Newt Gingrich Suggests Hurricane Victims May Be Better Off As Evacuees
Reported by Ellen - September 8, 2005
Newt Gingrich appeared on Hannity & Colmes last night (9/7/05) to rebut Howard Dean's remark that poor people and blacks suffered worse from Hurricane Katrina. Gingrich's response suggested that, in his view, the evacuees may be better off having been forced to flee their homes.
In response to Sean Hannity's complaint that Democrats have have politicized the hurricane tragedy, Gingrich answered: "We ought to be inventing a way so that those people who were driven out of public housing don't return back to the totally inadequate public housing of the past but have a better future. Those children who are now scattered across America - we have to worry about their getting a real education and, candidly, in some cases they may get a better education, if we put our minds to it, than they would have gotten trapped in areas of poverty, with schools that were failing, with nobody in the community who was able to be a role model so I think the time right now is to look forward in a positive way... and how are we gonna fix the bureaucracies that so clearly failed?"