Glen Beck Interview With Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich called into Glenn Beck's radio show this morning and the resulting interview merited a banner across the top of Drudge declaring 'GINGRICH HITS TURBULENCE DURING GLENN BECK RADIO INTERVIEW...'
The actual interview was less firework-y than Drudge's headline suggested -- even Beck concluded it had been blissfully gaffe-free -- which is not to say it wasn't tough.  It was impressively tough.
Beck, who's never exactly been keen on Gingrich, grilled him on some of his more 'progressive' stances (when Beck raises the specter of Theodore Roosevelt you know he's getting out the long knives).  But more importantly grilled him in a way conservative voters who are seriously considering voting for Newt should be eager to hear.
Unlike Mitt Romney, however, Gingrich appeared more than happy to answer for his history of seemingly less-than-conservative stances.

GLENN: Regulation and the government scares the crap out of me and I think most Tea Party kind of leaning conservatives, and Theodore Roosevelt was the guy who started the Progressive Party. How would you characterize your relationship with the progressive ideals of Theodore Roosevelt?

GINGRICH: Well, that depends on which phase of Roosevelt you’re talking about. The 1912, he’s become a big government, centralized power advocate running an a third party candidate which, for example, Roosevelt advocated the Food and Drug Act after he was eating ‑‑ and this supposedly the story, after he was eating sausage and eggs while reading up to Sinclair’s The Jungle, which has a scene in which a man falls into a vat at the sausage factory and becomes part of the sausage. And if you go back to that era where people had ‑‑ dealing with the Chinese where the people had doctored food, they had put all sorts of junk in food, they ‑‑ you know, I as a child who lived in Europe and I always marveled at the fact that American water is drinkable virtually anywhere.

So there are minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety that are I think really important.

Beck also grilled Gingrich on his support for his longterm support of an individual mandate, playing a number of older clips of Gingrich and then did the same on climate change.
And then here's how it concluded.  Which is to say, very nicely.

GLENN: Newt, I have to tell you, I ‑‑ you know, because, you know, it’s obvious it was very clear in advance and I hope my staff made this very clear that this isn’t going to be an easy interview but I think you’ve ‑‑ you know, there was no gaffes here by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t expect any. But I appreciate the willingness to come on and answer the tough questions, and I wish you the best.

GINGRICH: Well, sir, you and I have always had a great relationship and I admire your courage and I admire the way in which you’ve always stood up and told the truth and I think you’ve had a huge impact as I go around the country with Tea Party folks in maximizing interest in American history and interest in the Founding Fathers and I think much of what you’ve done, you know, you and I don’t have to agree on some things to have a great deal of mutual respect and I think you’ve been a very powerful force for good and I wish you well in your new ventures.

So once again Newt proves himself to be able to cope with Newt.  Unlike Romney who thus far appears mostly to be in a losing battle with himself.
But I think it's also one more example of the lesson certain politicians have an impossible time learning mostly to their detriment, which is the more you make yourself available to the press the more likely they are to accept you (and your baggage).  This was always part of the genius of Rudy Giuliani and arguably the fatal flaw of Sarah Palin and possibly Mitt Romney.