The Latest Scandals
Taxes: What does it matter that Gingrich released one year of his tax records? Any candidate can prep them a year in advance. Were I running for office a year or two down the road, and were I cynical, this year I would triple my charitable contributions, cut back on freelance writing to lower my income, and trim my deductions — on the assumption that one transparent year would be proof of thirty out of sight. So to be fair, Gingrich and all the candidates, if we go down this full-disclosure road, should release the last three years of returns. If so, I suggest that Gingrich will have as many tax/income problems as Romney.
Women: The Marianne Gingrich Nightline tell-all was a bust. In theory, we must sympathize with her: 60-ish, without much income, suffering from MS, forced to watch her ex — now soaring, both financially and politically, without her and without apparent acknowledgment of her long support for his career that must now be evident in his success — with insult added to injury as Newt parades around a younger, more attractive third wife as if he were a perpetual honeymooner. But to hear her is almost immediately to wonder, “Hmmm, let’s get this straight: you are mad that Mrs. Gingrich III and Newt did to Mrs. Gingrich II what you and Newt did to Mrs. Gingrich I? If you were sick and penniless when he left you, so was the poor first wife whom you once replaced.”
I wish I could believe (because I want to believe) that fidelity is essential in a leader, but unfortunately history tells me that Charles Lindbergh was a better pilot and inspiration than his more moral rivals, that the wayward George S. Patton saved thousands of lives by his brilliance in a way the more admirable but limited Omar Bradley did not, that the randy Bill Clinton was a better president than the devout Jimmy Carter, and that recklessly promiscuous JFK was no worse and probably more effective than loyal Richard Nixon. But marriage has so many variables (the devout husband can be mentally cruel and indifferent, the noble wife can be a shrew, the publicly supportive spouse can privately forgo sex, the faithful husband can be lazy and a leach), and leadership so many contours (natural brilliance, rhetorical flair, stamina, courage), that fidelity in marriage simply cannot quite trump them all. Was the wonderfully devoted Harry Truman a better president than Dwight D. Eisenhower (who once or twice probably strayed with his chaufferess), and if so, was it because he never looked at other women other than Bess? In short, the ABC interview was a dud. It only confirmed that dragging out a 12-year-old story on the eve of an election told us more about the morality of ABC than of present-day Newt Gingrich.
Romney’s money: Cannot Romney explain that, to be blunt, he does not have, and does not need, a regular day job any more? And therefore he does not pay taxes on income? In other words, cannot Mitt say that he once was so skilled or lucky that he made enough to allow him in retirement to either sell assets yearly, or buy and sell from his ample portfolio and therefore be taxed at the capital gains rate? The same unapologetic defiance should apply to Bain. If one devotes his career to winning the good life from taking over, trimming down, and selling companies, and one is not solely interested in cashing in and others be damned, cannot he in one minute, Newt-style, explain why he is a sort of personal trainer that both profits and does good from beating the out-of-shape into shape, and that when he cannot work with the flabby and unresponsive, he moves on?
The alternative is the sort of well-intentioned stumble in which the viewer sighs, “Come on, Mitt, you can do it. Don’t apologize or don’t gloss over, but explain, your success!”
Newt Gingrich
Why his death/resurrection/death/resurrection candidacy? His so-called checkered past and shoot-from-the-hip binges ensure that, on any given day, something arises from his past (women, book deals, consulting, etc.) or he says something provocative that leads nowhere (dressing down federal judges) which confirms the general take that he is too unstable for executive governance — a charge buttressed by the fact that Gingrich has never run a state or a business. But then, just when the op-ed writers and worried Republican elders write him off, he begins his comeback by questioning, rather than merely critiquing, the entire liberal experiment.
So he attacks the nature of the journalist’s question rather than answers it; he rails at overspending but in an existential way that suggests it is a symptom of a deeper malady; he assesses his rivals in the abstract as well as the personal. That takes gumption and talent.
The effect on primary voters? Gingrich becomes their everyman. He speaks for the beaten-down conservative, sick of reading about D.C. insider politics, race-baiting, crime, media bias, or apologizing abroad, as if to say, “I am your idea guy, your own PhD know-it-all, the good D.C. insider on your side who knows how the bad works, and I’ll out-talk, out-argue, out-think, and out-emote the entire Ivy-League elite Obama technocracy.” (Though I am not so sure he would win a debate with Obama given the exposure he offers through so many claims of multifaceted genius.)
So how long can the wild Gingrich needle graph go up and down, given his uncanny ability to die and be reborn a thousand times? I’d say about a month longer when one of two things will occur. One scenario: He is so thoroughly vetted that no more disclosures can emerge and he stops expounding ad hoc on Newtology in a way that confirms an undisciplined and wacky nature. In that case, he has a 50/50 chance of winning the nomination, regardless of the current status of his funding, organization, and endorsements. Or, we will hear yet a new Newtism (e.g., something like another neo-Marxist take on Bain Capital), or yet another brilliantly unworkable plan that serves as a proverbial last straw on the camel’s back, and the voters collectively sigh that they prefer Romney and pray he is not Dole, Bush Sr., or John McCain, more convinced that Gingrich is a Goldwater albatross rather than a Reagan savior.
Newt Gingrich has a real genius for appearing erudite, wizened, and clever in a flippant sort of way on television. Where Romney talks in banalities and split-the-difference circumspection, Newt rattles off facts and figures about the Civil War and World War II, to lend perceived gravitas to arguments otherwise identical to the rest of the candidates. I can imagine Romney conducting a meeting at Bain, asking for input about a takeover, only to have member Gingrich give an exegesis about the Sherman Antitrust Act, not an in-depth one, mind you, but a 10-second reference before moving on to serial 5-second exegeses about Adam Smith, John Adams, and Abraham Lincoln — with no effect on the issue at hand. The wide but shallow referencing is as impressive on television as it is often for no purpose.
I think Gingrich is a conservative, but he shares a liability common among conservatives of wishing to be considered an intellectual and in temperament moderate and accommodating — in short, an intellectual’s loyal opponent and praised as such by the liberal establishment, the sort whom the New York Times or NPR might once or twice treat equitably. How else to explain his commercial with Nancy Pelosi, his cap-and-trade/green affectations, or his support for the individual mandate? His ego knows no bounds. He may well through sheer repetition convince voters that as a Republican back-bencher he engineered the Reagan Revolution, ended the Cold War and then as speaker for four years forced a clueless Clinton to balance the budget on his terms and then by his own genius ensured the 1990s boom. I’ve heard it so many times and so assuredly expressed, that by now I half believe it.
