Waxman Smacks Down Gingrich On Cap-And-Trade Talking Point

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Of all the odd phenomena in Republican Washington, perhaps the most inexplicable is the party's embrace of Newt Gingrich--a man who hasn't been elected to political office since the kids still listened to Fastball--as a man of ideas and political relevance. Today they turned to him to articulate some of those ideas before a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on climate change legislation. We liked this exchange between Gingrich and committee chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) in particular:

"The problem with these numbers is that they're simply not true.... When the American people hear the statements that you have made, they get scared. Which is exactly what I think is intended. Let's scare people. This is not a new tactic."

We've reported extensively on the Republicans' mischaracterization of the MIT study Waxman cites. And despite repeated attempts by the study's author to set the record straight, the GOP continues to say it says things it doesn't actually say.

Gingrich also cites a Weekly Standard article and a study by the supply-side economist Arthur Laffer among others. But more on those later. For now, though it should be clear (if it wasn't already) that Newt Gingrich isn't a pure conservative man of ideas, untouched by Republican party orthodoxy, and that he drops the ruse entirely when Republicans think they've come up with a really, really good talking point.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04...xman-rebuts.php

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Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."