Gingrich: Message more relevant after NBC ‘under God’ omission

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Monday that his message has become “dramatically more relevant” following a controversial move to edit the Pledge of Allegiance during a weekend golf match.

Gingrich said that his ideas — particularly as articulated in his new book, A Nation Like No Other — are more salient following NBC’s decision to edit out the words “under God” from a Pledge montage during this weekend’s U.S. Open broadcast.

{mosads}NBC aired the segment during Sunday’s broadcast of the Open, one of the sport’s four major, yearly matches, and subsequently apologized on-air after a minor outrage erupted online.

“I must say that my book, A Nation Like No Other, becomes dramatically more relevant after NBC’s decision that they will edit out ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance,” Gingrich said during an appearance on the conservative Hugh Hewitt radio show.

No other Republican presidential candidate has really seized on NBC’s omission, nor have any other major GOP figures. But the former Speaker might well look to pick up some free political momentum from the gaffe, and curry favor with social conservatives in the primary electorate.

Gingrich has been one of a few candidates to make the idea of “American exceptionalism” — the notion that the U.S. is unlike any other country in history — a focal point of his campaign. His new book, which he’s promoting in a series of interviews on conservative talk radio on Monday and Tuesday, is meant to underscore that message.