Summary

FTG REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE NEWT GINGRICH SPEAKING AT EVENT IN MASON CITY, IOWA 11:46:20 Gingrich makes his way to podium with Callista 11:47:23 Gingrich: Well, thank you all for coming out today, and I wanna thank Linda Upmire in particular She has been absolutely the heart of our campaign here in Iowa and we're very proud of her The first women ever to be the majority leader of the State House, she did a great job, and if you look at the budget they worked out, without tax increases, and the way they worked very hard and diligently Washington could learn a lot of lessons from Linda Upmire and the Republicans in the legislature and the governor, and how to get things that would make Washington a whole lot better, so I guess a part of my campaign is to try to figure out how to educate Washington to be more like Iowa, rather than having Iowa become more like Washington (applause) ***11:48:11 We are delighted to be here in the closing days of the campaign here in Iowa, and let me just ask a question, b because I'm curious How many of you have received enough negative ads and mailers and what have you? I mean I wanna make two commitments to you, You're gonna see ads from us for the next six days, and they're gonna be positive You're gonna see ads from a so-called Super PAC that favors me, and they're gonna be posiitive I think that we have enough trouble in this country that we oughtta have a campaign of positive ideas and positive solutions, because the only person helped by negative ads is Barack Obama, and our business is to defeat him, not help him, and I'm gonna stay positive for that purpose (applause) 11:49:06 I am gonna talk briefly and take questions, and if you wanna ask any questions about the negative ads, I'll be glad to answer them, because I think you have a right to know the facts, and I'm perfectly happy to do that We've also been doingf telephone town hall meetings In fact, State Rep JoshBurns is here somewhere, and he actually got a call the other night as part fo a town hall meeting, and he and his daughter, Alexandria, joined in and participated in the call, and we had 9,700 peoplethe oteh night in one of our telephone town hall meetings, and I'm happy to answer any question about some of these totally false charges and exaggerations, but I really wanna focus on jobs and the economy, and tehre's a very powerful, practical reason You have a relatively good economy in Iowa compared to some parts of the country But the US is the economic engine which pulls the world economy, and there are very grave, troubling signs out there in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East, and I think there's a very real tdanger that the world economy could take another step downward in 2012, and having a healthy, vibrant American economy is a key part of us getting ahead 11:50:13 NJow, I'm gonna taljk to you about what I would do as president, but let me say, in opassing, I thionk the disaster of the President and the Congress passing a two-month extensipn and going home as if they had accomplished something is really embarrassing I don't think I've ever seen Washington more dysfunctional on a bi-partisan b asis than it is right now (applause) And I think this very serious for the counrty , because it's a mess No business now knows how to plan, no family knows how to plan You know theyr'e going to have another crisis in February To kick the ball down the road two months to have another crisis, probably, in May To kick the ball down the road I mean, this is an absurd way to govern I say this with experience I was a junior member when Ronald Reagan was elected Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House E had to g et 1/3 of the Democartys in order to pass anything, and we did When I became Speaker of the House, we had a Democratic president E had to get his signature to get things into law And we worked and we got Bill Clinton sign welfare reform We got him to sign the first tax cut in 16 years, the largest capital gains tax cut in history, and, in fact, when we passed welfare reform, 2/3 peoplewent to work or went to school, child poverty in America to the lowest point ever because parents were working, and the result was the Democrats split 101 votes yes, 101 voted no When we passed the tax cuts and the largest capital g ains tax cut in history, unemployment dropped to 42% Can you imagine how healthy we'd b e at 42% unemployment right now? In that process we were able to balance the budget for four straight years, so I 've twice participated in serious bi-partisan reforms where you had to be able to reach the American people with an idea, and g et the American people to reach therir congressman and senators in order to get things done, and I watch what's currently going on, and I'll tell you It's the cost of amateurism Barack Obama doesn't have any idea how to be president, he doesn't know how to negotiate The leader of the Democrats in the Senate is deeply partisan, and so you have a log jam, and I ghave no ideawhat I would do if I were in John Boehner's shoes, because I was very fortunate, both in the Reagan years and in the Clinton years, to have somebody rational to work with, and you could actally negotiate I mean, we fought pretty hard, as you can remember, but we fought with an understanding that the country's biger than our partisanship The country is b igger than our idealgy, and we have to find a way to get the country to work in order for America to succeed Ameica only works when American are working, and that's a key principle of this campaign 11:53:02 We're focusing on jobs and the economy and economic growth, and I'm deligted that Art Laffer is coming in to campaign with me t