Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a bid for the presidency in 2012, told National Review Saturday that he believes President Obama is operating from within a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. Gingrich, whose harsh rhetoric in the mid-90s transformed him from a Republican leader into a bogeyman, cited Dinesh D’Souza’s “stunning insight” in the Forbes article “How Obama Thinks” for the giving him the idea.

D’Souza’s article, which Gingrich told NR was the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama,” said:

Our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

The Forbes article draws on several disputed descriptions of America’s foreign policy to make its argument, including a Times of London article alleging “the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of … the Lockerbie bomber” which the State Department took unusual pains to refute, making public a pre-release diplomatic letter from the U.S. Embassy in London stating that the U.S. “is not prepared to support Megrahi’s release on compassionate release or bail.” The article also conflates Obama’s years in Hawaii with his time abroad and alleges that he is “a man who spent his formative years–the first 17 years of his life–off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan.” Obama spent four years as a child living in Indonesia and visited Pakistan for three weeks as a college student when he was 20 years old, according to FactCheck.org.

Gingrich’s remarks came in an interview with National Review’s Robert Costa after the Sept. 11 premiere of the Gingriches’ new movie, “America at Risk: The War with No Name,” in Washington, D.C.

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asked, according to the report. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich said.

“I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality,” he added. “If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane.”

The idea that Obama is fundamentally foreign because of his Kenyan father is a view most closely associated with individuals known as “birthers,” who assert against the evidence that Obama was secretly born or raised in Kenya, rather than Hawaii, and therefore is not eligible to be — and illegitimate as — president. The D’Souza-Gingrich argument represents a new approach to calling the president’s ideas foreign and unAmerican.

“We have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history,” D’Souza wrote.

2 Responses to ““This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich said.”

1. Redd
   September 12th, 2010 @ 12:42 pm

   Senate resolution 511…
   Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936:

   Now, therefore, be it Resolved,

   That John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘‘natural born Citizen’’ under Article II,Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.

   “Born to American citizens (mother and father)”.

   This Senate Resolution, unanimously (including Mr. Obama) adopted, declares that “natural born” means having two American citizen parents.

2. Leonard McCauley
   September 12th, 2010 @ 2:46 pm

   Ask Newt what he thinks about Nafta, after all these years? He, Bob Dole & Bill Clinton patted themselves on the back and told each other what a good piece of legislation they had just passed….Ask Newt What happened to the $40 billion He, Clinton & Bob Dole loaned to Mexico? After the Emir of Kuwait honored the United States with a $50 billion reimbursement, (In Cash) for the 1st Gulf War…Be careful who u allow to be ur fiends Orly.

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