“You import commercial quantities of drugs in the United States for the purpose of destroying our children, we will kill you… I say put it on the ballot and say either legalize them or get rid of them… But quit playing the game that enriches the evil, strengthens the violence, addicts our children, and makes us look pathetic and helpless… Do it one by one, it'll add up… If the word gets back that we're serious and we're actually implementing it, then it will have a very chilling effect on people bringing drugs into the U.S.”

“I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with President Jiang in the United States and to take part in a candid and direct dialogue about U.S.-Chinese relations. On every issue of concern to our two nations -- from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to the integration of Hong Kong, the status of Taiwan, and the growing inter- dependence of our two economies -- we spoke forcefully, honestly, and without reserve.

Most importantly, Republican leaders made explicitly clear our unwavering commitment to human rights and individual liberty. I believe it was vitally important that we used this opportunity to address the basic lack of freedom -- speech, liberty, assembly, the press -- in China.

Had we not done so, we would not only have betrayed our own tradition, we also would have failed to meet our obligations as a friend of China. As I said in China this spring, there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions. There is no place for intolerance of dissent.

While we walked through the Rotunda. I explained to President Jiang how the roots of American rule of law go back more than 700 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta. The foundation of American values, therefore, is not a passing priority or a temporary trend. We believe in religious liberty and personal freedom because the people who settled our country left the lands of their birth, accepting great danger and uncertainty, to secure those basic rights.

I reminded our Chinese guests that you cannot have economic freedom without political freedom, and you cannot have political freedom without religious freedom. You cannot have a system that is half totalitarian and half free. It will not survive. I, and the rest of the Republican leadership, will continue to take whatever action we, can to help move China down the path of freedom, democracy, and liberty. As Americans, as political leaders, as free individuals, it is our obligation to do what we can to extend these basic human rights and religious liberties to the rest of the world.”

“But there are two different parts here. The problem with building the bridge is simple. What, what is it about American regulations, American taxation, American labor cost and attitudes that makes it cheaper to go to China than to go to the United States? Now, we...

... first of all, you've got to decide, how are we going to be more competitive and how are we going to be the lowest cost? And there's a new Boston consultant (ph) that says, by 2015, South Carolina and Alabama will be cheaper than the Chinese coastal provinces to manufacturing.

Second, in terms of dealing with China strategically, I think we're going to have to find ways to dramatically raise the pain level for the Chinese cheating, both in the hacking side, but also on the stealing and intellectual property side. And I don't think anybody today has a particularly good strategy for doing that.”

“I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threat…

This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.

And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.

And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.

This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate…”

“We need a serious dialogue -- not knee-jerk hysteria -- about the 1st Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect. Here are a few baseline principles to consider:
We should be allowed to close down websites that recruit suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill civilians by suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the destruction of Western civilization;

We should propose a Geneva-like convention for fighting terrorism that makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. A subset of this convention should define the international rules of engagement on what activities will not be protected by free speech claims; and

We need an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents.

And just as free speech protections shouldn't be allowed to shield activities that threaten Americans, so too should we not allow our great national belief in nondiscrimination and equality before the law to be used against us.”

I think it's amazing that Barack Obama is worried about an Arab Spring, he's worried about Tunisia, he's worried about Libya, he's worried about Egypt, he's worried about Syria, and he cannot bring himself to look south and imagine a Cuban Spring. And I would argue that we should have, as a stated explicit policy, that we want to facilitate the transition from the dictatorship to freedom. We want to bring together every non-military asset we have, exactly as President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher and Pope John Paul II did in Poland and in Eastern Europe.

They broke up the Soviet empire without a general war by using a wide range of things, one of which is just psychological, saying to the next generation of people in Cuba, the dictatorship is not going to survive. You need to bet to moving to freedom in order to have prosperity in Cuba, and we will help you get to that freedom.

“If there was a genuine, legitimate uprising, we would, of course, be on the side of the people… In that sense, I don't see why Cuba should be sacrosanct, and we should say, 'Oh, don't do anything to hurt' - you know, we're very prepared to back people in Libya. We may end up backing people in Syria. But now Cuba? Hands off Cuba. That's baloney. People of Cuba deserve freedom.”

“… Throughout my years of service in the United States Congress, I was a consistent and active supporter of efforts to isolate, destabilize and terminate the Castro dictatorship. As Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, I was proud to work with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart to pass the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton).

