Mitt Romney used a line at the last debate to minimize Newt’s claim to have worked with Ronald Reagan (transcipt, emphasis mine):
MR. ROMNEY: … I mean, Mr. Speaker, it was — it was — you talk about all the things you did with Ronald Reagan and — and — and the Reagan revolution and the jobs created during the Reagan years and so forth. I mean, I looked at the Reagan diary. You’re mentioned once in Ronald Reagan’s diary. And it’s — and in the diary, he says you had an idea in a meeting of — of young congressmen, and it wasn’t a very good idea, and he dismissed it. That — that’s the entire mention. And — I mean, he mentions George Bush a hundred times. He even mentions my dad once.
In Ronald Reagan’s autobiography, “An American Life,” he writes extensively about supply-side economics. He cites Jack Kemp several times. He never mentions Newt Gingrich.(However, in Reagan’s massive 784-page diary, Newt’s name does come up — once. On Jan. 3, 1983, Reagan wrote that he met with “a group of young Repub Congressmen,” and says that one of them, “Newt Gingrich,” proposed freezing federal spending at 1983 levels, which Reagan rejected out of hand because it would “cripple our defense program.”)
As for a single mention in Reagan’s diary, Jack Kemp is mentioned only 11 times, mostly relating to foreign policy issues and only 4 relating to budget matters and only two related to tax policy. Reagan also notes in the diary that the entire Republican congressional leadership (other than Kemp) wanted a budget freeze (p.61). I wonder how many books Coulter searched in order to find her gotcha moment…. And in the Reagan autobiography, Kemp is not mentioned at all in the discussion of supply-side economics, contrary to what Coulter says in her column. (I used Google Books for all searches).
Romney would do well to avoid using lines from Ann Coulter:
Newt is pushing back against the attempt to minimize his role in the Reagan revolution:
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