Pittsburgh Live
December 14, 2009
Craig Smith

Newt Gingrich was the driving force behind the 1994 "Contract with America," which propelled the Republican Party into the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years. He served as speaker of the House from 1995-99.

Gingrich has published 20 books, including "Rediscovering God in America," which has been updated to include the photography of his wife, Callista Gingrich. He is one of the Obama administration's harshest and most visible critics.

We talked Wednesday as the president prepared to attend the United Nations-led climate talks in Copenhagen on Dec. 18.

Q: You were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement to fight global warming, but have rethought the issue. What did you think about the EPA's decision to regulate carbon as a pollutant?

A: I think it is an outrageous step toward a bureaucratic dictatorship in which appointed government bureaucrats will control your life under their rules as they decide and will intervene as they see fit. It's an extraordinary seizure of power and violates virtually everything in the American Constitution.

Q: How so?

A: We were promised that we would be governed by the Congress and the president. We were promised that there would be a rule of law. This is giving the EPA the power to decide the rules, judge you, charge you money, potentially send you to prison. ... Go out and talk to people who found their property suddenly trapped under EPA rules, and what you'll find, as an individual, (is that) you have basically given up a very large portion of your freedom to a government bureaucrat whose only virtue is that he works for the government. They weren't elected. They don't have any unique power except that they have the grant of government authority.

Q: You've called for a congressional investigation into the "bias and politicization in the climate change community." Do you think that will fly?

A: I think it does for most Americans. It doesn't for the elites; it doesn't for the bureaucracy. ... There is an emotional, almost hysterical, effort by the left across the planet to increase the power of government at the expense of the individual.

The environment is the newest excuse. But it's the same old socialist song, which is politicians and bureaucrats ought to be powerful and people who create jobs and run businesses ought to be controlled. ...

And then you find out that we don't have accurate scientific data because in fact all the data people are using was "adjusted," whatever that means.

Einstein, when he invented relativity, was by himself. They didn't vote on it. They didn't sign a petition.

Q: Your book "Rediscovering God in America" is a walking tour through Washington, showing references to God in the architecture, writings, customs. Why do you think there's such a push to erase God from our history?

A: Well, again there is a secular, socialist movement, which is determined to impose its worldview on everyone else by using the power of the court and using the power of bureaucracy. ... There is a cross eight miles off the highway in the middle of the Mohave Desert, created by the Death Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars of 1934, to commemorate the dead of World War I. The ACLU is such a totalitarian organization that the idea of a cross standing in the middle of the desert is a threat to their vision of America. And so they filed a lawsuit.

The cross currently is surrounded by plywood so as not to offend either Gila monsters, sidewinders or the random hiker who happens to suddenly come over the hill and realize, "Oh my God. Here in America they still have allowed one cross."

Q: Do you think there will be another Republican revolution, or will the tea party movement morph into something else, another party perhaps?

A: Republicans have to understand the core message of the tea party movement, which is that they want an alternative party, not an opposition party. They want a vivid, bold, positive set of big changes that meet the challenges of America. When we did the contract in 1994, it was designed very specifically with the (Ross) Perot voters in mind. And in many ways there's a real parallelism between the anger the Perot voters had toward a Republican presidency that they felt had betrayed them by raising taxes and the anger the tea party people feel.

Q: You've warned in the past about a Third World War emerging. How close are we?

A: I think we have to recognize when you have events in Fort Hood, Denver, Detroit and New York in the last two months, you have to be sober and you have to look at it. When you have five car bombs go off in Baghdad (Tuesday), when you have the violence in Pakistan and Iraq, when you have the Iranians getting nuclear weapons, there is a lot of good reason for us to worry. One of the challenges we have is that nobody can figure out the scale of this -- neither Bush nor Obama has confronted how big the challenge is.

Q: What would bring you back to elected office?

A: Oh, I think the country. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not one with a personal ambition. ... If at some point there was a clear movement that is not just about winning one office but is about a wave of change from school board and city council to state legislature all the way up, then I would be very interested in being part of that process. But I'm not interested in just doing it as a matter of personal ambition. I think you've got to have some larger purpose in life, some larger cause.