Let me assure the Cuban-American community, the captive Cuban people, and the Castro tyrants themselves, that a Newt Gingrich presidency will be committed to implementing a pro-active policy agenda to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba…”

• Eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, replacing the Environmental Protection Agency and repealing ObamaCare.



• Cut regulations on financial institutions



• Employing a fiscal policy that is based on Reaganomics



• A one-year tax moratorium, coupled with the elimination of capital gains tax and bringing down the corporate tax rate to 12.5%



• Limiting unemployment benefits to a maximum of four weeks

"As part of his conservative stance, Newt Gingrich aims to impose order with a vision like a surreal projection of his own past: a family structure as strict as Bob Gingrich’s military hierarchy and an educational system that, as he outlines for me, rewards high-school girls who graduate as virgins. In To Renew America, he suggests that one could communicate values to children by simply getting out “the Boy Scout or Girl Scout handbook, or go and look at Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post from around 1955.”

John King: Mr. Speaker, on that point, this is a conversation about what is the proper role of the federal government in the education issue? To the point the governor just raised about teachers unions, you have complimented President Obama to a degree on that issue, saying he had some courage to stand up to the teachers union. You went on tour with Al Sharpton and this president's education secretary in support of the multibillion-dollar Race to the Top program that essentially, I think they used stimulus money for it, but incentives to states, to schools that perform, and that enact reforms.

Newt Gingrich: What we did is we went around, including Tucson, in this state, and we talked about the importance of charter schools, which was the one area where I thought the president did in fact show some courage, being willing to go into Philadelphia or into Baltimore or in a variety of places and advocate -- we were in Montgomery, Alabama, for example, and say charter schools are an important step in the right direction.

There are two things wrong with the president's approach. And the reason I would, frankly, dramatically shrink the Federal Department of Education down to doing nothing but research, return all the power under the Tenth Amendment back to the states. And I agree with Rick's point. I would urge the states, then, to return most of that power back to the local communities, and I'd urge the local communities the turn most of the power back to the parents. And I think the fact is…

… We have bought -- we bought over the last 50 years three huge mistakes. We bought the mistake that the teachers unions actually cared about the kids. It's increasingly clear they care about protecting bad teachers. And if you look at L.A. Unified, it is almost criminal what we do to the poorest children in America, entrapping them into places. No Nation Left Behind said if a foreign power did this to our children, we'd declare it an act of war because they're doing so much damage. The second thing we bought into was the, the whole school of education theory that you don't have to learn, you have to learn about how you would learn. So when you finish learning about how you would learn, you have self-esteem because you're told you have self-esteem, even if you can't read the words self esteem. And the...

...and the third thing we bought, which Rick eluded to, which is really important. We bought this notion that you could have Carnegie units and you could have state standards and you could have a curriculum everybody, every child is unique. Every teach is unique. Teaching is a missionary vocation. When you bureaucratize it, you kill it. We need a fundamental re-thinking from the ground up.

I think you need very profound reform of education at the state level. You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations. And the truth is, I believe we’d be far better off if most states adopted a program of the equivalent of Pell Grants for K-through-12, so that parents could choose where their child went to school, whether it was public, or private, or home-schooling, and parents could be involved.

Brian Williams: Speaker Gingrich, this reminds me of “Race to the Top,” the Obama administration education program. You supported it, Governor Perry opted out, some people don't like it. What did you like about it?

Newt Gingrich: I liked very much the fact that it talked about charter schools. It's the one place I found to agree with President Obama. If every parent in America had a choice of the school their child went to, if that school had to report its scores, if there was a real opportunity, you'd have a dramatic improvement.

I visited schools where, three years earlier, there were fights, there were dropouts, there was no hope. They were taken over by a charter school in downtown Philadelphia, and all of a sudden the kids didn't fight anymore, because they were disciplined. They were all asked every day, what college are you going to? Not are you going to go to college, what college are you going (to). And so I would -- I am very much in favor of school choice.

My personal preference would be to have a Pell Grant for K-12 so that every parent could pick, with their child, any school they wanted to send them to, public or private, and enable them to have the choice. I don't think you're ever going to reform the current bureaucracies. And the president, I thought, was showing some courage in taking on the teacher's union to some extent and offering charter schools, and I wanted, frankly, to encourage more development towards choice.

