Newt slams Clinton as "fundamentally dishonest," leaves door open for VP slot

Speaking on C-SPAN's "In Depth" Sunday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich issued a strong condemnation of President Bill Clinton's character, Clinton's recent comments against Gingrich over the 1998 impeachment and the former president's recent claim that he was always against the war in Iraq.

"He is fundamentally dishonest on a routine, regular basis," said Gingrich. "It's just his personality. He tells you the version he needs to be who he is to get through this week. And he just did it in Iowa over whether he used to be against the war in Iraq."

Clinton told a crowd gathered in Iowa on Tuesday that he that he "opposed Iraq from the beginning." This statement doesn't perfectly square with previous statements by Clinton, including one in 2003 when he said, "I supported the president when he asked for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Gingrich also took exception with Clinton's recent characterization of the impeachment proceedings (Clinton told C-SPAN's Brian Lamb earlier that Gingrich thought the impeachment of Clinton "was something where he could manipulate the press in the present and the historians in the future. And maybe spook the Democrats into running me off. And I think he knew me well enough by then to know that he couldn't spook me and run me off.").

"Clinton is a wonderful story teller and he's a very charming man," said Gingrich. "But he has the greatest ability to rewrite his own life of anybody I've ever seen. ... Perjury was committed, perjury is a felony. ... He should have been impeached for breaking the law. ... President's should not be above the law. That's a very dangerous precedent."

But the fact remains that it IS a precedent, Newt, and one that his spouse relies upon to get herself through many a tongue-tied moment. She, like he, has nothing remotely resembling what anyone would consider a code of honor, and will do and say whatever the moment requires. People have become so accustomed to a Clinton lying they ho-hum it all, and that's terribly dangerous as well.

Dreadful people.