CAMPAIGN 2012 / GINGRICH HUNTSVILLE ALABAMA WHNT CBS 030612
In Interplay as: 5226 CAMPAIGN 2012 GINGRICH HUNTSVILLE WHNT CBS 030612
FTG OF REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE NEWT GINGRICH AT A RALLY AT THE US SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, AL 030612
13:50:12 :What an amazing place. I think of all the places we have held rallies, this may be the most amazing. Just to stand here. (applause) Pretty remarkable, don't you think? Sam, thank you very much, and I was thrilled that heather McCallum could come join us. Her story really is true. As Speaker, I would sometimes end up running late, and on that particular occasion, I think John McCallum kept thinking, 'Don't encourage him. It's ok. I'll stand here and talk to her a little while longer,' and I think that process of his entertaining her when she came, when she was serving as Miss America, and when she came to see me about her special concerns, that hour or so that she had to hang out with John waiting for me seemed to work out in a pretty fabulous way, and they have three children, they live over in St. Simon's along the coast, so they've done pretty darn well, and I'm just thrilled. I want each of you to know if I can be late for you at some point in a way that will change your life, I want you to let me know." (applause)
13:51:22 "Now, these young people who are up here remind me. You know, one of the things I got lampooned for. I got on SNL. I got a little bit with Romney and Santorum. is I said we should have a very aggressive space program, and it was fascinating because I was really thinking about the young people who are here. We. Callista and I did a movie called 'City Upon a Hill' about American exceptionalism, and in the movie we have pres. Kennedy and his famous speech in 1961 saying that we're gonna go to the moon, and we're gonna do it not because it's easy, but because it's hard, and because it will test the best of us, and then we have Buzz Aldrin pointing out that when Kennedy said that, no American had been in orbit. The only person to go around the Earth in orbit at that point was Yuri Gagarin, who was a Russian. The only American had been in a sub-orbital flight, and here' the POTUS not saying, 'Oh, we'll do it eventually. We'll do it someday' He's saying, 'In this decade,' and of course, how many of you remember July of 1969? (applause) Think about that. Eight years and two months, and that's what America was all about, and so when I talked about a bold, dramatic, new approach, which my opponents promptly totally misunderstood at two levels. One is they assumed, as Gov. Romney pointed out, that I was proposing, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending. No, I was proposing that we find a public-private partnership, that we use prizes, and that we encourage every entrepreneurial talent in America to become excited and be involved. Lindbergh flew the Atlantic for the Ortiz prize, which was 25 thousand dollars, and which had been there since 1919, and eight years later, 1927, he flew the Atlantic. We've had tremendous response at time o people who've had an incentive. The Wright brothers learned how to fly because they wanted to. They didn't apply for a government grant. They just wanted to, and so they went out and spent five summers learning how to fly, actually built their own wind tunnel, so I believe in a future for these young people that is dynamic and exciting and in which what we're in today is the launching pad. This isn't the end-state of the space program. This is the launching pad for the next phase of excitement and invention, innovation." (applause)
13:54:21 "And Gov. Romney said, well, if he'd been in business and somebody came into him with a big idea, with that kind of idea, that he'd have fired him, and I realized that he said he likes firing people, but you know. (some laughs) What occurred to me later was, ok, so he would have fired Christopher Columbus. (laughter) You know, he would have fired John F. Kennedy. You know. And if Henry Ford wandered in and said, 'Hey, I have this idea. Why don't we build mass-produced cars?' Clearly impractical. Fire him. You know, when the Wright brothers dropped by and said, 'Hi. We're working on flying,' he'd say, 'Clearly irresponsible. Fire them.' You know. There are visionaries, and there are people who manage the decay. They're not the same business. I'm very proud to be in the visionary business." (applause)
13:55:12 "Now, being a visionary doesn't mean being impractical. Ronald Reagan was a visionary. He had a vision that the Soviet Union could be defeated. When everybody in the elite had been demoralized, was desperately seeking to accommodate the Russians, a reporter went to Regan in the late 70s and said, 'What's your vision of the Cold War?' He said four words that changed history. 