“… When I was Speaker of the House, we paid $1.13 on average during the four years that I was speaker. When Barack Obama became president, we paid $1.89 that week. But the Obama administration is so anti oil, so anti gas, so anti fossil fuels in general, including coal that basically their view is: If we have lots of fuel, they don’t want it. They are prepared to do almost anything to stop the development of these kinds of programs…

… Become energy independent for national security reasons;
Develop enough new energy here at home that would create well, over a million jobs in the next few years, high paying jobs, very useful jobs, jobs which by the way, increase our manufacturing base because much of energy production requires manufacture products in order to both drill, due process, to transport;
Third, by using federal property and by allowing offshore development on federally controlled waters, we get paid a royalty. One of the leading experts on North Dakota has suggested that we might well have over the next generation 18 trillion, not billion, $18 trillion in royalties that we could gather for the federal government with no tax increases.

And in fact to accelerate that, I propose the following tax changes. I propose we go to zero capital gains tax, so hundreds of billions of dollars pour into the United States to enable us to have new investment, new factories, new exploration, new companies. I suggest a 12 a half percent corporate tax rate would liberate about $700 billion in overseas profits to bring them back home to be reinvested and to allow our companies to compete everywhere in the world. I’ve also proposed that we abolish the death tax permanently, so that we are in a position where family businesses can focus on job creation and are being successful, not on hiding from the IRS.

I’ve also proposed that we have 100 percent expensing. And what that means is: When you invest in new equipment, you write it off in one year. Now that is really important because it means if we are going to go out and find new oil, we’re going to move the oil with pipelines, we could make it very desirable to develop energy in America and to develop manufacturing in America, so that the energy companies would be buying from American manufacturers. And you would, once again, rebuild our machine tool industry and rebuild our industry that supplies goods and services…

… I guarantee you that as your president on the very first day; I will sign an executive order approving the Keystone Pipeline so that oil can come from Canada through the United States to Houston and Galveston. That way we will have 30 to 50,000 new jobs building the pipeline, and for the next 50 years, we will have people working to maintain the pipeline; we will have people working to process and refine the all products and to ship them out of the ports of Galveston and Houston. It is a win win program. I am dedicated to making sure that the Canadians do not have to have a partnership with China to build a pipeline due west across the Rockies…”

“Instead of offering a real plan to lower the cost of gasoline, President Obama offered excuses and fantasies. Blaming instability in the Middle East for high gas prices is not leadership. Neither is promising magic future technologies that won’t satisfy today’s energy needs. The fact is that President Obama could today, with a stroke of his pen, begin the process of bringing online 2.4 million new barrels of oil per day to US supplies – more than is transported through the Straits of Hormuz from the Middle East – simply by authorizing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, re-opening the Gulf of Mexico, and permitting exploration and production in the Chukchi Sea and National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. This would completely wipe out our dependence on the Persian Gulf, dramatically increase our energy security and significantly reduce prices at the pump.”

“After I came out with a program to get to $2.50 a gallon gasoline, Obama decided he had to make a speech on energy. I really hope every American will read his speech in Miami. It is a very revealing speech. It is factually false, intellectually incoherent, deeply conflicted on policy and in some places just strange…

… Our choice is between energy independence and never again bowing to a Saudi King; and $2.50 a gallon gasoline. His side is a series of fantasies in which your tax money is thrown away on products that are not commercially feasible while you pay higher and higher and higher prices…

General Policy On Guantanamo

“… The fact is every member of the American government senior leadership believed in the intelligence they were getting at the time. And the question comes right down to, as Vice President Cheney said this week, what's your highest priority? Is it to defend America and protect American lives, or is it to find some way to defend terrorists and to get terrorists involved in the criminal justice system? I can't imagine -- given the fact, for example, that we just picked up four terrorists in New York who had been converted in prison, I can't imagine -- the director of the FBI has said don't put these terrorists in prisons because there'll be an active threat to convert other people. The fact is these, these terrorists -- we're now down to the worst of the worst. These are the -- the Bush administration released over 500 people. One out of every seven actually went back to war against us and is out actively trying to kill Americans today. So I would be very cautious. I think the president made a very big mistake. It was a campaign promise, it is not a national security plan. I think, frankly, they should keep Guantanamo open. Whatever the, whatever things that are wrong at Guantanamo they would fix by moving them to somewhere else, fix them at Guantanamo.

Question: How long should Gitmo remain open?