omorrow I first worked with Laffer in the late 1970s when Laffer, Wanniski, Larry Kudlow, Richard Ron, Jack Kemp, and a group of us were working on what's called supply-side economics It's a v ery simple model If you increase the number of jobs and you increase the amount of production, you solve problems by having more things, more oil, more gas, more ethanol, more corn production, you know, more manufacturing, and that mops up money, and that mops up unemployment And so, it was a fundamental intellectual argument with Keynesian economics, which basially focused on the demand side Many people thought we'd won the argument, between Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, and Ronald Reagan in the US In fact, Daniel Yergin wrote a fascinating book called 'The Commanding Heights,' in which he described how Hayek and the Austrian economist had won and Keyenes and the demand guys had lost Wasn't true The reason the estabnlishmnet in both parties likes Keynesian economics is it puts control with the politicians The reason they don't like the Ronald Reagan Jack Kemp Newt Gingrich supply-side approach is it puts power in the hands of the people 11:54:25 If you believe in markets, you have to make decisions It means you have to be in charge If you believe that entrepreneurs create jobs, it means you, in fact, are going to be in charge The president deosn't create jobs The president can create conditions that facvor jobs, or they can creat conditions that hurt jobs But in the end you have to arouse the American people, because it's the Amerian people who create jobs It's the hard work of Americans that creates jobs So, we're back in exactly the same competition between a populaist supply-side apprcoh that Reagan and Kemp and I popul;arized 30 years ago and the much more timid, Washingtoni-centered approach, which will not create jobs, and of coruse Obama represents the extreme v ersion, wh ich is a Saul Alinsky radicalism, which actually kills jobs Consider the Reagan model Cut taxes, cut regulations, strengthen American energy production, and praise the people who create jobs Say it's important go out and open up a small business It's important to show up for work on Monday It's important to save and invest Then look at the Obama model HJigehr taxces, more eregulations, anti-American energy, and class warfare t o attack the people who create jobs I don't think the White House has a clue I mean I don't think they get up ion the morning and say, 'How many jobs can we kill today' I just don't think they realize that their idealogy kills jobs So you take the XL Keystone pipeline 20,000 jobs immediately, billions of dollars of oil going to Houston, which is the largest pil refinery complex in the world, a generation of money coming to the US from Canadian oil on the way to worldwide distribution The president postpones it, doesn't want to make a decision, because extremists are against building a pipeline for a very abvstract reason It's not because they worry about pipelines We build pipelines all the time They don't want Canadian oil in the world market because of the indirect by-product that they see in terms of global warming, therefor they're trying to find a way to keep Canadian oil in Canada Now, here's the problem It's on ething if you have an administration that can't play chess It's another thing if you have an administration that can't play checkers But it you have an administration that can't play tic-tac-toe, you're in deep trouble The Canadians are not trapped by Barack Obama The Canadians can take Chinese money to build the very same pipeline straight west across the rockies, put it in Vancouver, not a penny will come to the US, n ot a job will be created in the US, the environmentalists wil lose because the oil's gonna be used by the Chinese, and that's what the president's faced with, and I don't think he understands it 11:57:25 So, he goes to Brazil, and he says to the Brazilians, 'I really want to be your best customer He praises the Brazilians for drilling offshore, which he stops us from doing He tells them how glad he is we can guarantee them two billion dollars in equipment for a George Soros-invested company, and then he praises them and says, 'I'd like to be your best customer' That's exactly backwards, and every Iowa farmer know this We do not want the POTUS to be a purchasing agent for foreign countries We want the POTUS to be a salesman for American products If we don't sell American agricultural products worldwide, we will havea depression in farm country, So, we need a president who goes out and opens up markets for American agricultural products, because it is the We produce more than we're going to absorb here at home And I think Obama has it exactly backwards We have an economic growth plan, which you can see at newtorg It's very straight forward Remember I said cut taxes, cut regulations, strengthen American energy, favor people who actually create jobs 11:58:27 On taxes, we have zero capital gains so that hundreds of billions of dollars will pour into the US to create factories and firms and give us an enormous economic advantage We go to 125% corp tax rate, which is the Irish tax level That guarantees that, first of all, 700 billion dollars will come back home in profits that are currently locked up overseas that they won't bring back home at a 35% rate It means, second, that our companies will compete worldwide This will give us a lower corp tax rate than Canada And so we'll be very competitive worldwide And third, it means GE will actually pay taxes because it'll be cheaper to pay taxes than pay tax lawyers at 125% We have 100% expensing What that means is if you're a farm or factory or a business, all new equipment gets