'We win. They lose.' (applause) Now, this was a phrase that no liberal could have uttered. (laughter) First of all, 'we' and 'they' is so divisive, (laughter) and second, 'win' and 'lose' I so judgmental. (laughter) But I heard Sam's introduction, talking about AL and Auburn and football. Virtually every American understands the idea of 'We win. They lose,' and they don't feel bad about it. They actually feel pretty good about it. (applause) So the Chinese have a announced a bold, new program to go to the moon, and my only point the other night was we should be prepared to liberate space from bureaucracy. We should be prepared to set up incentives and prizes and goals. We should attract the best capital, the best talent, the best entrepreneurship. We should go back to flying instead of writing papers. You know, NASA spent 181 billion dollars in the last decade, and we do not have a man-rated launch vehicle. That's just wrong, and so we need a fundamental redesign to get us back in the business, and if we do it right, we will attract five to ten dollars in private capital for every dollar we put up with government capital. We will have people who arrive who are getting things done. The Wright brothers never applied for a single government grant. They just went out and practiced flying, and we can do the same, and so I wanna restate, far from backing off. I invite SNL to come here to Huntsville to tape one of their skits. (laughter) They could tape it at the space camp, because I wanna restate America has a destiny in space. It is a part of who we are. We are not gonna back off from John Kennedy's challenge, and we are not gonna go timidly into the night, allowing the Chinese to dominate the future of space." (applause)
13:58:00 "But being a visionary isn't always about the future. It can be about the present. I believe we need an American energy program so no future president will ever again bow to a Saudi king. (applause) The Iranians are practicing closing the Straits of Hormuz. The Straits of Hormuz is a checkpoint through which one out of every five barrels of oil in the world go. If they were to close it next week, it would be a catastrophe. The price of oil. of gasoline would triple or quadruple overnight. In the short-run the answer to the Iranians is the US Navy and Air Force, and a quiet declaration that any effort to close the Straits of Hormuz would be an act of war, and the government of Iran would cease to exist. The long. (applause) Well, let me be quite clear. I am unalterably opposed to police actions where we have the US navy running around in very sophisticated ships shooting up speedboats. I mean, we wanna say to the government of Iran, 'You wanna cease to exist? Come play.' (applause) 'But don' think we're gonna tolerate you illegally blocking the Straits of Hormuz and threatening the entire world's oil production and oil in the entire industrial world. It would be the end of your government, so when you send the note saying you're doing it, consider it a suicide note.' (applause) Now, I don't think in those circumstances, in the short-run, they're gonna do anything. In the long-run, however, the correct answer for the US, strategically, is to develop our energy supplies in the US so we don't care, at which point we say to China, India, and Europe, 'You have a problem. You may wanna do something about the Straits of Hormuz, but it ain't our problem.'" (applause)
14:00:14 "And let me. Let me very clear. My father's served 27 years in the infantry. I spent time in places like Orleans, France and Stuttgart, Germany while my dad was serving. I have a PhD in European history. I am committed to the US role in the world, but the difference is I think we need a national debate about American interest, and American values, and what America wants to get out of this. I am tired of being told we have to appease our enemies, apologize t those who want to kill us, (applause) and I am a lot less interested in the international community than I am in the American community. Now, the President has begun to respond. I think that they've begun to figure out that they have a big conflict between their ideology and their reelection, and let's be clear what their ideology. Dr. Chu, who is the Secretary of Anti-Energy, laughter) said in 2008 he wanted America to get to a European price level of nine or ten dollars a gallon. I actually had a guy in Nashville who came up to me the other day and said that he wanted me to tell Herman Cain that he had figured out what Obama's 9-9-9 plan was, (laughter) and I said, 'Ok, what is it you want me to tell him?' And he said, 'Pres. Obama's 9-9-9 plan is for us to pay $9.99 a gallon.' Now, I don't know if it's that precise, but it's clear they want us to pay a lot more for gasoline, and to his credit, in terms of being honest, when Dr. Chu went to the House last week, and a member of the House said to him, ;These high gasoline prices are hurting, and these high diesel prices are hurting my constituents, do you have a plan to lower them?' he said, 'No.' he said, 'I'm not in the business of lowering gas prices. I'm in the business of getting people to move out of gas vehicles into other kind of vehicles.' He then described a battery breakthrough, which I am sure in 10 or 15 years is going to be terrific, (laughter) and he described natural gas, wh ich actually does have some short-term potential, and which is a fascinating topic I'll come back to. The President was told by his political advisors he had to say something, so he went to FL, and he said, 'First of all, there are no silver bullets.' He loved this phrase. He said it two or three times. Well, there may be no silver bullets, but there is a presidential pen. There are three signatures the President could give us today aht would change the energy environment. First, he could sign the Keystone pipeline. That is about 700 thousand barrels a day from Canada to Houston. Second, he could reopen the LA-TX part of the Gulf. That's about 400 thousand barrels a day. (applause) Third, he could open designated areas in AK. That's about 1.2 million barrels a day."