Gingrich: Until the war is over.

Question: When is that?

Gingrich: We'll -- when the terrorists disappear.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

“I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with President Jiang in the United States and to take part in a candid and direct dialogue about U.S.-Chinese relations. On every issue of concern to our two nations -- from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to the integration of Hong Kong, the status of Taiwan, and the growing inter- dependence of our two economies -- we spoke forcefully, honestly, and without reserve. Most importantly, Republican leaders made explicitly clear our unwavering commitment to human rights and individual liberty. I believe it was vitally important that we used this opportunity to address the basic lack of freedom -- speech, liberty, assembly, the press -- in China. Had we not done so, we would not only have betrayed our own tradition, we also would have failed to meet our obligations as a friend of China. As I said in China this spring, there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions. There is no place for intolerance of dissent. While we walked through the Rotunda. I explained to President Jiang how the roots of American rule of law go back more than 700 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta. The foundation of American values, therefore, is not a passing priority or a temporary trend. We believe in religious liberty and personal freedom because the people who settled our country left the lands of their birth, accepting great danger and uncertainty, to secure those basic rights. I reminded our Chinese guests that you cannot have economic freedom without political freedom, and you cannot have political freedom without religious freedom. You cannot have a system that is half totalitarian and half free. It will not survive. I -- and the rest of the Republican leadership -- will continue to take whatever action we, can to help move China down the path of freedom, democracy, and liberty. As Americans, as political leaders, as free individuals, it is our obligation to do what we can to extend these basic human rights and religious liberties to the rest of the world.”

Greta Van Susteren : All right, now, waterboarding -- is that torture?
Gingrich : I think it's something we shouldn't do.
GVS : Should not do.
Gingrich : Should not do. I've been very deeply influenced by John McCain, who was a prisoner, by Chuck Boyd, retired Air Force four-star general, who was a prisoner, and by Jim Jones. And Boyd and Jones and I talked about this at length several years ago. I do think the United States should be very careful about the things we do. I think, frankly, releasing the documents last week was a big mistake. Releasing the pictures is, I think, a dumb mistake. But I want to see the United States run the risk, at times, of not learning certain things in order to establish a standard for civilization.
Now, remember, the people we're talking about are criminals. They're outside the law. They're not wearing a uniform. They're not part of a regular army. They're not engaged in anything that's called the law of warfare. Historically, they have been automatically subject to being shot because if you're not in uniform and you're an enemy combatant, you are deemed automatically to be the equivalent of a spy. The same thing goes with piracy, which is historically outside the law.
But I think as a matter of our own self-respect, we historically have been very careful about this. I'm just finishing a novel that'll come out in October about George Washington crossing the Delaware and winning a huge victory on the day after Christmas in 1776. Washington issued very strict rules, to be charitable towards prisoners, to be careful about treating them humanely, to draw a distinction between the way the Europeans mercenaries dealt with our men and the way Americans deal with other prisoners.
And I think Washington was closer to right. So I'm not going to defend any of these practices, but I do think the way the administration has approached it weakens the United States And I think that they have gratuitously done things that were not needed.

“There's nothing complicated about what's going on. The richest society in the planet is within geographic reach now, in the age of modern transportation, of much poorer societies. So relatively smart people wake up in the morning and say, Gee, I could earn $1 an hour here or $14 an hour in Kansas City. I wonder where I'd like to be next week. This isn't complicated. It's not indecent and it’s not wrong. But a society which fails to control its own borders is asking for the level of trouble we now have.”

"Because I think we are going to want to find some way to deal with the people who are here to distinguish between those who have no ties to the United States, and therefore you can deport them at minimum human cost, and those who, in fact, may have earned the right to become legal, but not citizens"

“No serious citizen who’s concerned about solving this problem should get trapped into a yes/no answer in which you’re either for totally selling out protecting America or you’re for totally kicking out 20 million people in a heartless way. There are — there are humane, practical steps to solve this problem, if we can get the politicians and the news media to just deal with it honestly.”