Mitt Romney
By now we all know his strengths and weaknesses. He is the most stable and judicious of the candidates. He looks presidential; his family is Rockwellian. He is a Mormon who, after five seconds of seeing and listening to him, might as well be a Methodist. His manners and graciousness and personal probity reflect the best of the American patrician class: George H.W. Bush fair play, hard work, and noblesse oblige.
But Romney is up against a go-for-broke Gingrich, who at one time would probably not have been allowed into a Romney country club. That means he has to get gritty, but in a way that by now unfortunately is not his nature and will probably come off as preppy-surly.
Gingrich told everyone that he was the proverbial tortoise who plods alone unnoticed before winning the race. In fact, he was the hare who rushed ahead with brilliant televised philosophizing only to wind up exhausted in scandal and self-inflicted buffoonery, only to sneak back. Romney is the plodder, raising money, building organization, at any given moment incapable of saying anything that would win him or lose him 10 points in the polls. He is the proverbial 4th-quarter, play-it-safe, run-out-the-clock coach who sits out a big lead, and who knows it will shrink, but might not shrink enough before the game ends — and finally who knows that he must, and may have the ability at some point to, pass deep, but still cannot quite take the risk.
“Do not take counsel of your fears” lectured Gen. Patton. Mr. Romney, remember your Danton: “Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!” Otherwise, we have a replay of the doomed Hillary campaign.
Rick Santorum
I am not sure that he is the most conservative of the candidates as he attests. Paul made points that today’s Pennsylvania senator naturally promotes union interests, protectionist interests, and constituent interests that are perfectly legitimate, but easily caricatured as not all that different from his liberal colleagues. His early petulance (that went something like “why is this race so unfair that my sincere message is not getting out?”) has mostly vanished with his rise in the polls. Santorum is surely the most decent of the candidates; he has no apologies that his ideas on social conduct, abortion, homosexuality, and the family are more early 20th than 21st century. That appeals to conservative voters, even if there has probably been an illegitimacy, an abortion, or a gay person in their extended family. In the end he leaves you puzzled, perhaps hoping that his Santorum world of 1960 might somehow be restored, but bewildered at the very thought of how such a multi-theater war could ever be fought, much less won.
Ron Paul
For someone so savvy about the nature of the disaffected, why did Dr. Paul believe that in the South he could go on rants about U.S. foreign policy that centered around American culpability? Of course, South Carolinians would be receptive to arguments that U.S. expense abroad earned only ingratitude or was counter-productive; but when Paul suggests that we earned hostility on 9/11 by our foreign policy, did he not expect to be widely repudiated? (e.g., So the country that saved Muslims in Kuwait, fed them in Somalia, helped them against the Russians, and bombed a European Christian country to keep them alive in Bosnia and Kosovo had a worse record on Islam than China and Russia, who were not attacked on 9/11?)
Paul has an eerie ability to win over almost anyone on matters of debt and financial insolvency, and lose them in a nano-second when he turns to foreign policy, where he loses clarity and conflates American gullibility with American culpability. A conservative might think it is unwise right now to attack Iran, but he does not wish to be told to look at the situation through the creepy Iranian regime’s eyes.
One new development. I have followed Paul for years, but never noticed his crankiness. The more he is known to voters, the more he now appears crotchety, gratuitously negative, and surly — even if in small radio and print doses he once seemed merely eccentric, in a principled sort of way. Like Obama, the more we hear and see him, the less we find him personable. The suspicion never quite goes away, given his past writing and associates, that in private his views would be neo-Confederate, isolationist, and anti-Israel in ways that go beyond policy differences.
Barack Obama
While the Republican cannibals devour themselves, Obama took the last two months to slip through the most radical agendas of his presidency and all to media silence: slashing the defense budget, recess appointments in a non-recessed Congress, cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, borrowing up to a new $16 trillion ceiling, and playing the race card via Michelle (“angry black woman”), Holder (if you ask about Fast and Furious you are racist), and himself (the renewed “they won’t give you a fair shot because of the way you look” trope).
That all got no attention, but firmed up his base among greens, minorities, and big government recipients. Coupled with his near silence (one press conference, few public speeches) and Republican self-immolation, his fire-up-the-base strategy has earned Obama a surge in the polls and lots of money at his $30,000 a head, corporate-jet-owner fundraisers.
What a strange fellow: damning the 1% only to hire three-in-a-row multimillionaire “fat-cat” ex-Wall-streeters as his chiefs-of-staff, while he lives a life indistinguishable from those he caricatures. Obama brags of killing bin Laden, without the slightest concession that he employed protocols to do it that he once smeared, or that he got the troops home for Christmas, without a peep that he followed the Bush-Petraeus plan and not his own that once called for complete flight by March 2008. Poor conservatives: should they praise him for get-real flip-flops or damn him for his hypocrisy and the damage he once did as a critic of what kept us safe? He is a figure right out Aristophanes, a polypragmon scoundrel, a demagogic genius, who can bomb Libya without congressional authority, claim it was not military action — and all the while keep the Michael Moore left silent if not proud of their guy’s duplicity, while begging the right to dare argue that Libya is not better off without the nightmare of Gaddafi.
Will he win? It depends on the huge and ever-growing Obama ego. After three years, to hear and see Obama now is to be exhausted by him, to tire of his hope and change banalities, to be worn out by his mean-spirited racial and class divisiveness, to shrug at his hypocrisy about slurring great wealth while seeking to enjoy its fruits, to snore at the serial me/mine/my. Yet not to see or hear him is, apparently for many, to be satisfied in the abstract that a young, charismatic president who looks good and talks glibly is our postracial president. The idea of Obama is as fresh as the reality is stale. But can his godhead see all that and accept that he wins by quietude and loses by being himself?
He has no margin of error in the states that he most likely must win, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, where the majority of voters are just the sorts whom he and Michelle privately despise, and now have ample evidence of the Obama antipathy.
Prognosis
There is a wish to cut and paste the flawed Republican candidates’ strengths into a composite nominee: Romney’s sobriety, Santorum’s conviction, Paul’s sense of outrage over debt, and Gingrich’s glib lectures about civilization—while pruning away their unique defects: Santorum’s self-righteousness, Paul’s otherworldliness, Romney’s Tom Dewey/George H.W. Bush patrician woodenness, and Newt’s tom-foolery.
Santorum and Paul cannot beat Obama. Romney is still the most likely to make it a close race; Gingrich possibly to win by a wider margin — or, more likely, to lose by an even wider one.
I have no endorsements, or at least not complete endorsements: I cannot vote under any circumstances for Obama and would not vote for Paul, but, for now, would find any of the remaining three candidates far better than what we have in the White House.
(Thumbnail on PJM homepage by Shutterstock.com.)
