ARLINGTON, Va. — Having Bubba keynote the Democratic National Convention may not be such a good idea for Democrats, former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich argued during a press conference Monday.
Gingrich said that former President Bill Clinton’s presence at the convention in September will just remind voters how liberal Obama’s presidency has been in comparison to the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
It was announced Monday that Clinton has been tapped by Obama to play a starring role at the convention, slated for September in Charlotte, N.C.
“There is a huge gap between Bill Clinton’s effort to take the Democratic Party to the center and Barack Obama’s effort to take it to the left,” Gingrich said at a northern Virginia television store. “So I think in a funny kind of way, having President Clinton at the Democratic convention may highlight the difference between the two choices.”
Gingrich said Clinton’s speech will “remind us that Obama really is a failed left-wing president with high unemployment, high deficits, huge regulatory policies and a very, very bad foreign policy.”
The Republican said voters will compare the current economic environment to the Clinton years of balanced budgets and welfare reform and all the “things that were done to make the economy better for the American people.”
“I think that will be a terrific opportunity for those of us who served with President Clinton to point out that Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich’s remarks were made while stumping for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during a “We Did Build This” event at Belmont TV in northern Virginia.
Standing next to storeowner Ken Sickmen, Gingrich hit Obama for recently saying: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
“Remember Steve Jobs starts Apple as a small business. Bill Gates starts Microsoft as s small business. Henry Ford started his auto company as a small business,” Gingrich said.
“It is the growth of small business that made America great,” he said. “And it’s Obama’s failure to understand that which explains his why his economic policies are such a disaster.”
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