WASHINGTON -- In the time between his tenure as Speaker of the House and his candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich presented himself as a ideological bridge of sorts: someone who was eager to find policy twists that would gather the support of both parties. It is what spurred his advocacy for Medicare Part D and a watered down version of President Bush's immigration reform plan. It also produced a series of strange-bedfellows moments. The most famous of these was when Gingrich appeared with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an ad campaign orchestrated by Al Gore to pressure Congress to fight climate change. Less discussed are the speeches Gingrich gave in the mid-2000s with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to promote centrist solutions to health care reform.
Yet Gingrich also worked with Andy Stern, the former leader of the Service Employees International Union who has become an almost comically inflated boogeyman for the socialism-fearing set.
In his book "Real Chance: From the World That Fails to the World That Works," Gingrich praises the SEIU head, who remains a close adviser of the President Obama. Pitching the need for conservatives to respect organized labor, while simultaneously pushing back against some of Labor's more cherished legislative goals, he wrote the following:
Conservatives cannot cheer unions overseas and then be blindly anti-union here at home. There are legitimate historic reasons for workers to organize together, and there is a strong need for a healthy, competitive, union, movement that helps improve the lives of its members and the competitiveness of our country. Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition. Sadly, he is a distinct minority among union leaders.
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