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Gingrich: McCain Must Oppose Bailout
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ShareSeptember 23, 2008 5:11 PM
ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that President Bush's proposed bailout plan is a "dead loser on Election Day" and urged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to come out against it, saying that the GOP nominee cannot be for it and maintain his claim to be a reformer.
"I don't know how he can vote for this and with a straight face go around and say that he's for real change and he's the reform candidate," Gingrich told ABC News.
Gingrich's comments were the latest sign that the presidential campaign could be upended by the Bush administration's $700 billion plan to buy up and hopefully resell troubled mortgage-backed securities.
If McCain were to come out against the bailout plan, Gingrich said that Republicans would rally to his side and it would become possible for the McCain-Palin ticket to style itself as "taking on the Bush-Obama establishment."
"Either McCain is going to go along" with Obama in supporting the plan, said Gingrich, "in which case the establishment will have the fix in . . . or you are going to see McCain decide, much in the way that he did in picking Palin, that, in fact, he is a genuine maverick, that he genuinely defends the taxpayers, and that this is a terrible bill."
"If the latter happens," Gingrich continued, "I think you will see the emergence overnight of a 'McCain Reform Wing of the Republican Party' and you'll see House and Senate members siding with McCain by overwhelming margins and then you'll be in a very different political environment. You'll have 'Bush-Obama ads' on the one side and 'taking on the Bush-Obama establishment' on the other side, and that will be, frankly, one of the more amazing elections."
Left unsaid by the former Speaker is the possibility that the bailout plan would simply die if McCain were to come out against it, which in turn, could deprive the McCain-Palin ticket of the opportunity to run against the "Bush-Obama establishment."
"If McCain doesn't come out for this, it's over," a top House Republican told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday.
Gingrich is against the bailout plan because he thinks it is "inconceivable" that the Treasury and Fed can manage Wall Street.
While coming out against the bailout plan, Gingrich forcefully rejected the contention that he favors doing nothing and laid out a conservative alternative.
Gingrich's four-point plan includes: (1) suspending immediately mark to market provisions (the accounting practice of valuing a financial position in an investment at its current market price) in the hopes of stopping the downward spiral in asset values and eventually replacing it with a three year rolling average; (2) repealing immediately Sarbanes-Oxley, the 2002 accounting law Gingrich described as "an enormous drag on small business"; (3) setting the capital gains tax rate at zero "matching the Chinese and Singapore" (to encourage private capital to flood into the market picking up properties without the taxpayers being at risk); and (4) passing an "extraordinarily powerful" energy bill ("to return $500 billion a year to the American economy that are currently going overseas").
Gingrich spoke with ABC News in Washington, D.C., after participating in a polling presentation sponsored by American Solutions, the group he established last year which works to identify issues that have a majority support among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
September 23, 2008 in Vote 2008: Republicans | Permalink | User Comments (88)
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It's easy Newt, McCain IS now and has always been a DEMOCRAT!!! DUH! Don't you ever get tired of this "RINO" insulting YOU and the American people? C'mon Newt, you know better!
Posted by: hmn | Sep 23, 2008 5:20:19 PM
That Newt. And to think he was once satisfied just shutting down the federal government.
Posted by: ricky | Sep 23, 2008 5:21:34 PM
Repeal Sarbanes Oxley, open up drilling and both Enron and Ken Lay will rise up from the dead. Of course, given what has happened to the markets it will take a long time for a capital gains cut to have any real effect. People will be writing off this year's losses for the rest of this decade.
Posted by: ricky | Sep 23, 2008 5:24:31 PM
If McCain doesn't come out against the bailout, he'll show himself to be the Bush puppet that his detractors accuse him of being. I was encouraged by McCain's initial stance against the bailout. Then McCain flip-flopped into Bush's camp. I wonder if he got a phone call from the White House or something.
Sterling Greenwood
Aspen Free Press
Posted by: AspenFreePress | Sep 23, 2008 5:34:17 PM
Yeah, Come On Ole John, put your mouth where your, well, mouth is. You say this is bad, but not out loud, SPEAK UP, take a stand. Don't keep hiding in the dark claiming that Obama's doing what YOU, YOURSELF are doing.
