Daily Beast: Political Chameleon Newt Gingrich Has a History of Working with Democrats

Takes the Daily Beast to tell the truth about Gingrich because you are sure not going to find it on Fox News.  I had forgotten that Tom Daschle was also involved along with Rev Al Sharpton.  How is Gingrich running as a Republican conservative?

As we noted on here this week, conservative members of the House under Gingrich have been complaining for years that his door was more open to Democrats then conservative, small government Republicans.  Now that Gingrich is trashing the very Democrats he used to court.  Looks not only hypocritical but two faced from someone who will say anything for votes.  Anyone who thinks he is a rock-ribbed conservative needs to rethink where they got their information.  If it was from Fox News or Gingrich himself, they had better be doing some fact checking from those who know Gingrich best.  Arrogant and opportunist comes to mind with few core values.

From pitching health-care reforms with Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle to criss-crossing the country with Al Sharpton for an Obama charter-schools initiative to famously sharing a loveseat with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge action on climate change, Gingrich made the most of his common ground with Democrats and the strange-bedfellows plotlines that reporters could not ignore. 

Al Sharpton made me laugh in the Democrat debates in 2000, but to have him traveling with Newt for an Obama initiative makes me shake my head at the people pushing Newt, the Fox pundit.  Fox News Roger Ailes and others pushed their pundits to run this time which raises the hair on the back of your neck as some of the other pundits like Dick Morris have been vocal in the fact that Fox News wants to pick the Republican nominee.

This article nails Newt unlike some of the conservative media like Fox News and others who turn a blind eye to all the flip flops of Romney, Cain, and Newt.

Political Chameleon Newt Gingrich Has a History of Working with Democrats 

By Patricia Murphy 

Dec 2, 2011 4:45 AM EST 

Gingrich may be savaging Democrats today, but he once gladly worked with the party’s biggest names, from Clinton to Pelosi. Patricia Murphy looks at the former speaker’s transformation.At Tommy’s Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C., Newt Gingrich gave the town-hall audience exactly what they wanted—a plate full of Republican red meat with a side order of Obama-bashing-Saul-Alinsky socialist hash. 

“At a values level, we stand for American exceptionalism, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence,” Gingrich told the crowd during his swing through the state this week. The president “stands for some weird, European-internationalist-elitist-secular model that doesn’t work.” 

The anti-Obama, anti-Democratic message put smiles on the faces in the meeting and has rocketed the former House speaker to the top of the Republican field. As conservatives have searched for someone, anyone, to take the fight to the president and his party, Gingrich has reprised his role as a one-man Democratic attack machine—ripping into President Obama, hammering Democrats in Congress, and even suggesting prison time for Rep. Barney Frank and former senator Chris Dodd for their role in botching oversight of the banking industry. 

But the attack dog on the trail doesn’t square with the person Gingrich became after he left Congress in the late 1990s. With his speakership behind him and a think tank to run, a more moderate Newt Gingrich quickly became the Democrats’ go-to conservative whenever they wanted to make a splash on a policy issue or get bipartisan credit for an initiative or cause. 

....

“It was an irresistible story—the bitter partisan had changed like a chameleon and become a sounding board for bipartisan big-picture ideas,” says Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the late Ted Kennedy. “As has become evident, however, very few if any of these activities weren’t designed to enrich Newt Inc.” 

To Manley’s point, the areas where Gingrich partnered with Democrats were often, but not always, related to his Center for Health Transformation, the for-profit think he ran with the backing of large health-care providers. According to The Washington Post, the center raked in more than $37 million from health-care concerns in the last eight years. 

In May of 2004, Gingrich launched an effort with then-congressman Patrick Kennedy to call for electronic health records. The two held press conferences and penned an op-ed piece together for The New York Times. 

Other initiatives, including those with Clinton and Daschle, usually featured Gingrich and his Democratic partner doing a double-take-inducing round of joint appearances, reports, op-eds, and press conferences that were heavy on substance and missing the impeachment-era lectures that Gingrich had become known for. Instead, Gingrich played the statesman, burying the hatchet and proffering big ideas to tackle big problems. 

But Gingrich also worked on issues with no relationship to his think tank. And even when he was supposed to fight with Democrats, he often managed to find common ground. At a 2007 debate with John Kerry on climate change, Gingrich and the senator agreed on so much—including the need for immediate action to reduce carbon emissions—that The Washington Post dedicated an entire column to the cage-match-turned-“love fest.” 

In 2009, Gingrich and Al Sharpton joined Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Meet the Press to support Obama’s push for more charter schools, and Gingrich praised the president for having “the courage” to take on entrenched interests on both sides of the issue. 

“Our children deserve a chance to see us come together to put their future above partisanship and take on the establishment in both parties to try to get this solved,” Gingrich told David Gregory. “I think the country is tired of politicians finding a reason not to try to work together and not to try to gamble on the future.” 

That let’s-work-together message isn’t one that Gingrich hits much on the trail these days, but strategists from both parties say the stealth aisle-crosser in Gingrich could be a game changer with moderate and independent voters, especially in states like New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney is struggling to hold off the late Gingrich surge. 

“If you walk down the street in Iowa, South Carolina, or New Hampshire, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find voters who think that Newt Gingrich compromises on his ideological beliefs,” says Patrick Griffin, a Boston-based GOP consultant and fellow at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College.  

Excerpt:  Read more at The Daily Beast     

As noted in the article, Newt works with Democrats not Republicans which should speak volumes to any Republican considering on voting for Gingrich who is definitely a big Government Republican not a small government Republican.   When is the last time you heard a Republican working with Newt -- it seems he prefers the Patrick Kennedy, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Pelosi ideology to work with rather than Republicans.

Once again, why is Gingrich running as a Republican?