Newt Gingrich Hated Ronald Reagan and Described Himself as a Progressive

Newt Gingrich continues to paint himself as the lone conservative in the 2012 presidential race. His past words criticizing one of the major conservative leaders of all time in the Republican party continue to come back to haunt Gingrich. We already know there was tension between Reagan and Gingrich and Reagan had little respect for Newt. We learn more every day why that is so.

The Washington Post writes:

In an unnoticed 1992 speech, Newt Gingrich in a single utterance took aim not only at a beloved conservative icon but also at a core tenet of the conservative movement: that government must be limited.

Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administration in Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. . . . The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”

A review of thousands of documents detailing Gingrich’s career shows it wasn’t the first time he had criticized Reagan, whom he regularly invokes today in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. When Gingrich was in the House, his chief of staff noted at a 1983 staff meeting that his boss frequently derided Reagan, along with then-White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader.

Gingrich “assumed that he’s the whole Republican Party,” said the Gingrich aide, Frank Gregorsky, according to a transcript of the meeting. “He knows more than the president, the president’s people, Michel, Baker. He calls them stupid all the time, and I think that’s going to get him into big trouble someday.”

The speech and meeting transcripts are contained in a largely unexplored cache of documents compiled by a former Gingrich aide and archived at the University of West Georgia, where Gingrich was an assistant professor in the 1970s.

It appears Newt's distaste for Reagan comes from Newt's early roots when he declared himself a liberal.

Gingrich had described himself as a “progressive” in his 1970 application to teach at what was then West Georgia College. That self-description changed to a “common-sense conservative” by his 1974 race, when Gingrich skewered his opponent, incumbent Rep. John J. Flynt Jr. (D-Ga.), for voting against numerous government programs.

One campaign flier described Gingrich as a “family man” — picturing him in front of his Georgia home with his two daughters and his first wife, Jackie — and vowed he would improve Medicare benefits and reduce tax loopholes for the rich.