written off in one year, and the purpose is very direct If we're going to compete with China and India, we have to have the most modern equipment in the world in order for our works to be the most productive in the world, and because we need productivity, I've also favored changing unemployment compensation so that if you sign up for unemployment compensation, you have to sign up for a training program by a business so we are investing in creating better human capital, better skills, and a better workforce We are not paying people for 99 weeks for doing nothing (applause) 11:59:50 So, the new equipment combined with the better trained workforce means we'll be the most competitive manufacturing company in the world We also permanently abolish the death tax because it is fundamentally immoral to say to peple if you work and save your entire lifetime and do the right thing your entire lifetime, some politican can take half of it away from your family when you die You should not have to visit the IRS and the undertaker in the sme week Period And so we abolish the death tax (applause) 12:00:20 Finally, we provide for individuals a 15% flat tax option This is something they do in Hong Kong You can keep the current code with all of its deductions, or you can fill out a single page, luist how much you've earned, how many dependents you have, pay 15% And that way people have the option to eioter keep records or not keep records, but youhave the choice, not the politician Part one is taxes Part two, regulation I will ask the Congress on Jan 3 beofre I am sworn in, to stay in office andf repeal Obamacare, repeal Dodd-Frank (applause) They should repeal Obamacare, which is a job-killing anti-smal business bill, they should repeal Dodd-Frank because it is killing snmall, independent banks, crippling small business and driving down the price of housing, which dropped again yesterday, by the way, which means the m idle class inverstment in their homes lost value again yesterday, and so if you repeal Dodd-Frank, you help small business, you help the value of housing, and you help independent small banks, who are currently being crushed by red tape I would also ask them to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, which is a bill which has huge red tape and had produced no information of any value during the last three years Those three things will start to liberate American business I would replace And I would like those three done before I'm sworn in, so that the day after I'm sworn in I could sign them and we'd have that part of it done in January and we could go about passing good reforms to replace the bad reforms that we've repealed On the day I;m inaugurated we'll have a day one plan which we'll publish by oct 1 of next year I will sign, about two hours after I'm sworn in, I wil sign between 100-200 executive orders The very first executive order will abolish all of the White House czars as of that moment (applause) 12:02:25 In addition to repealing those three bills, I would ask the Congress to replace the EPA with a brand new ESA, and I mean replace The current bureaucracy at the EPA is so radical, so anti-jobs, and so anti-local community, and so lacking in common sense that you cannot transform it Everywhere I go, whether it's in SC, NH, here in Iowa, small towns tell me they are being crushed by EPA bureaucrats in Washongton whop have never visted their town, have no idea what they're demanding, and the economic cost of the EPA in small towns in America is extraordinary When you go out and talk to businesses I mean, they have a proposal on electricity, which will almost certainly lead to brownouts, and in a time when we're trying to compete in the world market, will dramatically raise the cost of electricity Many of you know Sen Grassly spent a year fighting their dust provisions An agency which takes the general ability to look at particulate matter in clean air and turns that into a bureaucratic study of whether or not when you plow the dirt from your field will drift into the neighboring field, and tehrefor is the wind is high enough that the dust from your plowing will go into the neighboring field, then you should not plow that day I mean, this is Do you know how hard you have to work to be this stupid? This is some guy in th e Washington area who lives in a high-rise apartment with A/C, g oes downstairs to get on a Metro, which has A/C, to ride to his high-rise office where he has no windows, and he sits and he contemplates dust It makes no sense at all I was in AZ talking about what Sen Grassly He said it's worse in AZ He said, 'You know, AZ is a desert, and so we get natural dust storms We had somebody out here from the EPA and he said to us, you know, maybe what you should do is water-down the dirt so you don't get these dust storms' And he said we were trying to expain to him t he reason it's called a desert is we don't have any water Now this is So, I would like to replace the EPA with an ESA based on common sense and practicality I would like to modernize the FDA so that its new job bcomes to be in the laboratory, understand science , and accelerating getting it to the patient, so we could be the leading the developer of new medicine, new technology, because as the world market grows, health is going t o be the best new producer of high-value jobs, and we want an FDA that helps us be at the top of that market and doesn't hurt us 12:05:03 Finally, we get to energy Let me say unequivocally, with Ronald Reagan in 1984, and some of you are old enough to remember this, I actually voted for a thing called gasohol, and he signed it, because it was part of our getting away from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East In 1986 I voted to