Dr. Hanson:
Thank you for giving your readers a step out of the Fox News Spin Zone. You have fairly and accurately summarized the conservative dilemma.
It’s almost beyond question that if Gingrich goes on to become the alternative to Barack Obama, it’s campaign over, republic over and hope and change for future generations will be a contridiction in terms without peer.
no it’s not.
Gingrich is easily more electable than McRomney. Gingrich will lose no votes in Red States. Romney will, and may even lost a red state or two. Romney will win more votes in Blue states, but not enough to win one.
Gingrich will appeal much more to blue-collar voters in Pa, Ohio and Michigan. Florida is anybody’s guess.
There are polls that show Romney ahead nationally over Gingrich. The polls are nonsense. Other than Republicanc primary voters and people like ourselves, the vast majority of Americans only know what pravda has told them about Gingrich and McRomney, just like in the years before Reagan’s 1980 victory.
The polls will go out the window once Newt is selected and can’t be kept off the tube. America will vote for the smart granpa who loves his country and has fixed it before much more readily that the slick Wall Street guy who they won’t quite be able to figure out if he cheated on his taxes, investments and business dealings or not.
Exactly. Romney might do “better” in California and New York than Gingrich…
…meaning the GOP will lose them by “only” 60/40 instead of 70/30.
BIG difference (/S).
Gingrich is not electable. period. Republicans don’t want him elected. Democrats would love to run against him. Who has Gingrich campaigned with to help get them elected? Gingrich would have a dampening effect on the ballot, especially with anyone who is not hard and far right. No way does Mitch McConnell want Gingrich on a ballot with a bunch of other senator candidates that, were they to win, could give him the Senate Majority. Boehner wants to keep his Speaker position (something he’s not resigning in disgrace) and most representatives of the House don’t want their name printed on the same ballot with Gingrich. Hard conservatives can sneer all they want at the “establishment” GOP and put down anyone they don’t like as RINO’s (i.e. Pallin), but people have to look at what IS and be pragmatic. If Gingrich get’s the nomination, it’s over. And I like Gingrich! He’s fascinating. But there’s a REASON why his staff leaves him and that NO ONE in the know likes him.
“Gingrich is not electable.”
Tank, a winner of many big elections himself, has spoken. All hail Tank.
What makes Gingrich electable is the electorate. If the public at large says he is electable, then he is electable. SC proves that. I have not been on the Gingrich band wagon, but will get on it if it turns out that he manages to win the nomination. Once the dust settles. Everyone that wants Obama out, will vote for Gingrich should he be the nominee and they will do so with enthusiasm as they gaze upon the absolutely horrid alternative. In fact, even the Ron Paul enthusiast will jump on the Gingrich band wagon if Gingrich should gain the nomination because the Ron Paul crowd knows full well that America CA NOT AFFORD OBAMA.
All SC proves is that Gingrich is electable in SC among GOP primary voters. What about the rest? Do you think you are going to win a general election with the type of people that voted for Gingrich in SC? His negatives are almost at 60%, and have been forever. In other words, public opinion has crystalized on Gingrich. That is not likely to change.
his negatives have crystalized?
This is a preposterous comment, albeit the one the elites have spent years preparing for just this moment.
The only thing 80% of the country knows about Newt are the tidbits that pravda has fed them. Once he gets the nomination, he will present his own case.
Polls can be made to say anything the pollsters want them to say. The only reliable ones are the ones taken immediately before an election, and then only because the question is unequivocal, and the pollsters must base their reputations on the accuracy of, only, those polls. All other polls are manipulated.
Obama was elected. Anyone including Gingrich is electable. The bar has been set that low.
This web site prides itself on independent thinkers who possess a healthy dose of skepticism about the media, yet I read people repeating conventional wisdom promoted by the media as if it is established fact.
Gingrich may not be electable, but the fact that the media and many in the Republican establishment are so emphatic about this, doesn’t convince me. It makes me more suspicious.
I beg to differ. Newt Gingrich is what stupid people think a smart person sounds like.
Obama is the only candidate the truly stupid would vote for.
Cynic, I don’t consider myself stupid, but I most assuredly would if I EVER voted for Romney. No way in H3LL would I vote for him. It there are three candidates, I’d vote for the 3rd. If only two, I’d pass on both and complete my ballot.
South Carolina has a few extra reasons to be angry with the current administration. First, is the administration’s insistence that a plant to build a second division of civilian aircraft’s opening is being held up because South Carolina is a right to work state, and POTUS wants this plant run by a union. The second is that the DOJ has said that SC’s requirement that potential voters have a picture I. D. is being denied. Their contention is, which I believe is an absolute insult to minorities, is that minorities will have a harder time getting a picture I. D. of some sort. Since you have to have a picture I. D. for just about everything else—this seems ridicules and seems to imply that minorities are less capable of being self-reliant than others.
With good reason to be angry, I suspect that Newts bombast wore particularly well here, in the moment.
That aside. This election is not just about defeating Barack Obama. It is about electing a president who can govern our country. Our government is too big, too expensive, and filled with people who would not recognize integrity if it hit them in the head. The U. S. Department of Interior only has one agency that uses scientific policies that meet scientific standards of integrity. That is the US Geological Service. You refer to the environmentally concerned as greens. Perhaps if we had people managing our land and water with some understanding of science and the ability to balance the impact on their decisions on the environment, rather than being so concerned about the impact on their friends’ abilities to earn an income, we would not have such a strong environmental lobby. When the government is not doing the job it should be doing and that the tax payers expect, not following the laws made by Congress, then it is up to the citizens to hold the government accountable.
We need a President who can turn us around. Mitt Romney has demonstrated the ability to fix ailing businesses as well as the multinational Olympic Games that were in big trouble. We are in big trouble, and the only person with demonstrated ability to govern and to fix is Mitt Romney.
Using history to judge Newt, and I hate to say this because I do believe in second chances, but history tells us that Newt cannot be trusted. He cannot be depended upon. Great ideas, impressive debater, but he is not a person that others should put a lot of trust in. If it were only his wives, it would be one thing, but his colleagues in the House makes it another.
Newt definitely is electable, much to the consternation of the GOP establishment (none of whom are conservatives).
Ironically, despite the hype, and despite how much money he spends, Mitt Romney is not electable.
Sorry, CGW, I guess you missed the 44BC style denouement quite a while back.
The Republic’s been over for quite some time.
We rocketed forward to somewhere in the 5th Century, skidding into the 6th.
Haven’t you noticed the Vandals, Goths and Visigoths roaming the nation, swiping manhole covers and copper power lines, pitching their tents and drumming and raping in the parks . . . on and on and on . . .
Go Galt.