14:04:00 "Now, those three signatures would be 2.3 million barrels a day of increased production, or about 800 million barrels a year. Clearly downward pressure on pricing by shares supply changes, b ut that's before you do things that are exciting, like open offshore, open up federal lands. It's fascinating. The President said Republicans have a three-part plan. Part one is drilling. Part two is drilling. Part three is drilling. Well, Mr. President, for once you got it right. (applause) I helped launch a petition drive and a book called 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less in 2008.' If we had taken the advice of that petition drive, and we'd had three years of drilling, we'd have dramatically more oil today, so the President, who says drilling doesn't work, then in FL gave us his answer, which was, I thought, truly worthy of a SNL skit. It hasn't quite made it yet, but. Do any of you remember what his answer was? ("No.") Algae. (laughter) I want you to think about this. You go down town here to one of the gas stations, and prices keep going up. On Memorial Day a car pulls in, a big pickup truck, you walk over to him, and you say, 'Hi. Would you like some algae?' (laughter) I mean, I believe in science and technology. I believe in research into biofuels. I think someday we'll get stuff out of algae, but it ain't this year, and it tells you this fantasy land that Obama lives in, that his solution is not drilling, which we could do, it's algae. This is how they got to Solyndra. Let's find a half billion dollars we could throw away. You got a good company that's hopeless? Let me give you the money. (laughter) I mean, you have to wonder where these people come from. So he says drilling doesn't work, but here's what made his speech fascinating. If you read both his FL and NH speeches, about two pages after he says drilling doesn't work he starts talking about natural gas, and he says we've had these terrific breakthroughs in natural gas. We now have. Whereas ten years ago. This is in my newsletter, actually, tomorrow.. ten years ago we thought we were running out of natural gas, and people were investing lots of money to bring liquefied natural gas from the Middle East. Today we have 125-year supply of natural gas, and people are building facilities to ship natural gas to China. That's how big the change is in ten years. The President says we could create 600 thousand new jobs the next decade off of natural gas, which is true, and it makes you wonder, does the President know how we found the natural gas? (laughter) Alirght, you're obviously a very bright, high-tech crowd. (laughter) would anybody here like to guess how they find the natural gas? ("Drill.") See? I knew you'd get it. They don't go around with little algae looking or natural gas, right? (laughter) They drill. I think 63 thousand new jobs in western PA alone, because they're drilling, because it turns out the new technology opened up areas that we geologically new existed but we thought they weren't recoverable. So we have a 125-year supply of natural gas, and guess what happened when the supply increased? The price dropped, right? So if you.. And by the way, this is with an 11% increase in production. We haven't doubled the amount of natural gas. We found an amazing amount. We only produced 11% more per year. It's driven the price down from a high of $7.97 to I think it was $1.86. Now, if we had the same percentage drop in gasoline, it'd be $1.13, which is easy for me to remember, because that's the price for gasoline when I was Speaker."
14:08:43 "So when I picked a number, the number I picked, frankly, I got by talking to experts in the oil field, and I said, 'What is the price which would allow you to sustain exploration of more sophisticated and more complex fields?' Because these new fields are very complicated. They take substantial investment, and they said between $2 and $2.50 a gallon, so I picked $2.50 to be very cautious, and we have said we want a national. An American energy program designed to get us to $2.50 a gallon. I think technically, as a matter of free markets, it would not surprise me at all to see it drop down to the $1.80, $1.70, $1.60 range, and then go back up above $2.50 to $.70, $2.80, because markets go up and down, b ut what's clear is if you had a real effort to develop the oil, and if you had a real effort to go to flex-fuel cars, and if you used natural gas for large fleets. I mean, all these things come together, you are clearly going to be able to be independent of the rest of the world, and probably b y the end of the decade, and we clearly be the largest producer of oil in the world, bigger than anybody else." (applause)
14:09:57 "Now, this isn't just a, Gov. Romney called it pandering, I like to think of it as leadership (LAUGHS FOLLOWED BY APPLAUSE)
14:10:13: "But we have a case study right in front of us right not - because I'm a historian, I don't deal much in theory I deal a lot in what's actually happening. In North Dakota, we found oil on private land, so Obama couldn't stop it and they began developing it. They now believe in North Dakota that we have 25 times as much oil, not 25% more, 2500% more oil than we thought 15 years ago today."
"Now why does this matter? First of all, we may have doubled the known US reserves just in North Dakota. Now if you could double the US reserves in North Dakota. Let me mention another state - Alaska. Alaska's more than twice the size of Texas. You, the American people, own 69% of Alaska. You could offer, for the environmentalists, one half of Texas."
