tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a preview of this week's national republican convention with former speaker of the house newt gingrich. the weather forced the postponement of the kickoff. republicans are making the case for mitt romney. we are glad you joined us. former speaker of the house newt gingrich coming up right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have

work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: it feels like deja vu all over again as yogi bear once said. four years ago when we kicked off our coverage, our guest, former house speaker newt gingrich and a hurricane was playing havoc with the convention scheduled then just as it is this year in tampa. i am always pleased to welcome the former speaker to this

program. good to have you back, sir. >> is great to be back with you in there is an eerie parallel. >> if there is indeed. i am glad to have you tonight. but me start with the fact that you have releaser delegate -- released your delegate. what is the rationale having run against mitt romney? >> he will become the nominee and we want to be a unified party. when i look at the future, the requirement to defeat barack obama is so great it is easy for any conservative to decide that romney is the only alternative we have. that is a key part of what we're doing. it is important to recognize that and have some feeling among all conservatives we have to come together as we enter labor day and we have to present a united front. >> you raised president obama's

name already. we have not always agree but i have always had a fair audience with you and i have offered the same to you. let me give you a chance to explain to me what you meant when you referred to barack obama as the food stamp president. a lot of folks are raised in that. i did not like it when you set it. maybe i misread it. what did you mean by that and do you regret having said that? >> i do regret it. what i meant was specifically more americans today are on food stamps than any time in american history. if you look at the recent changes in the welfare law which the president did by himself and they are probably illegal, the create a loophole to avoid the work requirement and is part of the pattern. my point was this is the weakest recovery since the great depression. we have a chart that shows every single recovery since world war

ii. you have a president whose policies are not creating jobs but they are dramatically increasing the number of people who are dependent on the government. i think that is a bad thing. i was using the term -- more whites than blacks are on food stamps. do you want a president that focuses on getting people back to work or president that focuses on people becoming dependent and that is a fundamental difference in approaches. tavis: when you were the speaker 15 years ago and bill clinton was the president, you together at least came together on this issue. the so-called welfare to work program. bill clinton was taking a page out of your playbook. "the new york times" did an in- depth study that said that peter edelman was right. i did not agree with this program because of you take away

the social safety net, if the economy tanks, there is no room to fall back on. 15 years later, peter edelman was right. the program is supported did not work and that is the what -- reason white women and children are falling into poverty now than any other group of americans. >> i disagree. all the evidence was the program was working and the number of children in poverty was reduced by 25%. the income of families went up. the problem is today you have such a huge economic problems, so many millions of americans who are unemployed. the number is closer to fourteener 15% if you can people who would have been in the work force in 2000. they were discouraged and quit looking. this is an enormous problem. it is not quite at a european level but it is drifting toward

that problem. we have too many people out of work. what is the best way to get them back to work and what is the best way to encourage the economy to develop? tavis: there is no social safety net now. you're right about the numbers you just laid out. we agree on that. what do people do when you have corporate greed and political indifference, jobs being shipped abroad. americans did not ask to be unemployed. they did not ask to be underemployed or be part of a housing bubble. they're catching hell through no part of their own and the social safety nets for women and children, they're out there now. >> -- we have to change unemployment compensation so if you sign up for unemployment you have to go into work training program so you're increasing your skill level. you go to a place like north dakota which has a huge boom on oil and they have 3% unemployment but that number is

misleading. they have 17,000 jobs should they cannot fill. there are 7000 people of work and 7000 job vacancies. the 7000 people do not have the right skills so the first thing you do is you realize we have to train american back into jobs and make is fully competitive in the world market. the second difference and the second place where i would approach this very differently from the obama model is you dramatically favor small business. small businesses hire people, small businesses for ethnic minorities is where they started. you have your future steve jobs and bill gates and not from people going in at some big corporations but from going out and founding a business. microsoft was a baby business, apple was the baby business. you want to encourage more people. this administration has discouraged creating small business. to grow in the opposite direction. tavis: i do not think the

administration has done enough with regard to small business. they favored big business. many of them gathered in tampa for this convention. they too often favored big business. let me go back to your first part. if you said to the american middle class or the former middle class which make up the ranks of the poor that the reason why they are not employed is because they do not have a good skill set, lots of folks would be offended. many did not downsized or slipped because their skills it was deficient, it is because a lot of greed and other things but it is not because their skills that is all of a sudden did not measure up. >> you have to approach life reim morning either as a victim or an opportunity. that is a big psychological difference in liberalism and conservatism. i have relatives who came through the great depression at a time that was much worse than today and they picked themselves up every morning and found