Ole McCain, those old guys always crap about everything, don't they?
Posted by: JR | Sep 23, 2008 5:35:39 PM
Having the choice between the ongoing of a economic desaster and a black president a lot citizen are chosing the ongoing of the desaster.... you call that a self destructing hate.
Posted by: maz hess | Sep 23, 2008 5:38:15 PM
but all of mccains buddies are in this mess he has to save them
Posted by: Bhrandon | Sep 23, 2008 5:45:38 PM
sure he can vote for it and then call himself a reformer, jsut like he can spend 26 years calling for deregulation and then claim lack of oversight as a factor in the current crisis. Just like it has been 8 years of a GOP whitehouse, with 6 years of a GOP congress and it is Obama's fault that the banks are failing now. That his sits on the commerce committee but doens't understand economics. This turn of face would be no problem for him.
Posted by: Danny | Sep 23, 2008 5:48:24 PM
how does john mccain continue the war in iraq and continue to support no taxes except for those rich wall street people?
how does john mccain stop the landslide spending that is the bush administration?
Posted by: Bhrandon | Sep 23, 2008 5:50:24 PM
obama said today taht this administration with their bailouts are officially hamstringing the next president and if the bailout goes through he would have to slowly ad in his plans over the course of his first 4 years
sounds like obama has a grasp of the situation
anyone want to wake up mccain and tell him his tax cuts for the rich wallstreet people arent looking so great and ask him how he plans to get the defecit down
Posted by: Bhrandon | Sep 23, 2008 5:51:53 PM
maz hess You're pretty close but not quite right. It's not really hate as much as fear. All of our chicken conservative friends are terrified of voting for such an intelligent guy who is not a good ol' boy. Besides he has a funny name and isn't even 85% white. We are just going to cling to the hope that the fat cats will patch things up well enough that there will be enough scraps left over for us to get by.
Posted by: McChickens | Sep 23, 2008 5:57:01 PM
Gingrich '08
Posted by: john | Sep 23, 2008 5:57:15 PM
If McCain comes out against the Bailout then what would be his solution to the Wall Street crisis?
Posted by: Vanessa | Sep 23, 2008 5:57:25 PM
REPUBLICAN BLAME:
democrat administration and minority homeowners for the wallstreet catastrophy
LOL this is sooo good, i mean, who are these people
no it wasnt the deregulation it was the democrats and all those pesky yard workers
lol
cmon wtf you guys need to be out of office for awhile, you are pathetic
tahnks for bankrupting the country pathetic republicans
Posted by: Bhrandon | Sep 23, 2008 5:58:59 PM
Why should anyone pay attention to a has been like Newt who was thoroughly repudiated by Clinton in 1996 in the Presidential election and by his own party for poor decisions that led to major losses.
Posted by: bhciapol | Sep 23, 2008 6:03:16 PM
I personally can't wait for the debate on Friday.
Posted by: beck | Sep 23, 2008 6:10:57 PM
mccain economic plan
ATTACK SPAIN!
Posted by: Bhrandon | Sep 23, 2008 6:18:29 PM
Thank you, George Bush. Thank you, John McCain. Thank you, Sarah Palin. I'm sick to my stomach after reading the following:
"We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida," Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would "call it quits."
"The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don't have that money," Jones said.
Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress "we're running out of time" in Afghanistan. "I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," Adm. Mullen testified.
Posted by: Mr. Coffee | Sep 23, 2008 6:18:38 PM
beck....ARE YOU KIDDING?? There will be NO debating as neither candidate has the incentive to debate...BOTH ARE TOO AFRAID TO MAKE A COMMITMENT ON THE ISSUES...I wouldn't be surprised if they spend the time in a stare down contest....or perhaps, no you go first...no no you go first...no age before beauty.......
Posted by: curious indep | Sep 23, 2008 6:24:07 PM
bhrandon....Stop thinking old school...this isn't repub vs dem issue..took both parties to get us here and it is going to COST BOTH REPUB/DEM/INDEP...TAXPAYERS TO GET US OUT..
Posted by: curious indep | Sep 23, 2008 6:28:40 PM
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