renew what then became ethanol In 1998, when big oil tried to kill ethanol, Sen Grassly said I was the person who saved it, and there was a practical reason If I have to choose between a billion dollars going to Iran or goint to Iowa, I prefer Iowa If I have to choose a billion dollars going to Saudi Arabia or going to South Dakota, I prefer South Dakota When you watch the Iranians, the news this morning, they are practicing how to close the Straits of Hormuz Now, Callista and I had lunch with Sec of State George Schultz, who had been Reagan's Sec of State at the Reagan Library on Pres Reagan's 100th birthday And Sec of State Schultz said to me, he said, 'How often do we have to get hit over the head with a 2x4 to realize we need a national energy policy that maximizes American energy production If the Straits of Hormz are closed, you will see a catastrophe in the world market You will see a depression in t he industrial world, and it will be a nightmare We've had thirty years to prepare for this We know exactly what the danger is, and we know exactly what the requirement is If you look at ND, where the federal government couldn't stop it because it was on private land, the Bachen Field in ND has 25 times, that's 2500% more oil and gas than the US Geological Sruvery thought six years ago, and we're developing it because it's on provate land If we had a president who was pro-American energy, we would develop oil and gas, we would devleope shale oil, w would develop ethanol and soy diesel and next generation biofuels We would develop wind We now rival, I think only Denmark produces more wind than Iowa We would devel;op all the different aspects, including coal, nuclear power, and solar, but our goal would be to produce a surplus of American energy so in a cris y ou could wave at the Middle East My goal is to be able as President, to never bow to a Suadi king or walk arma dn arm I want to explain to the Saudis we don't need your oild and we Re no gonna tolerate your support of terrorism (applause) 12:07:33 So, let me say one last thing then I'm gonna throw it open to questions I'm not here to ask you to be for me, because if you're for me you're gonna vote and go h ome and say you hope that I'll fix it I don't think even the POTUS can get this country back on the right track by himself I'm here to ask you to be with me We need you, Callista and I need you to be with us for the next eight years, to stand side by side We need you to remind the Congress what we're trying to get done We need you to remind the governor and the state legislature, the city council, the county commission, the school board In addition, we need your help If we do all the things that we need to do to get America back on track, we're gonna make mistakes, and whn we make mistakes, we need to hjave social media where you can say, 'That ain't working The world has changed Here's a better idea' Because we together I don't think 537 elected officials can fix this, but I think 305 million Ameicans can fix it easily But lastly, if we apply the 10th amendment and we shrink government in Washington, we have to grow citizenship in Mason City It's that straight forward, and clearly we have to be in a podition where everybody understands that citizenship has to rise as bureaucracy shrinks And so I will ask y ou to be with me, I'd love your help next week I believe we can win the general election decisively, and I will challenege the president to seven three-hour debates in a Lincoln-Douglas tradition with a timekeeper but no moderator, and I will concede in advance that he can use a teleprompter I mean, after all, if you had to defend Obamacare, wouldn't you want to use a teleprompter? I think we have to be fair about this I would love to have your help, and what I'd like to do now is just toss it open to questions if that's alright 12:09:25 Given the recent potential for instability in the Korean peninsula with Kim Jong-Il's death, how would your position with regards to North korea be different than Obama's? Gingrich: Well, first of all, you need to rapidly finish developing a ballistic missile defense, because you cannot afford any risk of a North Korean nuclear missile reaching the US, so I think we need to move activel;y to defending ourselves We need to rebuild our intelligence capabilities It is amazing to me Callista and I met recently in Los Angeles with Korean Americans There are 600,000 korean Americans in Los Angeles alone, y et our intelligence community's ability to understand North Korea is very limited, and I think you have to have a much better understanding of what's going on up there You want to avoid getting into a fight This regime is going to be very shaky for a while, because ethe son that's taking over is very young, and it's a regime which values age, so all the old general s are going to be very suspicious of this very young leader, and I thionk we should be careful about what we should do What we don't wanna do is to cause them to react out of fear, but I think that we should constantly pressure them, I think the goal is to ultimately replace the dictatorship, but even the South Koreans, frankly, they waiver between whether thtey're more frightened of a North Korean military, or they're more frightened If North Korea will collapse I mean, the South Koreans looked at how expensive it was for the germans to absorb East Germany, and they know that North Korea would be vastly more expensive, so it'sa balancing act in the region, but I think on balance we have to have a strong national defense, and we need a ballistic missile defense that could make4 it impossible fopr the North Koreans to attack us directly 12:11:15 Question: Mr Speaker, what do you perceive to be the roll of the