“Sorry, CGW, I guess you missed the 44BC style denouement quite a while back.
The Republic’s been over for quite some time.”
I’m afraid it’s you that may have missed something; The Founders gave this nation a Republic based on a costitution and up until now it hasn’t been ammended to change that fact as far as I know.
Criminals may circumvent the constitution but the fact is that it still exists and given some honest leadership after the 2012 election some life might be restored to it’s pages.
That of course would surely not happen under a Gingrich or Santorum administration. Those two posers are loose in the land seeking to find and or invent problems for them to pretend to solve at the federal level.
Mitt Romney on the other hand speaks more about devolving power back to the respective states as was originally intended by those very wise founders.
“44BC style denouement.” Plain English would serve your cause much better.
– the fall is all there is, the fall matters.” — The Lion in Winter
If it is ordained or rigged by the DEMedia that Obama be re-elected, then at least give us a GOP candidate who will go down fighting and not pull punches and snivel and congratulate Obama on Election Night. If the GOP keeps and/or takes both houses of Congress and Obama is a badly-bruised lame duck, then yes we can dare to hope for change again — or at least no further harm at the hands of Obama.
I would vote for any of the 3, OR Paul or even a used 1968 Plymouth over Obama. Obama is a disaster and what’s more, he has no opposition in the media. Even if Paul turns out to be as big a fool as Obama, the media push-back to him would mitigate that considerably. There is NO counterweight at all to the crypto-fascist tendencies of Obama, as we saw his first two years in office.
A used 1968 Plymouth would defend America better against a nuclear Iran than RoNpAuL.
Didn’t Cash for Clunkers take most if not all 1968 Plymouths out of commission? Gotta admit, it was pretty clever of Obama to anticipate and eliminate that source of competition.
We still have monkeys and dartboards.
Prof. Hanson wrote about Newt: “…just when the op-ed writers and worried Republican elders write-him off, he begins his comeback by questioning, rather than merely critiquing, the entire liberal experiment…but he shares a liability common among conservatives of wishing to be considered an intellectual and in temperament moderate and accommodating, in short, an intellectual’s loyal opponent and praised as such by the liberal establishment”.
I tend to agree. Many erudite conservatives seem to crave the approval of the liberal establishment. Newt probably shares that flaw to some degree. But I think what drives him is the former descriptor, not that latter. That is to say that in his essence, he stands in opposition to the liberal mythology, and the entire apparatus that has been constructed to advance it.
Newt’s counter attack at the debate was the kind of frontal assault that we regular commentors here at Works and Days have been employing for years. This will arouse and inspire the silent majority, and create the kind of tidal force that will sweep everything else aside. Much of the nation feels the same way. It is a flood-dam of sentiment that has been building up and is ready to burst. The statist Dems and their media / academia henchmen still don’t seem to understand of the danger they are in.
Newt called it like it is: the mainstream media has become the informal propaganda arm of the Democratic party, and the globalist-statist-corporatist conspiracy. We all see it now, and that is why Nov. 2012 will be their swan song. Their chicanery is endless. The Occupy movement is only the latest round of violent, anarchistic political theater that this cabal has employed. We all know it was closely coordinated between the msm and the Dems because it is classic Alinsky on a grtand-scale. And their carefully timed and sequenced rollout was too obvious. We also know that the Arab Spring (and the attempt to link it to the Occupy movement) was at least in part engineered by the conspirators in order to consolidate control over whatever resources and strategic territory they can, and place it in the hands of anti-capitalist, anti-democratic forces and overt enemies of the United States… Besides Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman, I don’t know of any other major national figure who has been willing to attack the Dems’ entire paradigm in quite the same way.
Still, I wonder if even Newt understands the full scale of what the conspirators are doing? How Obama is using his Office to not only steal from us on a scale never before imagined in all of human history, but to to bind our progeny to serfdom and ignorance while transferring their inheritance overseas.
Either way, the Dems took a very big gamble. The kind that more often than not, does not end well. They took a generous, open system; a framework that enabled anyone with energy, drive, talent or even just a willingness to work, and build a good, decent life for themselves and their families… A historically unique and sublime achievement. They took that openness, and our trust in them, and they used it first to carve out little fiefdoms for themselves, then to spin hate and division amongst us, to stir violence… and finally to attempt to seize our very sovereignty in the name of some purported high global ideal which is really just another elaborate web of lies! It is worse than treason, it is what used to be called sedition. Now they have awakened the sleeping giant.
Viewed historically, there is something inevitable about the unfolding that is to come… The Dems are largely following a script that was written long ago. For all their mastery of sophisticated communications techniques, they are largely unconscious, and therefore walked straight into the greatest (and most common) of all historical traps: This is their fatal weakness. The lure of great power has blinded them. They are unable to truly perceive what is happening around them (they rely on metrics, but wear filters when they interpret them; and on high abstractions that only link to objective facts here and there). Thus they cannot see the Hubris they have engendered, and the nemesis that is thus spawned. No one can say we didn’t warn them.
As for Newt. I hope he understands that, if we elect him President, it is not to make nice with Dems but rather to attack them relentlessly for the traitors that they are. And to prosecute them for their crimes. More, it is to roll-back their leftist-corporatist-globalist agenda at every level, by exposing the corruption and deception, taking on the special interests and the unions, media and academia, slashing government, and unleashing business. If he thinks the Presidency is a popularity contest, then we will shut him down and vote him out too. But if he fights to restore the Republic, he will have our bottomless support, and go down as one of the great Presidents of history.
PS – Just thought I’d add that I think Perry had a lot of the right stuff too, but might not far too well in a debate against a seasoned class warrior like Obama. Obama’s arguments are usually laughably weak (non-existent), but he is good at trickery and demagoguery. Too risky, but I hope Perry continues on at the national level. We need more like him.
You give Newt too much credit. He is too bloated with ego to ever be effective at anything more than starting a fight. We all know these men- they can draw a crowd, fire everyone up then slip out of the fight only to meet you back at the bar to claim victory. I certainly believe that Romney is a decent man but judging from past statements that can be found on youtube that ask liberal voters to think of the “R” after his name as reform and not Republican- I cannot trust him to understand the dire situation our country now finds itself. He has simply been too removed from the life of average citizens to ask them to do the hard work that is going to be absolutely necessary to make our country strong again. He has a credibility problem since he has used the very laws to profit that have hurt the rest of us who have to make up the revenue he doesn’t pay. If you want to win the election- only Santorum, with his immigrant grandfather and understanding of our dire need for manufacturing and its importance to our national security can beat Obama. There will be no Lincoln-Douglas debate- only a billion dollars of negative ads depicting “the clueless rich guy” or the “ethics nightmare of the 90′s gone lobbyist”. Wake up quick America- this isn’t a reality show- it’s reality.