(LAUGHTER)
14:11:26: "125,000 square miles - pick your favorite glaciers, your favorite national parks, your favorite grizzly bear areas, you know whatever you want. That would leave you an area the size of Texas to develop. Alaska we know has the largest coal reserve in the United States. Alaska has in the Chuckchi Sea alone, they have as much oil as there is in the Gulf of Mexico. So the potential's enormous. And I'm citing this because guess what happened in North Dakota, as they have developed the oil it has created jobs. And this is really hard to get across to liberals (CHUCKLES). If you let the free market work instead of letting the bureaucrats be venture capitalists, you actually have venture capitalists being venture capitalists, it turns out you start creating things that create real worth. The unemployment in North Dakota is 3.5%."
(APPLAUSE)
14:12:28: "And that overstates it. There are 16,000 jobs in the oil patch that are not currently being used and there are 3.5% over there that are not being used. So if you could retrain the 3.5% you'd probably get almost zero unemployment. The new oil reserves produce royalties and taxes and the result is the government of North Dakota has had seven consecutive tax cuts. And they have a multi-billion dollar rainy day fund."
(APPLAUSE)
14:13:03: "So they have a multi-billion dollar rainy day fund for the government that only spends $2 bill a year. So what does that mean for us? The leading developer in North Dakota has estimated publicly that if we were allowed to develop off-shore and develop federal property, the royalties over the next generation for these young people would be 16-18 trillion, not billion, trillion dollars. So if you were disciplined and you said this is now going to be my debt repayment fund and all the money that's going to come in through these royalties is going to go into this bank account. Over here, I'm going to balance the fed budget and now I'm going to pay off the national debt. You could literally -
(APPLAUSE)
145:13:52: "We could give the young people who are here, a debt free nation."
(APPLAUSE)
14:14:05: "Now - that would require real discipline and that would require changing the structure of government, that would require shrinking the bureaucracies, that would require killing a number of programs, that would require taking out a lot of waste. But if we were prepared to do it - you know we used to be a country where parents paid off the mortgage and left their children the farm. We've become a country where the politicians sell the farm and leave the kids the mortgage."
14:14:28: "And I think this is a great opportunity for us to - and notice what we now do - so the American energy plan that I'm suggesting allows us to ignore the Saudis and ignore the Chinese. (APPLAUSE) You get a two for one. You pay off all the bonds - and in the process you create millions of new jobs so the government's actual revenue on the operating side goes up because more people are at work, companies are making more profits therefore there's more income. So even if you have sequestered over here the oil revenues to help pay off the debt, you are still increasing revenue by the sheer size of the economy and by the number of people working in energy. And I'm for all energy, I'm for flex fuel vehicles so you could have a choice of what kind of fuel you want to use. I'm for natural gas for large fleets, I'm for biofuels as they become economically rational. So I'm for doing all the smart things, but I'm for doing them in an orderly, rational way that doesn't punish the American people."
(APPLAUSE)
14:15:37: "I think this difference in energy, Obama's willing to bow to a Saudi King, I want energy independence. Obama's willing to make us pay European $9 or $10 a gallon, I want to keep it down to $2.50 or less so that every American has an opportunity to buy a car. Obama wants to tell us the kind of car we should buy. I believe if you work and you save and it's your money, you get to buy the car or truck you want - not the one the politicians want."
(APPLAUSE)
14:16:08: "Obama is the best Food Stamp President in history, more people are on food stamps than ever before. I'd like to be the best paycheck President in history. (CHEERS) Obama believes in the philosophy of Sol Alinsky and other radicalism, I believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." (APPLAUSE)
14:16:35: "Obama wants to cut our military dramatically, I want to reinvest and rebuild our military to remain first in the World."
(APPLAUSE)
14:16:48: "Obama believes in a form of foreign policy of appeasement and apology and weakness, I believe in a foreign policy of strength based on American interest and American values."
(APPLAUSE)
14:17:04: "Obama is prepared to apologize Islamic religious fanatics while attacking the Catholic Church and every right-to-life institution, I favor religious liberty in America and I would advocate religious liberty even in Saudi Arabia."
(APPLAUSE)
14:17:26: "I think this will be the most important election of your lifetime. I think the difference between Obama and Gingrich is literally this wide (INDICATES WITH HANDS). I need your help next week. (APPLAUSE) We're going to carry Georgia by a big margin tonight and we're going to do much better than people expected in a number of other states (CHEERS)
14:18:00: "It turns out the American people will like positive ideas and positive solutions and the American people like proposals that give them a better future that create jobs and help them to create a better future. So I think for the third time, we're going to come bouncing back and I suspect another two or three weeks, we'll have a clear choice."