national government as we seek to improve our educational system in the country? Gingrich: I think that's a very good question I think we should dramatically shrink the Dept of Educ, eliminate the federal effort to regulate education, eliminate the testing mdoel, which I think is gonna have everyone teaching, taught to the test, and return power to the states, but I'm gonna mettle for a second I think we oughtta have a lot less power in the state Dept of Educ I'd like to see us get back to where parents were the primary implementers of education, and where parents talked to the local school bhoard, and parents and the local school board developed education, but I also wanna say one other thing As president, you're both leader of the country and manager of the federal government, so Ican say things that are about America that we're not gonna do out of Washington I think every state should readopt the idea that you need discipline in the classroom, and back, you know, when I was young, if you got in trouble with the teacher, you got in trouble at home for getting in trouble with the teacher Then we went through this cycle where parents came in and said, 'How can you say that to Johnny or Sally? I'm gonna sue you' And I think you have to say get serious The reason they're called the teacher is they're suppose dto be in charge, and the reason you're called the student is you're supposed to learn from them, and we need to reassert discipline in th e classroom if we're gonna have any oppoprtunity to have the kind of education we need to have in this country (applause) 12:12:45 Question: As president I just want to know what you would do to support God in America, and to definitely promote our heritage 12:13:07 Gingrich: I think that's a very good question As you may know, Callista and I have written a book called Rediscovering God in America, and made a movie about the same topic There's a paper, which is a little controversial, if you go to newtorg on rebalancing the judiciary, because the primary threat to our belief in God has come from judges who are secular and behave as though they are dictators I got drawn into this is 2002 when the 9th Circuit Court ruled that 'one nation under God' was unconstitutional in th Pledge of Allegience, and I thought that ws such a radically anti-American position that I got ingtirgued at how the courts got so radical And so, if you go to newtorg there's a very complicated paper We spent nine years working on it, Vince Haley and I, and Vicne is the primary author If you look at the Consitution, this is one of the great examples of how big the change has to bethe Constitution says that tehre's a balance of power ebwteen the three co-equal branches So you have the judicial, the executive, and the legislative, except the way they wrote it the legislative comes first, the executive comes second, and the judicial comes third The Federalist Papers, explaining the judicial branch, and Alexander writes it will always be the weakest of the three branches, and it would never pick a fight with the president and with Congress because it would inevitably lose the fight Now, in 1958, the Earl Warren court totally subverted the American Constitution and said the Supreme Court is the final decider of the Constitution Well, by definition, that sets the Supreme Court above the legislative and executive branches, and politicians have tolerated, and what that has done Lord Acton wrote in the 19th century that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and he took out the word 'tends' in the second half You have judges today who are drunk on power Judge Biery in San Antonia, on June 1, said not only could high school students not pray at their graduiation, they could not use the word invocation, they could not use the word benediction, they could not ask for silence, they could not ask the audience to stand, and they could not mention God And he went on to say if any of these five were violated, I will put the superintendednt in jail Now, I believe that that is a bigoted, anti-religious dictate by a speech dictator, which is not a appropriate for the federal bench, and I think he should be taken off the bench (applause) So the first step would be to ask the Conghress for impeachment of Judge Biery, which would require him to come to Congress, totally under the Constitution, and defend his position, and explain why he would issue such a radical statement, and I think that just the act of getting him to defend it would be very, very helpful in resetting it You cann;t explain America without the Dec of Indep, which is a political document You cannot explain the Dec of Indep Without understanding that it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights We're the only country in history which says power come from God to each one of you personally, and therefore I think we have to have a position which says we are gonna defend in the public square, and we are gonna rebalance the public courts so that they are one of three public branches, theyr'e not the dictator to the other two branches (applause) 12:16:53 Question: Considering we have a fairly dysfunctional Congress, what is your stand on an amendment to the Constitution to limit Congressional terms? Gingrich: I am actually less favorable to term limits than I was in the 1990s, and the reason is the experience of states like California wheren term-limited state legislators never quite figure out what's going on, so the lobbyists and the bureaucrats now run the states I am in favor of very dramatic election law reform I would make it legal for anybody to g ive any amount of after-tax personal income if they reported it every night on the internet so you knew who was backing who, and