Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is calling for Energy Secretary Steven Chu to resign because the Obama administration’s policies actually make him the “anti-energy secretary.” The former House speaker also told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Thursday both Chu and President Barack Obama are perfectly happy with soaring gas prices.
“First of all, he’s the anti-energy secretary — by his own admission, he wants American prices to be about the European level, which would be $9 or $10 a gallon,” Gingrich said. “When he was asked yesterday, he said that he had no intention of trying to get gasoline to be less expensive and his goal was to get the American people to go to alternatives.
Gingrich, who has made attacking Obama’s energy policies and their national-security implications central to his campaign, pointed to Chu’s recent claim that he deserves nearly a perfect grade as energy secretary — despite the prices at the pump and the Solyndra solar energy fiasco.
He has also called for a plan to return to $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, so America will never again have to be subservient to foreign oil-producing nations.
“It tells you that by his standard, the current gas prices are terrific — they’re doing exactly what Obama and Chu want them to do. They’re causing pain for Americans, and they hope that will force them into smaller cars and force them into other kinds of vehicles,” he said. “And I think their strategy is to get to $9 or $10 gallon gasoline.”
On Gingrich’s moribund presidential campaign, Van Susteren noted that front-runner Mitt Romney’s Super Pac has been running an ad with a sound bite, which it claims shows the former House speaker was opposed to the policies of conservative icon President Ronald Reagan. Gingrich said the claims are absurd.
“You know, the Romney campaign’s level of dishonesty is really sad for somebody who wants to be president. Everybody who has studied that period knows that I was a very loyal ally of President Reagan,” a bristling Gingrich said. “Ambassador Faith Whittlesey — who was in charge of strategic communications, the highest-ranking woman in the Reagan White House — has written an article on this, and she has said that these things are total fabrication, they are deliberately taking things out of context.
“I was, in fact, on the side of the president fighting the Republican establishment, which did not want him to say, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall — the Republican establishment did not want him to call the Soviet Union an evil empire,” he continued. “I was a Reaganite fighting the Republican establishment. And I just think it's sad to watch somebody run for president with a continuing pattern of dishonesty — which is what Governor Romney’s done.”
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