Newt Gingrich Praises Obama Speech to School Children

While many conservatives have been acting outright paranoid about Barack Obama’s speech to school children, Newt Gingrich has praised it:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended President Barack Obama’s speech to school children Tuesday, urging “every child” to read the remarks.

Some conservative critics have accused the president of trying to “indoctrinate” school children with a speech Tuesday welcoming students back to school, but Gingrich said during an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” that the attacks are without merit.

“President Reagan did it, President George H.W. Bush did it,” he said. “I read the speech yesterday when it was posted and I think the White House was smart to post it.”
“It’s a good speech,” Gingrich added. “I recommend it to everybody if you have any doubts. I would love to have every child in America read it, think about it, and learn that they should stay in school and they should study.”

Many conservatives are claiming that the speech is intended to indoctrinate school children in socialism and are urging boycotts of the speech. The text of the speech is posted here.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Mike's I.P. alter-ego says:

    Rush Limbaugh also called it a good speech. (I know I have been a bit derelict in my official talk radio commentator duties lately) But of course he then turned around and said that Obama didn’t mean any of it, that telling kids to accept responsibility and such was all good, but A) Obama should be making the same speech to adults and B) The concept of self determination advocated in the speech flys in the face of relying on government programs, nanny state, the ususal blah blah right wing talking points.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Obama has said many similar things to adults. As you note, part B is just the usual right wing talking points which have little relation to reality.

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