overnight you would have challengers springing up all over the country, and you'd have a much more competitive environment As late as 1890, half of every Conghress was brand new, and it was because ethe telections were starightr forward, and what we've now done is we've built these incumbency castles where the first thing an incumbent does is raise money to try to be so invulnerable that nobody can run against him, and the corollary of that is we now get millionaires who buy seats, and I think that's very dangerous for the future of American democracy My dad served in the Army for 27 years, I was a college teacher, I'm a middle class person, Callista's middle class We don't come out of a background where we can buy a seat or, as Mayor Bloomberg did, buy the mayorship of new York Look at how much he sent He just wrote a check and bought it I think that's wrong It eliminated self-government and make sit money government, and so I think finding a way fro middle class Americans to raise the money to challenge incumbents, you'll beat a lot of these guys every two years or every six years in the Senate if they have to face real challenges and real organization **12:18:44 Question: Given the reaction that you've drawn, would you revisit your comment about poor kids working in public schools, and please don't skip over child labor laws and work ethic Gingrich: Ok I'm glad to Sure My newsletter today You happened to touch on a good topic My newsletter, which is at gingrich productions and at human events today is about NYC janitors, who are paid more than NYC teachers, and it'sabout the fact you can make well over $100,000 a year as a janitor with a contract that doesn't require you to mop the floor more than once a week, And I suggested that, in fact, if you took about half the janitors, for a $100,000, you could hire30 kids at $3,000 a year to work part time at the school They could dop everything from working at the library to work in the cafeteria, to work in th e front office, and I'll be bold They could mop the floor Now, I've had liberals jump up in horror and suggest I'm trapping them into being janitors My younger daughter, who's written two books and writes a wekly column, reminded me her first paying job was at the First Baptist Church in Carolton where she was, in fact, cleaning out the toilets and being a janitor I m entioned this he other day to an editotail board who were in a state of schock They said, 'You would have children actually deal with things like that?' and I said, well, I think if you talk with most Iowa farm families, they will explain to you what they have their kids do, and it turns out they encounter real work Some of them actually get dirty, they sometimes encounter dealing with things with animals It's amaziong what on farms you encounter, and nobody seems to be horrified except now the EPA is proposing a rule that you can't allow children to work on the farm unless they're an immediate part of the family, so you can't have your cousin or your niece or you nephew come in This is the kind of mindless, left-wing thinking Now, let me tell you how it started Liberals used to say you don't wanna get a hamburger-flipping job, and I was working with the McDonald's people studying McDonald's, which is the most successful franchise system in the world, and they have an entire training program for new entries They're the largest trainer of new workers in the world And guess what's the first thing they need to train people Show up The second thing they have to train people, you can't leave Now, to people who grew up in middle class families, this all makes sense But if you grew up in a very, very poor neighborhood, 2/3 children in the poorest neuighborghoods have nobody in their family working They're not acquiring themost basic habits The goal's not to get them trapped at a job like that, the goal is to hjave them start rising by larning the habits of work So I'm in the middle of this and I don't know if this is in response to you or not, but I just find it absolutely fascinating, because the left just went crazy 12:21:50 So we were in New Hampshire last week, in Manchester, and a young man walks up to me, who's 16 years old, who owns his own doughnut company, which he started at 11, because his father, who's an investment advisor on 401ks and thigs like that, was trying to get him to understand free enterprise, so his father's thrilled, by the way, because he now for the fiorst time can deliver his own doughnuts without his dad having to drive the car, but he has two restaurants that serve his doughnuts every morning, and he's out there baking, you know, 40 doughnuts at a time, packaging them He's now been in business for five years I think this is wonderful Gallop reports that 50% of the kids in the US would like to won their own business I would like to say that in the poorest neighborhoods, if we had one less janitor and 30 kids working, which would also lower the dropout rate because they'd have a reason to go to school, you'd have better kids, with a better pride, with a better work ethic, and they would rise in life from having learned at an early stage that you can earn money, you can budget money, it's your money, it's nt the government's money, and no politicians can tell you what to do with it So, I'm gonna defend my belief that if we had more work, we would actually have earned self esteem You can't give self esteem You have to earn it, and that's wh the left is profoundly wrong about how America works (applause) 12:23:37 Question: I would like to see a very classy lady be the first lady (applause) Gingrich: I agree with you Question: I think she's somewhat homegrown here, and she will definitely add some flavor to Washington My second