"We are not going to deport 11 million people. There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty… Let's find someone who actually knows what they're doing… It should be possible for any employer, anyone in the United States, as fast as you swipe your ATM card to get cash, to swipe a card to know whether or not they're able to hire you”

“I’m just going to ask them a simple question… They’re going to take somebody who came here at 3 years of age, who doesn’t speak Spanish and who just graduated from a high school in Texas, and they’re going to say to him, ‘We’re going to deport you… That’s certainly their prerogative. I don’t think the country will go for that. I think that’s so lax in a concern for the human beings involved…

So first of all I would urge the House and Senate to pass a border control bill that's real. And when I say real, let me explain - I recommend to all of you, if you've never read Rudy Giuliani's Leadership and Bill Bratton's Turnaround, they're both worth reading to understand what I mean by real.
Bratton is actually the police chief who actually enforced Giuliani's determination to control crime. They set up a system called COMSTAT for Computer Statistics. They were very aggressive and very direct. They replaced three-fourths of the Precinct Captains in New York the first year. Out of 76 Precincts, three-fourths of their captains replaced. They reduced crime 14% the first year. Mayor Bloomberg has maintained the same system. Crime in New York today is down 70%. New York is statistically the safest large city in the United States. One estimate is there are 16,000 people alive today who would've been killed in New York over the last 15 years.
Staggering. I mean, nobody studies it because it’s a success. And how could you possibly do a Time magazine cover about success? That would imply things in America could work.

“I am deeply committed to securing the border… I am deeply committed to changing the deportation rules for felons and gang members… But I also think we have a huge challenge — what do you do with the human beings who are engaged, some of whom are married, have children? It’s a very complicated situation, and I don’t you think you can just wave a magic wand and have some kind of a simple, clean answer.”

“... there are a number of ways to be smart about Iran, and relatively a few ways to be dumb, and the administration skipped all the ways to be smart…

First of all, have a maximum covert operation to block and disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable.

Second, maximum coordination with the Israelis, in a way that allows them to maximize their impact to Iran.

Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher did to the Soviet Union, of every possible aspect short of war, of breaking the regime and bringing it down. And I agree entirely with Governor Romney. If in the end, despite all of those things, the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have nuclear weapons.”

“Because I live through the Carter inflation, I know that Governor Romney’s proposal for automatic minimum wage increase is potentially a catastrophe. I mean if you go back and look, we ended up under Carter, 13% inflation. You go after every small-business owner in the area, and you say to them, if you have an automatic increase of 13%, and the year before was 10, and the year before that was 9, and the year after was 11, how many people would you fire in order to - people need to understand, if you arbitrarily raise prices, without raising productivity, you eliminate jobs.

So Governor Romney has a major job killing proposal. And I think the reason is because he’s never lived through that period.”

"Start with the following two facts. Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal. Second, every first generation successful person I know, started work early. And how many of you either did baby sitting or…

… You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school," he said. "They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they came in? What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian? And I'd pay them as early as is reasonable and practical…”

“Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them, by putting them in schools that fail, has done more to create income inequality in United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children, first of all, in child laws which are truly stupid. Saying to people you shouldn't go to work before you're 14, 16. You're totally poor, you're in a school that's failing with a teacher that's failing.

I tried for years to have a very simple model. These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work; they'd have cash; they'd have pride in the schools. They'd begin the process of rising. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you’re in a fight with your girlfriend. The whole process of making work worthwhile is central. We have cut, you put your fingers to it, I take seriously that every American of every ethnic background of every neighborhood has the right to pursue happiness and that was endowed by the creator. That means you’re gonna see from me extraordinary radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and to give people a chance to rise very rapidly…

… Go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job at 9 to 14 years of age. They are selling newspapers, going door to door, washing cars. They were all making money at a very young age. What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don't do it. Remember all the stuff about not getting a hamburger-flipping job? Worst possible advice to give the poor children.”

Question: With your view of history do you see comparisons between the civil rights era and the push these days for gay rights? There were lots of people in the South in the '60s who would have never had consented to blacks and whites marrying, and that's become the law of the land. There are lots of gay folks who see themselves in the same predicament. Talk about that.

Gingrich: I think there is an enormous difference between an inescapable fact of race… and you have to decide whether or not you are in fact going to tolerate discrimination based on race, and a question about culture, a question about what are your values. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. That's a value proposition. I think it is very important for society to try and emphasize that relationship. I think people growing up in a structure in which children have parents that they look up to and parents that they relate to is a very important thing. I think there is a big difference between saying that you are going to have an acceptance of people's lifestyle and saying you now are going to normalize that as the standard for the whole country. And I think that, the fact is I am a traditional classic conservative. And I am defending a value system which has a several-thousand-year history behind it, which is pretty clear. And I think that almost nobody who studies that value system has any doubts about that clarity.

