Newt Gingrich, the third GOP presidential candidate to address this year’s CPAC conservative confab, finally got foreign policy into the mix.
Like Rick Santorum this morning and Mitt Romney midday, the former House speaker made President Obama his principle target in his late afternoon speech.
But while Santorum focused on economic policies and Romney made the case for his social conservative chops, Gingrich got into foreign policy.
“We need a profound national debate about our [foreign] policy and it starts by telling the truth about radical Islamists that seek to kill us,” Gingrich said amidst loud applause from the CPAC crowd.
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During his speech, Gingrich likened Obama to former President Jimmy Carter when he equated the Americans being detained by the Egypt government with the U.S. embassy workers that were held hostage by Iran in 1979.
He said that he wanted “to ensure that no future president ever bows to a Saudi king again.” (For the record, the Obama folks say it didn’t happen that way.)
Gingrich repeated his pledge in December to the Republican Jewish Coalition that during his first weeks as president, he would sign an executive order to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Gingrich didn’t stint on domestic policy proposals, specifically his desire to repeal “40 percent” of Obama’s first term agenda by signing executive orders that would repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as to repeal what he described as other “job-killing bills,” such as the Dodd-Frank Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Gingrich also brought in the birth control brouhaha, another hot button topic Santorum and Romney did not address. Referring to the president’s plan to make contraceptive care available to all, including staffers at religious institutions — with an exception for houses of worship — Gingrich said the Obama administration was “waging war on religion” and accused the president of being “deeply committed” to going after the Catholic Church.
The next month of campaigning will be crucial for Gingrich, who has not won a primary contest since South Carolina and with his chief conservative rival Santorum gaining momentum in Tuesday’s sweep of primaries held in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.