issue is I believe it aappars to me the Arab Spring is going to turn into a Muslim Brotherhood Summer Where can the US position itself and be led if and or this does happen? It's just a fear or a concern of mine 12:24:33 Gingrich: Let me On your first very nice, positive comment, let just mention on being homegrown, that last night we were at Mabe's Pizza, in Decorah, which some of you will remember when Callista was in Luther, and it turns out the room we had met in was the room she had had her graduation party in, and spent her senior year living above Mabe's Pizza, so she had pizza smell 24 hours a day, but she was really in terms of being homegrown She was really happy to be back at Mabe's I have to confess the pizza was pretty darn good I think there's every reason to worry if you watch what's happening in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, in Libya I'll just give you two quick examples We have to liberate out intelligfence community from all the restrictions Congress has put on it over the last 36 years We today don't know enough We don't have real spies We rely on local governmnmets to tell us things, and this is enormously dangerous, because we don't know, for example, on the Libyans from bin Gazi, which was a primary supplier of anti-American fighters for Iraq, are these anti-American Libyans who have now taken over Libya? And if so, who are they? What are their relationships? We don't really know the relationships in the Muslim Brotherhood, and by the way, you can extend this all the way down to Nigeria, wher there's a war against Christians in norther Nigeria In Iraq there a 12 million Christians when the Americans arrived There are 500 thousand today Seven hundred thousand Christians have left Iraq because of the failure of the Americans You just look around at the things that are going on We do not today have a strategy large enough and comprehensive enough to deal with the scale of the problem This is not a military problem This is a strategic thinking problem first Gen Abizaid, who used to be the head of the Central Command, said to metwo months ago our strategic deficit is bigger than our fiscal deficit, and we strart therein 1947 we intervened covertly and we saved France and Italy from going communist in an election by pouring money in to help the anti-communist side We have no understanding today, no mechanisms, and no capacity to help those who would like to be martyred Muslims, and as a result there's a great danger they will be drowned by the forces of radicalism, and I think that's a danger in every single country where this is going on, and we are simply on probe to pay for it 12:27:15 Question: What is your stand on the UN stand on wanting our guns? Gingrich: I believe that the 2nd amendment, which is worded very carefully The 2nd amenmnet does not give you the right to bear arms The 2nd amendment says the right to bear arms shall not be abridged Very important Remember, I'm wearing George washington's command flag The Founding Fathers believed that your right to bear arms was endowed by your creator as an ability to defend your political rights, and the Founding Fathers all knew that if they had not had the right to bear arms, the British army would have crushed them I believe that the US should actually go on offense workldwide I think we should be explaining why the right to bear arm would lead to a better world We should beactive;y fighting the UN's efforts Again, this goes back to who controls The eleites would like to take aay our guns, because the elites would like to control us with no recourse Having a free America made up of free people just drives the elites crazy, because we don't fit our model They would like us to be subjects to gvernmnet We are citizens, and government should be subject to us, and that is a fundamental fight with elites aroudns the world, and we should have the courage to go out and take the 2nd amendment everywhere in the world Let me close with this one First of all Let me thank you for coming out and spending so m uch time with us Callista and I are both delighted to be with you We look forward to getting pictures and seeing each of you, but let me ask each of you as you go to the caucus and you talk to your friends across the state, this is still wide open ****Iowa has an opportunity to say to the rest fo the country the era of the negative consultant running false ads is over, and I would ask you when you gfo to the caucus to remind uor friends and neighbors, do you realy want to reward somebody who's done nothing but run negative ads, or do you want to elect somebody who has big, positive solutions, runs positive ads, and has a track record of actually getting it done?**** I'd love to have you support, we'd love to work with you Thank you very Very much 12:29:30 Gingrich and Callista walk off stage Gingrich meets and greets the crowd 12:40:19 Gingrich: Let me just say, as I mentioned earlier, we're very excited to have Art Laffer come out tomorrow to continue our focus on jobs and economic growth, and to remind people of the fundamental choice between a supply-side approach that encourages the creation of jobs and economic growth, and a more establishment-based model that actually limits the likelihood of jobs and economic growth, so I think Art will be a great asset in his ability to explain things He has been one of the great pioneers of developing Will be useful, so our focus is gonna be for the whole closing days of the caucus to focus on the economy, on jobs, on economic growth, on the fact that twice, I helped do it once with Reagan in 80s, and once as Speaker of the House with Bill Clinton in the 90s, and I think we have approaches and policies and principles that'll g et