing that this could be “Newt’s Hillary moment.” That was a reference to Hillary Clinton’s teary performance at a town meeting just before the 2008 New Hampshire primary—humanizing waterworks that may have given her a last-minute edge, and victory, over her then-bitter rival Barack Obama.
Maybe Gingrich, who’s lagging at the back of the pack in the latest polls, only a few weeks after being the Iowa frontrunner, can redeem his flagging candidacy with a tactical show of emotion.
But Cushman, an author, syndicated columnist, and mother of two, reacted in more personal terms—that is, with the full knowledge that the deeply personal is entirely political during the hard-fought Republican presidential nominating contest.
Gingrich’s tears were prompted when Republican pollster Frank Luntz, emceeing the event hosted by the nonpartisan mother-oriented group Moms Matter, asked the candidate about his late mother, Kathleen, who suffered from bipolar disease and other ailments as she spent her last days in a nursing home. Gingrich—known as a copious weeper in private, during tense closed-door meetings in the speaker’s office—started sobbing when he talked about how his mother’s condition prompted his interest in brain science. As the mostly female audience applauded and “awww”ed, he quickly regained his composure.
As Cushman wept along with her dad, her older sister, Kathy Lubbers—sitting with their stepmother, Callista Gingrich, in the front row at the landmark coffeehouse Java Joe’s—passed some Kleenex up to the stage.
“It was really nice today to hear him speak from the heart,” Cushman said afterward.
Newt Gingrich gets emotional about his mother
Related reading:
The New Media Journal, Global Warming: An Obituary
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