something to do. they stayed busy and stayed active. they moved ahead. he pointed to one thing that is beyond the control of average people and that is the housing bubble. there is no question that in florida, nevada, arizona, southern california you have a genuine bubble where people thought there would be able to increase the value of their house overnight. what is the fastest way to turn it around? i agree with the club -- the critique that the dodd-frank bill was profoundly wrong. it makes the big banks bigger which is the wrong direction to go in. we ought to encourage local community banks, credit unions, situations where local people put their money together to form local blacks in order to prop of the local economy, you're not going to get these jobs -- banks to pay attention to small town america but you could find enough capital in small banks to have this country launch a new generation of economic

opportunity. tavis: you raised the issue of poverty and i want to come back and ask about poverty. sitting here tonight, we are days away from the u.s. census bureau releasing the official government numbers about poverty. we expect the numbers in september. we talk about poverty in america and how democracy-threatening it was. let me go back to paul ryan. you of course are not catholic along with your wife and when mr. ryan put out his budget, catholic bishops came out and said it was not in keeping with the teacher that mr. ryan had been raised on. now. mr. romney has picked mr. ryan as his running mate. what do you say about the romney-ryan budget which is not going to be that the similar, i

suspect. >> i say this to people who are interested. speech in paul ryan's georgetown. he went there and allied his understanding of catholic social doctrine and explained how he thought the level of compassion he was greeting was appropriate. the challenge you have is this. he increases support for people in the lower 40% of income level and he cannot support people in the top 40%. he is trying to find a way on social security reform and medicare reform, of increasing the support for people who have -- are at the lowest part of the income. you do not want to leave them so low they cannot have a decent life. people will find it is a serious effort to apply catholic social doctrine was also respecting the

reality. this is something that cardinal dolan and others have commented on. you do have this reality that we do not have all the money would like to have and we're faced with a fiscal crisis for the entire society, not just the government. tavis: how will they sell this medicare plan? i have had conservatives say they do not think the stock will hunt. they may have picked the wrong issue because it takes a much explaining even if there were right, is this a red herring, olive a-rod of an issue. why choose this and can they sell their plan to the american people without scaring them between now and election day? >> part of what is interesting about paul ryan is he decided if the debate is not affordable, is it not more valuable to have the guy on the ticket? he is very attractive, articulate, and has a great story to tell in his home

district which is a swing district, obama carried it. he got 60% of the vote last time so ryan has a responsibility to convict when he finishes. if you're over 55, nothing changes. every democratic party and add that tries to frighten senior citizens, there is a president who took 7 $16 billion out of medicare funding to put into obamacare and cromie and ryan did not change medicare for people over 55. the new ryan-widen plan, the bipartisan plan that tries to reform medicare, the new plan allows you to keep traditional medicare benefits were you want it to be and establishes a voucher program. you'd rather spend your money inside traditional medicare, that is fine. would you rather by other kinds of influence -- insurance?

it is metal -- modeled on the plan that congress gets. it puts people -- earmark son bleier, his chin to bring down costs and price which has happened in the car -- medicare party. it is cheaper than the government thought and that is because market forces have driven down the cost in a way that no bureaucracy could have. tavis: people have a right to disagree but if i were asked to put my list of the top five political mind, who would fare best in debate? you would be in my top five because you note your material, york it what you do. i raised that because you debated romney as much as anybody. they're going to be three debates between mr. rahm and mr. obama in october. since you mentioned obamacare.

he says, my plan is your plan. the obamacare plan was modeled after your plan. you want to denigrate the plan we modeled upon which is yours. >> he will say almost in machine-gun fashion and i have to tell you i have debated mitt romney 17 times and people think i did as well as or better. the debates was life and death and life and death for gingrich, he did very well. he was a very well-prepared, he was leaning forward and combatting. the ran-biden debate will be more fascinating. i think the obama romney debate will be interesting. there will be too tough guys at -- to give -- go at each other directly. are many storennet

storylines. he is his own guy and he is said that is not who i am and i am not going to pull my heart out. i am not paraphrasing. how can he connect with the american people? even people who think you have a good idea but they do not feel empathy or connection. most americans feel something for mr. obama. were they do not feel anything over mr. omromney. >> i do not think mitt romney will be obama in a personality contest but he can beat him in a performance contest. imagine that you had a major leak in your house and water was dripping on the wall. you had a choice of two plumbers, one was a terrific guy, you love to have a beer with him but he was not very competent and you knew the water would still be running down your

wall. the other guy is standoffish and not nearly as much fun but he is a good plumber. simple.romney's case is he is a good leader, a good manager. he can create american energy independence so no future president ever bows to a saudi king. he is smart enough to run the federal grand effectively and he he is smart enough to run the federal grand effectively and he will