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Friday, June 20, 2008

Gingrich wants cheap power

Former house speaker speaks to local Republican at home of House candidate

At the Beaver Creek home of House candidate Muhammad Ali Hasan, Newt Gingrich says he's trying to unite Americans behind efforts to reduce the price of energy.
At the Beaver Creek home of House candidate Muhammad Ali Hasan, Newt Gingrich says he's trying to unite Americans behind efforts to reduce the price of energy.ENLARGE
At the Beaver Creek home of House candidate Muhammad Ali Hasan, Newt Gingrich says he's trying to unite Americans behind efforts to reduce the price of energy.
Ruth Moon/Vail Daily
BEAVER CREEK, Colorado — Cheap energy sounds like a fairy tale; it’s like eating your cake and having it too.

But that’s exactly what former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested as a possibility Friday in a speech to a small group at the home of Republican state House candidate Muhammad Ali Hasan.

Hasan, who joked that he is trying to fill Gingrich’s shoes, lives in Beaver Creek and is a candidate for House District 56, which includes Eagle County.

Gingrich’s speech drew chuckles from the crowd as he poked fun at the Democratic party’s approach to the high cost of gas.

“There’s an ideology on the left that would like everyone to walk,” he said. “If everyone on the left wants to say, ‘You’re not paying enough, let’s keep sending the money to Saudi Arabia … let’s make sure that Iran and Russia have all the money they need,’ I just think people are going to think this is nuts.”

The purpose of Gingrich’s appearance was to tell the attendees about a new organization he started as a grassroots approach to lower the cost of energy, especially gasoline, in the U.S.

“Here’s my theory,” he said. “Almost everybody in America pumps their own gas, so they stand at the pump for three to five minutes getting really mad — and they do it on average twice a week, so there’s this wave building.”

His organization, called American Solutions, is intended to channel that wave. He hopes it will be a tri-partisan group composed of at least 50 percent of each major political party in the United States, including the Independent party.

Gingrich said the goal of the organization is to find issues that garner nonpartisan support and unite Americans to find solutions to those issues.

“We were looking for … red, white and blue issues rather than red versus blue issues,” he said. “We found over 100, and we found the American people have a lot of common sense; it’s the elites that are nuts.”

A petition on the home page of the American Solutions Web site, which had almost 1.1 million signatures at press time, calls for Congress to “act immediately to lower gasoline prices … by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.”

The Web site also contains a Solutions Lab where the user can view suggested solutions to current issues and a link to “Create MySolution.” Areas in need of solutions include campaigns and governance, transforming social security and taxation.

In a recent post in the solutions lab, “tamagramma” says: “Is there any way to entice people to recycle as a means of getting fuel discounts to ease the pain at the pump?

This would help the environment, encourage recycling and help with fuel discounts.”

Gingrich said his goal is to gain the support of 3 to 4 million people who will congregate in Washington, D.C. in September for an “energy legislation week” to get the House to pass an energy bill.

Gingrich stressed his belief that current Democratic solutions aren’t working.

“We had one Democrat the day before yesterday who proposed that government take over oil refineries,” he said. “If you look at the job the government did in Katrina and you look at the job the government did with the border and you look at the job the census just did in failing totally to learn how to use computers, you have to wonder what planet this guy lives on, because it’s not earth.”

The event, hosted by Malik and Seeme Hasan, was sponsored by the Eagle County Young Republicans and Eagle County Republican party as a thank-you for local Republicans, said Melissa Lueck, acting president of the Young Republicans.

Almost 30 people attended, including Republican candidate for county commissioner Debbie Buckley and several members of Young Republicans, who had spent the morning campaigning for Hasan.

Fittingly, Gingrich had some cake of his own at the event, as he sliced a birthday cake the Hasans had prepared for him. Gingrich turned 65 last Tuesday.




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