I like Santorum too. But so fire don’t see the fire I am looking for.
yes, no fire in the belly.
Even the optics are wrong. Sweater vests?
Great post, btw.
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence- it is force
Like FIRE it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master” George Washington
Fine- if you want fire- that sure sounds like newt to me
I will take the man with a plan to get people back to work- manufacturing has to come back to this country if we are to survive. Let the financials whine now- they will be better off for it later. My vote remains solidly with Santorum
P.S Sorry this reply comes so late but I run my own business.
Getting a fight started @ the level Newt can is better than we’re doing now.
It’s fascinating to see all the back and forth about egos and rinos and this and that. In the end, what we vote for is the person who is most likely to have the most impact in helping to repair the terrible straits our nation is in. I don’t really care if he can’t relate to me or me to him. I care that he knows how to size up situations, cut out the dead weight, manage to produce success. and someone who understands that when he is an elected official, he serves everyone, not just the supporters. rino rino rino blah blah blah. yeah, i’ll vote for gingrich over obama, but romney is going to make a much better president, by a long shot.
Amen brother!
I must dissent very strongly from Dr. Hanson with respect to Newt and Romney. VDH’s article appears to reflect the influence of the pro-Romney, anti-Newt menatality prevailing among most writers at the National Review; that influence would account for what I ocnsider to be a badly mistaken analysis.
Newt is no superficial intellect at all; the charge is false. Newt is the one who has published a book analyzing the Obama Demcorats as a secular socialist machine, and Newt has published numerous books on political subjects and military history. Further, Newt has more actual conservative achievements than any of the GOP alternatives, particularly Romney. Newt’s strength among military voters reflected Newt’s long standing support of the military and knowledge of military history. As a credentialed lawyer, I know that Newt’s comments about the judiciary are on target, reflecting an understanding of the need to bring about a more traditional role for the judiciary as opposed to today’s imperial judiciary that was not the intention of the Founding Fathers. When Newt speaks strongly, he is borrowing a page from Reagan. When Newt speaks broadly, he is again borrowing a page from Reagan.
Romney is the one who needs to be subjected to a far more critical examination than what VDH has provided here. Romney’s only experience in Government was one short term as Governor of Massachusetts, and there is everything about that term to drive conservative Republicans away. Romney as Governor raised taxes, was adamantly pro-abortion rights, appointed Democrats to the state judiciary and championed RomneyCare, the precursor to ObamaCare. Further, Romney has not shown strength with respect to military matters, foreign policy and national security. In 2007, Romney waffled on the Iraq surge; and in 2011, Romney appeared to call for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In 1979 and 1980, Ronald Reagan was seen as the dangerous choice for the GOP. Republican establishment types favored the genial elder Bush. But the Republican rank and file insisted on the right choice — Ronald Reagan. Romney may be like the elder Bush in a number of respects, but Romney is no Reagan. Newt, who has done a video about Reagan and Reagan’s destiny, knows how to do Reagan.
Exellent observations Phil B.. Perhaps we are in part seeing a “cat fight” between historians which also reveals Dr VDH bias toward Romney. Jobs, and the economy are important but first the election must be won by a Republican. Thus far Newt has shown the ability, grit and determination to beat Obama in a public forum. Lets us all focus on which of our fine candidates can beat Obama before which nothing else can be done. First WIN WIN WIN to salvage what is left of our country.
What a silly ad-hom riposte. Gingrich may BE intellectually deep. In public, he’s not. He’s broad, shallow, rapid-fire, and prone to poorly-considered overreach. Such a contrast to “Romney the plodder” is absolutely legitimate to note — and something which should be.
Contrast Gingrich and Ron Paul on the Fed and the Gold standard. Both are essentially on the same page: which one’s bringing depth of argument, as opposed to “patter of allusion?”
I’m not a huge VDH fan in addressing modern concerns, where I find he generally writes to the CW. He’s stronger, MUCH stronger, musing within his specialty. But I’d say this column nailed it pretty well.
Nice counter to VDH whom we all love and respect. You’re right, though. Newt earned a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Tulane. Respectable school, so likely he was at least a respectable scholar.
I wish you knew as many intellectually unserious people I know with phds from fancy institutions. newt certainly is smart, though, at least in his own eyes. humility would amplify the appeal of his intellect. his conceit only undermines it.
“There is a wish to cut and paste the flawed Republican candidates’ strengths into a composite nominee . . .”
I swear. My husband and I where cutting and pasting this ideal candidate only this morning.
Great minds . . .
God, he was beautiful.
“something like another neo-Marxist take on Bain Capital”
Dr. Hansen, I normally love the clarity you bring to your writing … in this case I see you are projecting onto Newt something he certainly did not saw or do …
Are they putting something in the water over at NRO ? I hope so because otherwise I have to assume you are off your game … please bring back the old clarity … this was 3 pages of nonsense …
I’m a Gingrich supporter. But the Good Doctor is right, Newt’s attack was Marxist-like in it attempt to portray normal capitalist behavior as unfair to the “working masses”.
yet, I think, he did it not out of marxism, but just for dirty vendetta, an eye for an eye
Agreed. Newt is a scraper. In the current situation that is a feature, not a bug.
i support newt as well
newt’s attack only revealed romney’s achilles heel and that of all the moderate/establishment types– their inability to defend the merits of capitalism versus the destruction of collectivism– if the alternative to obamanation cannot articulate or demonstrate this most critical of criteria then it’s time for the one who will fight
milton friedman said something to the effect of it not being necessary to replace all the politicians but to persuade them to do what “we” want– newt can fill this role better than the rest of the candidates
The doctor is the genius at presenting details and tieing them into the theme that explains everything…usually. But not today.
The overwhelming theme of this election is freedom vs statism. The overwhelming theme of the Republican primary is the struggle between the Republican ruling class and the upstart people who have finally had enough of the patricians who consistently choose themselves instead of the underlings they hold in contempt.
Romney’s a good man who for whatever reason has aligned himself with the status quo patricians. Ginrich is a flawed man who for whatever reason has aligned himself with the upstarts, and ultimately with freedom.
This isn’t a clash of personalities, it really is a clash of philosophies, albeit one conducted by actors who are hopelessly human rather than playwrites with the luxury of time to write a masterful script.
We need Dr Hanson to inspire us with the drama, not the sordid soap opera that is only the framework for the most important battles of our lives.
Interesting that VDH would quote Danton, (via Patton,) re: “l’audace.”
