Gingrich: Hoekstra’s Campaign Got A ‘Boost’ From Failed Airline Bomber

Just hours after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor in Michigan, began politicizing the event. Hoekstra baselessly claimed President Obama had not paid enough attention to Yemen — the base of Abdulmutallab’s radical affiliations — and even tried to raise campaign funds off the incident.

Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the failed terror attack was good for Hoekstra, even adding that it was “probably” the reason the leading Democratic candidate for Michigan governor dropped out of the race:

GINGRICH: In Michigan, I think Pete Hoekstra is putting together such a good campaign and has gotten such a boost out of having been intelligence committee chairman now with the attempted attack on Detroit that Pete really is becoming a dominant figure in the state.

I think that was part of why Lt. Governor Cherry probably dropped out. He’s faced with a president who clearly couldn’t have defended Detroit. We were lucky that the terrorist didn’t know how to set off the bomb or we would have had a huge disaster.

Watch it:

Republicans have no shame in playing politics with terrorism and have a habit of leading on that terror attacks and serious national security crises are good for their side, a point exemplified by a comment from Charlie Black, top aide to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ), during the 2008 presidential campaign:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.