Bill Clinton, the original "comeback kid" doesn't see much hope for a resurgence by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, dissing him in a new interview as a Romney clone because of issues the former speaker has flip-flopped on.
Clinton, who is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Esquire, puts down the speaker who has bragged on the campaign trail of how he worked with Clinton to reform welfare and balance the budget. [Check out the latest political cartoons.]
Clinton doesn't give any love back. In an excerpt provided to Whispers, the former president says, "As a private citizen he was for certain important health-care reforms and believed in climate change and believed there had to be a strong reaction to it. And now he's just like Romney. Neither one of them can say what they believe to be true and get nominated. Romney's still trying to figure out what he did as governor of Massachusetts and still appeal to this driving vituperative energy."
Bubba also takes a shot at the GOP culture, charging that the Republican side of aisle has given up any pretence of moderation and bipartisanship. His key example is how Jon Huntsman was run out of the Republican primaries because voters saw him as a moderate and didn't respond well to his work as President Obama's ambassador to China.
"Huntsman's economic record — and his positions on the abortion issue and other things — is every bit as conservative and considerably more consistent than the two front-runners. But he also doesn't make any bones about being willing to work with people and thinking you ought to put your country first. When the president asks you to serve — to go to China, and you speak Mandarin Chinese and you think you can help American business and America's national strategic interest by doing it — you do it."
"But all of a sudden that's disqualifying. So I think that it shows you, we're, you know, we're living in a time when the Republicans have only pushed harder and harder to the right. And every time the president adopts a plan that they once advocated, they abandon it and push farther to the right. But the voters can push them back."
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FLORENCE of OH 4:17PM January 21, 2012
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lwlivingston of NY 6:35PM January 20, 2012