Question: A lot of people from the South in the '50s and '60s would have said mixed-race marriage was a cultural thing that they couldn't accept at the time.

Gingrich: Look, you can always make parallels if you want to. I don't accept that parallel. I think that it is fairly ludicrous. Nobody is suggesting that we have legal segregation of gays, nobody is suggesting they not be allowed to use the bathroom, they not be allowed to drink at the water fountain. I mean, segregation was a horrible thing. And I grew up, I was born in Pennsylvania, I grew up in an integrated U.S. Army. I arrived at Fort Benning when I was a junior in high school. Segregation was still legal, it’s a totally different thing.

And I think that it is frankly offensive to have this whole effort to draw the contrast and to say that if you feel strongly about marriage being between a man and a woman, gee, is that parallel to being a racist? The answer is no. I am defending a 3,000-year tradition. It's very deep in our culture for very profound reasons.

Question: But marriage is about to be a minority status in this country, marriage between a man and a woman.

Gingrich: And that's a problem.

Question: Is there something as president you would see that you could do to turn that tide if that's what your value is?

Gingrich: I think part of it is to try to make it, to shift the benefit patterns economically so there is a greater benefit to being married. Look at the impact. You go back and look at Moynihan's original warnings on this topic 40 years ago. And by every criteria, the breakdown of the family has gotten worse, the number of children who are growing up rootless and without any kind of adult supervision has gotten worse. And yet Moynihan was roundly attacked for having said things that are now patently true, very clearly obvious.

I think Santorum is actually on to something important, that finding a way to create a positive environment to maximize the desirability of marriage being the central building block and family being the central building block of society is a very important step we ought to take.

Question: So apart from gay rights, apart from marriage you say you support equal treatment of gay Americans?

Gingrich: I'm against discrimination against people based on their private behavior.

Question: So what is your position on the ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ policy?

Gingrich: That would be my policy, don't ask, don't tell.

Question: So in the military, you would have separate standards?

Gingrich: I don't think in the military, that you particularly want sexual behavior to be an overt issue.

Question: So you would not have wanted that repealed?

Gingrich: I would not have wanted it repealed.

Question: Would you try and reinstate it?

Gingrich: I would sign a reinstatement.

Question: Would you actively work to get it reinstated?

Gingrich: Well, I would encourage the Congress to pass reinstatement, and I suspect the next Congress will pass reinstatement. And by the way, when the president moved in the opposite direction, the two major ground combat forces, the Army and the Marine Corps, were both deeply opposed.

Question: They aren't now, though.

Gingrich: They aren't now because they respond to the commander in chief.

Question: They aren't telling the truth, they aren't telling their true feelings?

Gingrich: I think fairly often when you are in the chain of command, there is a way to ask the question just right. But the truth is I think it would be a career-ending conversation.

Question: Mr. Speaker, you mentioned race earlier being inescapable. Do you believe that, being gay, that people choose to be gay?

Gingrich: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think that both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?

Question: So people then can choose one way or another?

Gingrich: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.

Question: So a person can then choose to be straight?

Gingrich: Look, people choose to be celibate, people choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of noncelibacy. It’s part of how the species re-creates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.

Question: So gay people should choose celibacy?

Gingrich: I didn't say that. I said people have many choices within genetic patterns. It is not a predetermined either-or.

"Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank, for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

… No. I think, I think when the left, when the radicals lost the vote in California, they are determined to impose their will on this country no matter what the popular opinion, no matter what the law of the land. You've watched them, for example, in Massachusetts, basically drive the Catholic Church out of running adoption services, drive Catholic hospitals out of offering any services, because they impose secular rules that are fundamentally…

… sinful from the standpoint, you know.

… And so I think, we need, look, we need a debate. Calista and I just did a YouTube video on the Capitol Visitors Center where there's also an effort to take "In God We Trust" out of the Capitol Visitors Center…

… That's how bad it is."

"We commend Newt Gingrich for signing NOM's presidential marriage pledge, committing himself to play a leadership role as president to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman," said Brian Brown, NOM's president. "Mr. Gingrich joins all the other major candidates who have made a similar commitment, save for one—Ron Paul. Now we will embark on an intensive communications program to inform Iowa voters who will stand with them to preserve marriage, and who has abandoned them on marriage."