Nothing is more clear that BHO was really serious about the “Audacity” part of his book. Every move he makes presses the envelope of his Constitutional authority. When questioned, he, and his minions in and outside the media, do little more than lie to America’s face: (up is actually down, black actually white, etc.)
All this knowing that Republicans dare not open impeachment hearings. So, our basic freedoms are being quietly bled out of us.
With all his weaknesses, at least Gingrich will say what needs be said. If Obama is re-elected, the problem is not Newt, it’s America.
I’d vote for Kermit the Frog and Fozzy Bear before I would vote for Obama! Any of the GOP candidates is better than the current occupier of the White House. I’d like to give President Obama three things: a handshake for serving, a pink slip, and a plane ticket back to Chicago.
HAHAHA! Seriously! ME THREE!
Not a ticket to Chicago, no, a free ride to Camp Gitmo.
As far as I can tell, Newt for all his flawed past, does not suffer from any delusions. He is not upside down and inclined to seek being favored by the enemy.
Many have corrupted their strong footing, seeking the favor of enemy votes. So they will appease or ingratiate themselves for this.
We know them well. The are the hand-wringing, weak kneed, apologists dominating the western leadership. They are in disarray and in over their heads. They are the captains of the sinking ships of Europe.
The Lord is on the earth. It is not wise to take a stand against Him. Even for votes, because they will come off looking the fools that they are.
Better a repentant sinner, who will take a stand for what is right, than all the polished, charmed candidates who will not.
We are at a crucial time in our history. We must strive to choose that which would please the Lord. Because it will take more than just a mortal to deal with all of it. It will require Divine help.
Very good.
I think your comment about a repentant sinner is what the rubes have come to believe.
Dr. Hanson, you forgot to mention than though Romney tries oh-so-hard to look sincere, he doesn’t even look like he believes his own words; and so whenever he speaks we are reminded of his flipflops.
My first political memory was helping Mom pass out I like Ike buttons when I was three years old. I’ve been participating in campaigns ever since and I am hard pressed to recall a candidate who has put more resources to less effect on the campaign trail than Mitt Romney. He’s had six years to plan this thing and he can’t seem to have anticipated he’s going to get questioned about his tax returns or to come up with a cogent defense of the role of private equity firms in a growth economy?
It’s not just that Romney isn’t a natural on the campaign trail. Many candidates aren’t but the smart one’s quickly find some aspect of their persona that works for them. Few people manage the type of success Romney has while being utterly devoid of personal charm yet his among the most charmless of campaigns. He seems to combine Nixon’s obvious insincerity with George H.W. Bush’s patrician goofiness and John McCain’s deep seated need to constantly diss the base. Add to this a Hillary Rodham Clinton/Al Gore like habit of talking to audiences as if they are composed entirely of half wits with a short attention span and a DC consultant heavy operation that makes Dole ’96 look like a model of energy, warmth and spontaneity. It is as though Romney is trying so hard to be nonthreatening and inoffensive he comes across as both condescending and phony.
What makes this even more infuriating is that a large segment of the professional Republican pundit class, all of whom should know better, keeps insisting that Romney is a really good candidate and that people like me must be stupid not to see it.
Great line, NC: “[Romney] makes Dole ’96 look like a model of energy, warmth and spontaneity.”
NC Mountain Girl, this post was GOLDEN!
So true and yes, the auto-bot Romney love-in is INFURIATING! Pfft!
Enough of all this endless analyzing and bickering about the weaknesses and shortcomings of the conservative candidates. This is a single-objective election: stop the Democrat/Socialists, who have devoted the past three years to initiating the destruction of our way of governance and commerce. from being re-elected. What we are looking for is the Audacity of Outrage!
Gingrich “resurges” for one reason only. He is the only one of the lot that is prepared to get in the faces of those who proudly inform us that they bring guns to a knife fight. The GOP appears to be armed with butter knives. The voters who can swing this election into a landslide are those who are apprehensive, scared, disappointed, ticked off, exasperated, at what this fetid administration is ramming through, staffing up on, ignoring the will of the people, doing end runs on the two Houses, hell-bent on getting us as far down the road to serfdom as possible in the next few months.
We do not need lecturing on what the Socialists are up to. We apparently know more about freedom that the RNC does. Voting this year is going to be based on gut-feeling and, yes, downright fear. The candidate who is most blunt about addressing Socialism by name and getting in the faces of Axelrod’s cohorts is the one we’re looking for.
And why does VDH, of all people, who has certainly seen a lot of phonies in his time, write about Obama as if he is the leader, when he is manifestly nothing bout the mouthpiece for the the Chicago Alinsky machine that scammed him in. Why is Mighty Mouth suddenly silent, while Axelrod is suddenly all over the MSM? Because the Boss wants to keep the Great I Am from going freestyle and blowing their chances. “Stay home, eat your Kobe beef and shut up until I tell you.”
In their time of crisis the British did not choose a “decent” man – they picked CHurchill, because he perceived the threat and acted. After the victory, they quickly got rid of him. Our crisis is not as threatening physically, but it as serious in terms of the future of our Constitutional Republic and our way of life. We want to rally behind a leader who fearlessly expresses our outrage. We can make changes later. Mitt doesn’t seem very upset.
A-freaking-men, stuart!
I see Romney as wanting to restore our confidence in and reset the foundations for a bottom-up America. I see Gingrich as believing in top-down plans for the country. Gingrich may be best for starting a revolution. Romney is probably best for establishing the traditions that keep us free. Which of the two would be likely to establish the two-term tradition that Washington gave us?
Since just *when* is RomneyCare “bottom up”?!?
Loosen that hat of yours, friend.
States vs Federal. I am not worried about what MA does, so long as they can’t do it to us.
Nice mental gymnastics, but without me calling you a gullible fool, I can only point out that you are believing the words of a man who has “committed” to BOTH sides of just about any issue of importance to this country.
“Oh, but that was Massachusetts.” Yes, and he defends it to its bitter end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OQoBxZZPqU&feature=player_embedded
Yep, Ed. Not to mention that Mittens truly gives me a case of the Heebie Jeebies. There is something in my gut instinct about this guy that sends me the “Danger, Will Robinson!” signals.
The author lets Romney off WAY too easy.
If Gingrich is the man who you’re not quite sure what’s going to come out of his mouth next…
Romney is the man whom you *know* is going to either give you
A) a pre-programmed PolitiBot script line fed to him by his Committee-pollsters (which he may or may not believe in…doesn’t matter, as he’s *committed* to – for example – being pro-Life AND pro-choice), OR
B) a Deer-In-The-Headlights glare, as he hasn’t the faintest idea who to think on his feet.
Romney takes ObamaCare off the tables. Oh wait, he *promised* to stop it. Uh huh.
