Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan

Above, Ronald and Nancy Reagan at Los Angeles International Airport in 1980. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

National Review Online has an interesting article on Newt Gingrich. It was written by Reagan Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams.

The article starts off with this:

In the increasingly rough Republican campaign, no candidate has wrapped himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan more often than Newt Gingrich. “I worked with President Reagan to change things in Washington,” “we helped defeat the Soviet empire,” and “I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress” are typical claims by the former speaker of the House.

The claims are misleading at best. As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.

Many conservatives look at Gingrich as a loose cannon. The article above is a good example on why this is so. It is a real eye-opener, to put it mildly.

To read the full article go here.

UPDATE (1/26/12): Newsmax is reporting that Michael Reagan and Rush Limbaugh are blasting Mitt Romney and his supporters over "false claims."

Ronald Reagan’s eldest son Mike Reagan has issued a statement lambasting Mitt Romney and his supporters for claims that Romney’s Republican presidential rival Newt Gingrich was a strong critic of President Reagan.

Reagan says such claims are false.

Even Rush Limbaugh, shocked by the Romney claims, chimed on his Thursday radio broadcast to say "This is obviously a coordinated attack to take Newt out here in Florida."

Rush slammed the Romney-backed smear campaign against Newt.

“That kind of stuff is why people hate Romney so much," Limbaugh said.

Limbaugh added that Newt has always been a conservative from his early days in national talk radio in the 1980s.

“He was perhaps the premier defender of Ronald Reagan,” Limbaugh said.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Mike Reagan, Rush Limbaugh Blast Romney