With his campaign floundering in third place in the delegate count and the popular vote, and facing the likely probability that he will walk away from today’s Louisiana Primary without picking up a single delegate, Newt Gingirch is blowing the dog whistle:
Newt Gingrich said while he believes President Obama is a Christian, the president conducts himself in a way that would fuel suspicions that he is a Muslim.
Asked by a reporter following a speech on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast Friday if it concerns him so many people in the country believe Obama is Muslim, Gingrich said it was the president’s problem.
“It should bother the president. Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he is a Muslim]?” Gingrich said. “You have to ask why would they believe that? It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because they watch the kind of things I just described to you.”
And lest you think this was just a momentary slip of the tongue by the former Speaker, consider what he said on Thursday:
In a radio interview on Thursday, Newt Gingrich accused the “elite media” of failing to cover President Barack Obama’s ties to Islam, reiterating his claim that the president is “consistently apologizing” to Muslims.
While campaigning ahead of Saturday’s primary in Louisiana, Gingrich spoke with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios about the recent Washington Poststory on Rick Santorum’s association with Opus Dei, a devout Catholic group. Rios, who disapproved of the Post‘s story, asked Gingrich if he thought the media would similarly “hold their powder” on Mitt Romney for his Mormonism.
Gingrich said the media, which he believes is “in the tank for Obama,” will “do anything that helps re-elect” the president.
“It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are,” Gingrich told Rios. “Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama is consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic church?”
“Do you see anybody in the elite media prepared to say, gee, isn’t this kind of odd that we really worry a lot about the Quran and nothing about the Bible?” Gingrich asked, likely in reference to Obama’s recent apology to Afghanistan after U.S. troops burned the Islamic religious text.
And, before that, on Wednesday:
Newt Gingrich said that he accepts that President Barack Obama is a Christian, but claimed that he’s more sensitive to “radical Islamists” than the Catholic church.
“Let’s accept he’s a Christian in his own light. He went to a Christian church for over 20 years,” said the former House speaker on Fox News Wednesday night. “Why is it he’s more sensitive to radical Islamists who are killing young Americans than he is to the Catholic church, to Baptists, to fundamentalists, to people who are pro-abortion — I mean, who are pro — who are pro-life?”
“I mean, the fact is, this is a very strange presidency,” Gingrich said.
His comments referred to the president’s plan to require most religiously-affiliated employers — but not houses of worship — to provide birth control at no cost to their employees in their health plans.
The remarks came when Gingrich was asked about a National Journal story on how he did not correct a voter who said that Obama, a Christian, is a Muslim in a question-and-answer session.
“You know, that is such total baloney. I was asked by a reporter immediately afterwards. I said of course I accept that he’s a Christian,” Gingrich said. “The guy didn’t ask me a question. The guy got up and stated his opinion. I don’t have an obligation to go around and correct every single voter about every single topic. I also didn’t agree with him.”
But apparently you’re not above pandering to him, Mr. Speaker.
None of this is new for Gingrich, of course, he’s been saying similar things for years and is perhaps best known for his endorsement of the bizarre assertion made by Dinesh D’Souza that the President has a “Kenyan anti-colonialist” worldview. Given the large Catholic population in Louisiana, it’s also not surprising that Gingrich would be bringing up the HHS mandate issue down there. Nonetheless, it’s clearly not helping him in the polls and it seems to be yet another indication that he, like Rick Santorum, is flailing as he slowly comes to realize that his campaign is doomed.
