Michael Reagan defended Newt Gingrich against charges that he wasn’t a strong ally of his father, President Reagan, adding that Gingrich represents “the Reagan conservative wing” of the Republican Party against the Rockefeller Republican moderate.
“The people who say he wasn’t there, weren’t there,” Reagan said at a Gingrich campaign event in Tampa. “Newt was there at the beachhead at the beginning of all of this [in the 1980] Reagan Revolution,” he said. He added that “He has done more for this party than anybody on the race running for the presidency.”
Reagan compared Gingrich’s race against Romney to the old battles between Barry Goldwater conservatives and the Rockefeller Republicans. “Guess who is part of the Reagan conservative wing [of the GOP]?” Reagan asked.
It was a curious choice of a rhetorical question, given that Gingrich worked on the Nelson Rockefeller presidential campaign in 1968.