(APPLAUSE)
14:18:27: "I want to ask you to do a couple of things - first of all, how many of you are on facebook (SEES MANY HANDS RAISED) Okay. Terrific. It's been a fascinating campaign because it's impossible to match the amount of money Gov Romney can raise on Wall Street but it's possible to arouse people to offset his money. We now have over 173,000 donors. 95% of them give $250 or less and so we really have a nationwide network that's pretty exciting. The first thing I want to ask you to do on Facebook, no cost, is to just go on your homepage and say 'Newt = $2.50 a gallon'.
(APPLAUSE)
14:19:18: "See we have a very simple theory, if people walk in just before they vote and they go 'okay now do I want $2.50 a gallon or $9.00 a gallon' - you know, unless there are a very small number of tenured faculty at some liberal university (LAUGHS) they're going to be for $2.50. So that's the first thing.
14:19:34: "The second is how many of you are on Twitter - well if you go to hashtag$2.50gas we have a whole group of people now, thousands are signing up there so we can keep information out about energy prices. Third: if people come up to you and say - 'yeah, but how's he really going to do it? Is this just another slogan?' If they go to my first name - to Newt.org - there is a 30 min speech that we taped where we literally walk you through, step by step how to do it. And I think we can answer their kind of questions. And then if they say to you: 'alright I really want to help him' - it's an easy thing, just go to Newt.org and we're just asking people to start with one Newt gallon of gasoline. So if they just give $2.50, now if they get really excited they can give 10 Newt gallons, that's $25. But we're finding lots of people showing up and doing it and again we want this to be a very broad campaign. I'll say this in closing, I do think in the terms of the Republican nomination, I am the one person who could debate Barack Obama this fall."
(CHEERS)
14:21:01: "I am tonight, going to challenge Gov Romney and Sen. Santorum and Sen. Paul to agree to come to a debate in Alabama and to come to a debate in Mississippi next week."
(CHEERS)
14:21:22: "I think the people of Alabama and the people of Mississippi deserve to see the candidates without the advertising, without all the various experts, without all the various consultants, and I do think the debates have actually been helpful. I do think they have changed things substantially and I don't think you could describe this campaign since last June without the impact of the debates."
(APPLAUSE)
14:21:48: "And I'll admit up front that sometimes, as I said awhile ago when Gov Romney came after me about space - I was so surprised, we were in Florida, I didn't react very fast because I was just sort of staring at him - because to me, the achievement and getting to the Moon, the achievement of the shuttle, the achievement of the laboratory which we call it the International Laboratory but let's be clear: we financed it, we designed it, we built it, I mean an overwhelming American achievement."
(APPLAUSE)
14:22:27: "I couldn't imagine a candidate being as negative as both he and Santorum were about the future. This is the country of the future. This is the country that invented the airplane, this is the country that invented the mass-produced car, this is the country that invented the electric light. I mean go back - the telegraph, the telephone. I mean we liberated people. We allowed them to go out and create a better future. And that's what a Gingrich campaign is all about - that we can unleash the American people and they can rebuild the America we love and that is the only way we are going to create a better future for our children and grandchildren."
(APPLAUSE)
14:23:16: "Let me ask you to e-mail all your friends all around the country - remember the campaign's going on everywhere - and let me ask you to Facebook as much as you can. In an old-fashioned sense, if you get to call people that's good, if you actually see them face to face that's okay. This is really about a people campaign and I'd like to close with this thought: I didn't come here to ask you to help me, I came here to ask you to help America."
(APPLAUSE)
14:23:54: "This isn't my campaign, this is 'our campaign'. I want you to be with me, not for me. I want you to stick with me through this whole long fight, not just the election, but what it's going to be like once we win. Because the Left isn't going to go away, they're not going to give up. And it's going to take every one of us to get the change we need. And I want you to remember and remind your friends and neighbors and when you start seeing all the negative attack ads, it's really sad. We should be running a campaign worthy of these young people. We should run a campaign of positive ideas and positive approaches and positive solutions. We should focus our attacks on one person, Barack Obama."
(APPLAUSE)
14:24:40: "So I do need your help, I look forward to taking a few minutes here and hope to see as many of you as I possibly can, I am very grateful that you're here and I want you to know that with your help, we can win a great victory next week. And if we really do well next week coming off of - we're going to do very well in Georgia tonight and I think pretty darn well in Tennessee and Oklahoma and elsewhere. With your help by the end of next week, we could really be in a totally new race in a very exciting way. Thank you, thank you very much.