Preserving traditional marriage is a major issue in the presidential campaign. In 2010 Iowa voters removed three justices of their state Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, who voted to redefine marriage in Iowa and thus imposing same-sex marriage. NOM's marriage pledge commits the candidates to:

• 
  Support an amendment to the United State Constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman;
  


• 
  Appointing Supreme Court Justices and an Attorney General who will apply the original meaning of the Constitution;
  


• 
  Vigorously defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in court;
  


• 
  Establish a presidential commission on religious liberty; and
  


• 
  Advance legislation to return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage."
  

December 15, 2011: Press Release, National Organization for Marriage

Question: I have a question regarding all the law that people are trying to make for gay rights. I heard what you said about marriage being between a man and a woman and I agree that’s what God said in the very beginning, in, in, the book of Genesis. But our laws of our land we’re seeing more and more states allowing gay marriage. And how can we stop this? It is so (unintelligible) wrong.

Newt Gingrich: I think ultimately we're going to have to have a federal amendment because at the rate we're going, you might be able to pass a federal law, but at the rate we're going it's going to be just chaos, you're going to have some states that say it's all right and other states that say it's not all right. How are people gonna travel, what are their legal rights? It is a mess, and, and I think if we’re going to defend marriage in the end, it will probably require federal law

Question: Well, what’s the difference? What they’re saying, you know, a woman wants to be with a woman, when is it gonna be, well 'I want to marry a dog' or 'I want to marry a cow'?” Well you know, that makes as much sense. Their saying is (unintelligible) something stupid like that.

Newt Gingrich: Well, I think that you have, some people, remember we have now had a whole two generations of teachers who explained to us, 'You shouldn't make, render moral judgment. After all it's all situation ethics, who are we to decide?', et cetera, and that's been a major problem.”

Scott Arnold: My question is, how do you plan to engage such a large community of people, who, on this one specific issue, do not support you - may agree with you on the other parts of what you stand for – but how do you plan to engage and get the help of gay Americans and those who support them?
Gingrich: I think, for those for whom the only issue that really matters is the definition of marriage, I won’t get their support, and I accept that that’s a reality. On the other hand, for those for whom it’s not the central issue in their life, if they care about job creation, if they care about national security, if they care about a better future for the country at large, then I think I’ll get their support.
Arnold: So what if it is the biggest issue?
Gingrich: Then I won’t get their support.
Arnold: Then how do we engage if you’re elected, then what, what does that mean?
Gingrich: Then you engage in every topic except that. I mean –
Arnold: Except the one that’s the most important?
Gingrich: If that is the most important to you…
Arnold: — to many millions of people.
Gingrich: Well, if that’s the most important to you, then you should be for Obama.
Arnold: Okay.
Gingrich: I think that’s perfectly legitimate.
Arnold:  I am, but thank you.
Gingrich: Yeah, I think that’s perfectly legitimate.

Lofton: How about civil unions? Where do you stand on that issue?

Gingrich: I stand on some kind of legal rights. I’m not sure where I stand on civil unions. It’s like marriage without marriage. I’ll give you a specific example of what I believe. People ought to have the ability to have people visit them in the hospital, which is the most obvious and awkward situation. There ought to be a way to arrange that. There ought to be some way to leave your estate to someone. There ought to be some way to arrange that.

“You can certainly reverse the President’s position on social engineering in the military. I was underwhelmed when Leon Panetta proudly announced that 97 percent of the troops have now gone through sensitivity training. Somehow, that wasn’t why I thought we recruited people to be on active duty…

… You have to start with the idea that this is an administration of extraordinary anti-military prejudice, which just hides it, okay? This president is not a commander in chief in any normal sense, he is a politician in chief."

Lapinski: Would you reinstate ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’?
Gingrich: Yes. I voted for it originally, and I agree with things that Rick and others have said, that we shouldn’t run the U.S. military as a social experiment. The purpose of the U.S. military is to win wars.

“I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job… His job is to enforce the rule of law and for us to start replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama is a very dangerous precedent.”

Lofton: Do you think homosexuals ought to be able to adopt children?
Gingrich: No.

“I favor adoption being between a man and a woman that, traditional families are what I’m in favor of. Period. But I’m trying to say it in a positive way because I frankly think we are stronger. If we indicated it in a positive way what we favor, and I favor the position that’s been taken for at least 3,000 years.”