The left-wing blogs, and even some parts of the mainstream media, are pushing the story today that Newt Gingrich told gays to vote for Obama.
It started with an account by someone identified as a gay Iowan Democrat, as related at the Iowa Caucuses blog of the Des Moines Register, which made no mention of context and simply related as follows:
Newt Gingrich told a gay man and longtime resident of Oskaloosa here today that he should vote for President Obama.“I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama,” said Scott Arnold, an adjunct professor of writing at William Penn University.”
Gawker was typically over the top, Newt Gingrich Tells Gay People to Just Vote for Obama:
Blabbering corpuscle Newt Gingrich told a gay man in Iowa yesterday that he’d rather have gay people just vote for Barack Obama than show the gay community any support.
Joe Gandleman at the mislabeled Moderate Voice:
And this time Gingrich show he hasn’t run out of political poison to throw into the proverial well: he told a gay Iowan asking him a basic, boilerplate question that most politicians would respond to in policy terms to go vote for Barack Obama.
But it’s all a lie. Gingrich never said he wanted gays to vote for Obama, or that he did not want to “engage gay Americans.”
The video finally was released, and the question to Gingrich was “on this one specific issue” of gay marriage.
All Gingrich said was that if the single most important and determinative issue to a gay person was implementing gay marriage, then that person would be disappointed in Newt and probably should vote for Obama. Newt made clear that if gay marriage was not the determinative issue, then the person should consider Newt (here’s a link in case the embed doesn’t load)
No fact checking so far at the Iowa Cauces blog, which has not updated the story so far. (Added: It now added a link to the video, but no correction to its story.)
CBS accompanies the video (at the link above) with this misleading description:
Newt Gingrich agreed Tuesday with a Iowan voter who identified himself as gay that he should support President Obama again in 2012. (Dec. 21)(/CBS News)
H/t HotAir the link to the video.
Update: More at Gay Patriot.
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