After fending off a flurry of right-wing criticism over the weekend, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appears to be changing his tune on why he received so much flack on Facebook for praising civil rights icon Nelson Mandela.
When Gingrich posted a statement about Mandela’s greatness, conservatives fired back with nasty criticism and some racist remarks that are unfit for publication. The anger took the former speaker by surprise.
"This clenched-fist, murdering, gorilla (sic?) warrior does not deserve respect from informed Americans," posted Trish Baehr-Schaefer.
On Sunday, Gingrich told fellow CNN on-air personality Candy Crowley that conservatives were wrongly conflating the violence perpetrated by the African National Congress in South Africa with the actions of Mandela, an ANC leader who was imprisoned during the worst violence. But this morning, in another interview with CNN, the cable channel where he co-hosts Crossfire, Gingrich emphasized that the backlash on the right was also caused by “elements of the left, particularly on one news channel, who went overboard in trying to use this in a chance to attack Ronald Reagan.”
President Reagan, in a sharp departure with Gingrich, had staunchly opposed South African sanctions designed in the 1980s to break the apartheid government.
In his Saturday statement, Gingrich compared Mandela to the Founding Fathers and the farmers who took up arms at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War. He praised the former South African president for his calls for black/white reconciliation, for turning away from communism, and for embracing free markets and Christianity.
According to CNN, fellow conservative Ted Cruz faced a similar backlash this week when he posted a respectful tribute to Mandela that generated angry barbs. The freshman senator from Texas has remained uncharacteristically quiet, but he will be one of two Republicans in the congressional delegation attending Tuesday’s memorial service for Mandela in South Africa. President Barack Obama and other former presidents are also slated to attend.
"Frankly, without being partisan, I hope the President brings some of the spirit back with him," Gingrich said on CNN’s "New Day." "Maybe he and the Congress can sit down more in the spirit of Mandela and actually listen to each other for a while."
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