Back in April of 2007, when Newt Gingrich was still being looked upon as a potential candidate in the upcoming presidential contest, during a debate with John Kerry, Gingrich climbed on board the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) bandwagon and even endorsed carbon regulation.

Distancing himself from AGW-skeptic Senator James Inhofe at the time, Gingrich said:

“My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere.”

And then proceeded to propose that the rest of the Conservative Movement should follow his own example by knuckling under to a popular delusion and developing a so-called “green conservatism.”

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Campaigning over the weekend though in Illinois’ 14th Congressional District for Ethan Hastert, the son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, it sounded like Gingrich has jumped back onto the right side of the fence on AGW. Gingrich said:

“Copenhagen in its current form is a fraud by the left around the world to take power away from people and give it to government and bureaucrats and is a combined effort by the bureaucrats and the academics to take power away from free people and turn them over to the international organization, and it is going to be a disaster. And we should be committed to not implementing Copenhagen [global warming treaty] in its current form under any circumstances.”

Gingrich was back in good form as well on Health Care Reform, advising democrats in danger of losing their seats that voting with Harry Reid may not be worth it.

“If the left manages to drive through a bill which is opposed by 65 percent of the country on health care, our commitment should be simple — when we get a majority, we’re repealing the whole thing. And I want every Democrat who is about to sacrifice their seat for socialized medicine to understand: after you lose your seat, you’re going to lose the socialized medicine too.”

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