Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was blasted for saying President Obama exhibits “Kenyan, anti-colonialist behavior.” (AP)
Gingrich, a Georgia Republican and a potential 2010 presidential candidate, made the comment in an interview with the National Review, in which he credited his observation to a recent article in Forbes magazine by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza that examined what shapes the nation’s first black president’s philosophies.
In the National Review piece, Gingrich called Obama a “wonderful con” who “is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works.”
"What if (Obama) is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together (his actions)?" Gingrich said in the interview. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating - none of which was true," Gingrich continued. "In the Alinsky tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve. ... He was authentically dishonest."
White House officials and Democratic Party organizations pounced on Gingrich’s remarks.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” suggested that Gingrich is looking for the anti-Obama “birther” vote.
Gingrich is “trying to appeal to the fringe of people who don’t think the president was born in this country,” Gibbs said. "You would normally expect better from somebody who had held the position of Speaker of the House."
Hari Sevugan, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, said Gingrich’s comments destroy the myth that the bombastic former House speaker has become a voice of moderation as he mulls a 2012 presidential run.
"This crushes the hopes of those who thought Gingrich could bring ideas instead of smears to what the GOP was offering," said Sevugan told The Huffington Post. "He's not a reasonable man that some thought he could be. He's proven he's just like the rest of them with a worldview shaped by the most radical and fringe elements of the Republican Party, which are more dominant with each passing day."
Gingrich derived his assessment of Obama from the D’Souza piece in Forbes. In the article, D’Souza rhetorically put Obama on the psychiatrist’s couch and concludes that much of what makes him tick can be traced to his deceased Kenyan father.
“It may seem incredible to suggest that the anti-colonial ideology of Barack Obama, Sr. is espoused by his son, the president of the United States,” D’Souza writes. “That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military an instrument of neocolonial occupation, He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America.”
“Our president is trapped in his father’s time machine,” D’Souza continues. “Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dream in his son … The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post commentator Eugene Robinson noted in his Tuesday column, entitled "Gingrich, Unhinged on Obama," called D'Souza's article "a big gob of gibberish ... much of it strikingly lazy," .....
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