this country growing again and will create the economic dynamic that we need if we're gonna help the pull the world past a very real danger of an even deeper recession given the problems in Europe and the threats in the Middle East So, I'd be glad to take questions ****12:41:26 Question on PAC's Mitt Romney: Second Most Dangerous Man in America ad Isn't the negative? Gingrich: Yeah, I would encourage them not to do that anymrope, and I think that's not right, and I don't You know, again, I don't control them, but I would discourage them from sending out that kind of negative information I think that's wrong 12:41:48 Question: Isn'y your inconsistency in saying you would not support Ron Paul as the nominee and also saying posiotive campaign Gingrich: the questions's very direct question Do you feel comfortable, in terms of my two grandchildren, and everybody in this city, in somebody that believes that an Iranian nuclear weapon is irrelevant? Now that It's one thing to stick to a policy position that he has said in debates It's another thing to go out and run ads that are dishonest and misleading I answered a question We're not running any ads attacking anybody, which is what I've said all along, but I was asked a direct question I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that the Commander in Chief would think that it was irrelevant to have an Iranian nuclear weapon, because I regard an Iranian nuclear weapon as very dangerous 12:42:39 Question: come out fighting for this nomination Gingrich: I think, if you saw the crowd here, I know this hard for some of you to cover You can fight in a positive way You can be very strong in a positive way You can talk about positive ideas It's ok You don't have to have a nasty, negative, mud-slinging, consultant-driven campaign, and I refuse to engage in that kind of politics, and I think it's good for America to see somebody fight in a positive way and not degenerate into the kind of junk you've seen on tv lately ***12:43:09 Question about ballot situation in Virginia Will you join lawsuit? Gingrich: We haven't looked at that yet, but I thought it was interesting for everybody who thought it was my problem, you know have Gov Perry also pointing out that Virginia is a very difficult ballot to get on Five of the seven candidate were blocked from getting on it I would like t o0 be on the ballot, or I would like the legislature to give us the ability to have a write-in campaign Every poll in Virginia shows me beating Romney in Virginia, so I would love to be able to at least have a write-in campaign It's the people of Virginia who lose when you are restricted to only two candidates out of seven, so, you know But Gov Perry did the right thing I haven't talked to our attorneys I have no idea what they're doing ***12:43:47 Question: NYT piece said you went to Greece last spring to intentionally invoke a confrontation with staff, and it worked because they all left Can y ou talk about that? Gingrich: All I can say is I was very struck when Callista and I did the film on Ronald Reagan, going to the ranch, the he was an extraordinary president who spent one year out of eight at the ranch, and I relly tried to understand what was he accomplishing? And he was achieveing a sense of balance and a sense of distance He wasn't sucked into Washington bologna, and we had planned for a long time to stop We had been campaigning very hard And we had planned for a long time to stop for ten days to think Again, I know this doesn't fit the normal media model of how candidates operate **12:44:40 Question: This was the first week of your rollout of your campaign Gingrich: But we had been working ever since January to get everything lined up and organized, and we'd been working very, very hard, and it wouldn't have mattered if we'd done it the first week or we did it the first week of July The fact is, I think you need to pace yourself, you need to get a sense of distance Ironically, being in Greece during the Greek crisis was very helpful It gave me a much deeper perspective of how hard this is going to be, but I also wanted to say to consultants, I'm a different kind of candidate I'm determined to be positive I'm determined to talk about big ideas I wrote books We have made movies We think ideas matters The consultants found us very mystifying, we're very strange And so I wanted to force, either they would like to be the advisors to my campaign, or they needed to leave, because I couldn't be the candidate for their campaign, and I think it worked pretty well Within two h ours of their leaving we were back on track, and growing ever since I mean, we're ahead of where I thought we'd be at this stage, but I'm pretty happy with the campaign overall nationally ***12:45:46 Question on lobbying for medicare extension in 2003 How was that not lobbying? Gingrich: No As a citizen who said publicly I'd like to see this passed, I'm allowed to ay as a citizen I'd like to see this passed That's not lobbying I wasn't paid by anybody to say that It was a public position I'd taken for a practical reason We had a medical program which said, 'We will not pay for you to have Lipitor, but we'll be glad to give you open heart surgery We will not pay for insulin, but we'll be able to give you kidney dialysis' This was my public position I've been taking it for months, so when members of Congress said to me, 'Gee, what do you think I ought to do?' I said, frankly it's a lot better health system if you help people have preventive care than if you wait for the more expensive solution But that was a public positin taken publicily It was literally, by definition, not lobbying **You can be an advocate without being a lobbyist** Gingrich takes pictures with supporters