Saddest, Romney clearly has the Leftist disease of feeling guilty about his wealth. That’s something conservatives and many other Americans are looking for in a leader, right?!? (/S)
Unleash Gingrich in 2012!
Hear, hear!
“So he attacks the nature of the journalist’s question rather than answers it….”
John Edwards must be thinking, “Shoot, why didn’t I think of that!
his answer was that his ex’s story wasn’t true
Dr. Hansen provides us with his typical thoughtful analysis, but I must respectfully disagree on some points. First, agonizing over candidates is a normal part of every election. Recall the Democrats in 2008 as a recent example. Second, Dr. Paul may know better than to discuss his foreign policy and defense ideas in South Carolina, but I see him as a true ideologue who is going to say what he thinks no matter what. He has done this throughout his career in Congress, as a result typically being out of step with other representatives, and he isn’t going to change now. Third, I think the criticism of Mr. Gingrich has been influenced by leftstream media hype. His frequent historical references suggest a contextual understanding of issues that is difficult to capture in television and radio sound bites. However, when he talks at length or when you look at his numerous books/papers/videos, his intellect and depth of knowledge are clear. The lack of discipline some cite seems to me to be a habit of “thinking out loud”. The leftstream media, no friend of conservatives, is particularly quick to pounce on Gingrich, characterizing his statements as another wild idea or another angry rant, and certainly happy to pursue a character assassination through his former wife. Keep in mind that he was a regular analyst on Fox for years and, frankly, I found him insightful and effective in that role.
Gingrich has the ability to go toe-to-toe with Obama because he shares many of his strengths. Both are cunning politicians. Both are able to articulate their ideologies effectively. Both have the ability to inspire their bases. Both have the ability to recover from the attacks that are part and parcel of politics.
With a combination of Perry and Palin support and a rousing rebuttal to Obama Media, Newt has rescued us from Mitt. Now I want the real deal, Sarah Palin, to jump in and rescue us from Newt. Come on, Sarah, what would George Washington do?
True Dat!
Yes. Sarah the reluctant warrior as POTUS 2012. The most vetted, most honest, best executive, 20 yr political career w/ proven accomplishments, true conservative, constitutionalist, courageous, Mr.Smith goes to Washington type of character & principle. Obama’s antithesis. Most important she can rally the crowds & only her name on the top of the ticket will turn the Senate & bring out the voters. Draft Sarah & Obama is history no matter what the GOP establishment-white-hair-psuedo-conservatives say.
Victor, a disappointing piece. It has the feel of a very comfortable armchair quarterback, assessing the warts and imperfections of each warrior, without being a warrior. It’s the job of an academic. Smoke the pipe, issue erudite commentary, have another cup of tea. I like Newt, so I will take his case. Your not so subtle academic envy of one who is in the arena seems palpable. Your critique of Newt would be more credible if Newt did not have an actual resume that includes very significant conservative accomplishment, a fact that you forgot to mention. I was alive during the 70s and 80s and remember how completely inept and meaningless were the Repubicans in the House. It was a fact of life they would be forever in the minority. Except for Newt. He nationalized what every commentator said were all local elections, and he created the framework for a Republican majority. And he did this against ot just the Democrats, but even moreso against the Republican Establishment. In my mind, this political feat, which produced balanced budgets and real welfare reform, done in the presence of a liberal Democrat President, is a far greater achievement than that of Bain Capital, which was and is a legitimate success, but not of historic magnitude. But you did not even mention Newt’s accomplishment. Newt is still running against the Republican “Ruling Class” and it’s intelligentsia. But I for one note the endorsement of the likes of Thomas Sowell, Sarah Palin, Michael Reagan and others. The Tea Party is not well liked by high brow academics, but it is a force and a force for good. And the Tea Party does not want to send a nice non-conservative into the arena. Maybe it is compassion to not want to see Mitt get annihilated. More likely, the Tea Party wants a proven warrior in the arena, who will fight back hard against the statist threat that is on our doorstep. Newt is an academic who long ago shed his cardigan and pipe and entered the arena. He now gets bloodied every day, and sometimes by pipe smoking professors.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Excellent. Thank you. Teddy Roosevelt knew how to express it.
This column is a rare “miss” by the good Doctor. He is too dismissive of Gingrich while to easy to excuse Romney.
True, Newt has enough baggage to elicit concern, but he is a fighter, has the ability to expound on any subject without hesitation (if somewhat superficially at times), and has a history of being part of transformative conservative victories. His stated goals should he achieve office are likewise transformative, and he expresses them with an ardor and humor that is both inclusive and inspirational. I have full knowledge that he is a flawed man, but like Churchill may be elevated because the depth of crisis summons his rare combination of oft abrasive talents.
But with Mitt, safety first is his only pure beneficial trait. Yes, he is solid, and would be an excellent manager. As a ships captain, he would keep a true bearing, going neither too fast or slow, and would dock perfectly on time. But our ship of state is foundering! We don’t need mere safety, we need dramatic changes, not the trimming of sails to stay neatly on the course of socialist decline. He talks of capitalism, and lived it in his pricate life. But in his government life he has espoused nothing but socialism light, and good management of it. He talks down to the little people and is dismissive of the concerns of the base. Because of his record, all talk of a conservative governing philosophy, much less anything resembling the ethos of the Founders, falls flat and seems insincere. I have no doubt that he is a good man, but at the wrong time of calling.
I fear that the reelection of Obama would end any hope of ever restoring our Republic without a prior total societal collapse.
Prof. Hanson, how about your insight into the human nature of “envy” (AKA resentment) vis a vis Romney (or, for that matter, all the candidates), and how this affects voters – whether “right” or “wrong”?
Please refer to: “REPUBLICANS IN DENIAL” at: http://floppingaces.net/2012/01/20/republicans-in-denial-reader-post/
Dr. Hanson, I find it telling that you wrote twice as much about Gingrich as Romney. Is this because there just isn’t much to say about Romney? Even in the Romney section, Gingrich was mentioned twice by comparison – again – it must be difficult to talk about Romney without adding a comparison to a living entity. Paul and Santorum was again half as much as the discussion on Romney, but in their cases – everything that needed to be said was easy and quick.
So thinking not about what you said, but how you said it – Gingrich is our best hope for the future, but few are truly happy about it.
NEWT THRIVES ON HELLFIRE
I’m not predicting Newt will be the nominee. If he wins Florida, to be sure, the establishment will make a titanic effort to stop him and turn his candidacy into a living hell. However, the country is in an anti-establishment mood and this could end up propelling Newt to the top. Hercules went to hell and back and brought back the three headed dog Cerebus. Newt is a modern day Hercules who thrives on hellfire.
BTW As for Newt’s history of infidelities he’s married to the Constitution and American Exceptionalism, and that’s good enough for me.
Click my name and read my popular, widely linked Townhall piece: Signs of Newt Gingrich Defeating Obama. It’s like nothing that’s been written on the subject.
STAY THE COURSE TO DISASTER
REELECT OBAMA
I’ve recently been reading a book that seems uncannily prescient about this election season.
The book is “Fear and Loathing; On The Campaign Trail ’72″ by the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It is a compendium of Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 Democratic party primary season, and then the McGovern campaign, for “Rolling Stone” magazine.
Reading through it, I was struck by the resemblance of the 2012 GOP primary season to the 1972 Democratic one. In many respects, Romney and Gingrich are almost carbon copies of George McGovern and Hubert H. Humphrey, respectively. (NB; Thompson became a McGovern partisan, and loathed Humphrey from the beginning; only his hatred of Nixon was greater.) South Carolina on Saturday was almost a replay of California in June of ’72, when Humphrey beat McGovern by 6% in spite of McGovern being predicted as the winner a week earlier- before Gallup showed his lead abruptly evaporating.
Ron Paul is in many respects a fun-house mirror reflection of Ed Muskie, who was himself a Bizarro World version of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. (And McCarthy was weirder than Zaphod Beeblebrox after a round of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.) Paul also has more than a few attributes of George Wallace, as well.
Santorum, Perry, etc. are the same sort of minor players that all the other Democratic wannabees were in both years. P.J. O’Rourke’s term “ballot mice” comes to mind.
On the other side, never mind comparing Obama to Carter or (as He would prefer) Lincoln. In all meaningful respects, Obama is Nixon. “Afghanization”= “Vietnamization”, i.e “as long as we don’t lose on my watch, I can live with a defeat”, de facto nationalization of industries = wage/price controls, defense cuts, NASA “retasking”, etc.
And Operation Fast & Furious was only possible because BATFE, in its present form, was Tricky Dick’s brainchild- his way of getting payback vs. the NRA, and sportsmen in general, for not supporting him “strongly enough” in ’68. If, as Thompson said, Nixon represented the dark side of the American psyche, so does The Self-Exalted One. (And as can be seen from his policies, Nixon was by no definition a “conservative”.)
I’m looking for the GOP convention to be a replay of the Democratic ’72 version, which was one of the down-and-dirtiest in U.S. history. If nothing else, it should make great TV.
As for the general election, if Romney is the nominee, I look for a repeat of both Nixon vs. McGovern ’72 and Clinton vs. Dole ’96. I.e., the electorate opting for the incumbent because they can see little reason to switch to a replacement whose policies are not noticeably different.
Of course, Nixon didn’t serve out his second term- but I don’t think Joe Biden is even close to being another Gerald Ford. It’s not a matter of would Biden lose to “any Republican” in 2016, but rather whether or not we’d even still be in existence with the likes of Joe the Mouth in the center seat.
clear ether
eon
Having lived through the period you mention, and having read Hunter Thompson in the original Rolling Stone articles, I just don’t see most of your (I would say, forced) parallels. The dynamics of McGovern and Humphrey, for starters, given what they were representing, were so different than the supposedly parallel Romney and Gingrich equivalents, that it was hard to take any of the rest of your equation seriously. McGovern was the peacenik stop-the-war rebellion within the Dem party…and that is supposed to be Romney? Humphrey was trying desperately to hold onto the LBJ mantle and support an unsupportable war. By the way Thompson really lost me when he came up with these drug-fantasy scenarios of HH mugging him in the parking lot, biting him in neck, blah, blah. That was just too wierd, even for a long-hair like me.
But if you want to figure out the key equation now, you have to solve for the number of people who are, or could become OUTRAGED at Obama. This forum is dominated by such folks and they want someone who will play to the outraged element. My estimate (and what do I know?) is that the outraged segment is not above 35%, but there are another 30% who could become disgusted, or at least disenchanted enough with Obama, to pull the lever for someone else. A candidate asking them for wild outrage, would backfire and they would circle just enough wagons to give Obama a second term.
People are calling for the all-out Gingrich frontal assault, because like Lee at Gettysburg, they believe that the Union center must be weak. As Shelby Foote said, “Bobby Lee’s blood was up.” Romney is more like Longstreet, if we want to go with historical parallels, who claims to have wanted to fight on different ground on a different day. This, I believe is what VDH is saying in his own way. Does he know that at least 60% of the American public is NOT as offended by Obama as he is? Yes, I think he does.
So, we are not to take eon’s comparisons seriously, but Dwight compares people who are outraged at Obama to Lee at Gettysburg and compares Romney to Longstreet. Foote would be turning over in his grave about now.
By the way, Dwight, does claiming the mantle (literally) of long hair mean we can compare you to Custer?
Claiming no mantle, but I did have long hair in the late sixties and most of the seventies. And you?
Anyway, Custer did fine at Gettysburg; he should have just left those damned Indians alone.
“OUTRAGED”
Can’t see the forest for the trees?
Or maybe a past John Adams Northeast Ingrown Toenail is blocking D-White Thought.
D, you can be identified as “D”, one can assume?
“A candidate asking them for wild outrage…”. Why must telling Modern Liberals about their faults be characterized as “wild outrage”? “There you go again”. The Ping Pong Tongue is drawn to yet another flawed consensus, and bitterly clings to it like a favored worn out Tweed Syllabus from the Progressive Era.
The Big Picture. What the hell is that? Well, it’s Humpty Dumpty sitting on the Pick It Fence But. But… Wait!
“That was just too wierd, even for a long-hair like me.” Oh boy. What an image. And broken 8-track tapes too, one can suppose.
Look what beckons D-White.
D has come out for Mr. Romney. The Former Mr. President Supporter (was it kind of like that strap worn when playing sports?) now has seen some sort of light that happens on The Road to Washington. Take credit PJMers, D is the proverbial canary indicator. He has awakened from the Great Modern Liberal Slumber. He has been swayed by the likes of the “OUTRAGED”. Sort of.
D doesn’t realize that on a personal level. Wait until “they” tap his pension though.
There are more people showing signs of this realization, and some “Centerist” canaries even think that the Modern Liberal Crony System is now a detriment to their future. You know, enlightened self interest will win quite often, especially when Mr. President does things like put a personal But Plug in the Keystone Pipe. No, that’s not that piped Afghani Failure Faculty Lounge Tweed wafting around D, that is the smell of a burning electorate.
“My estimate (and what do I know?)…” Correct. What do you know? Do you listen to yourself? Or is this just more ” blah, blah” school marm Red Pencil Necking in an attempt to appear present? D, Mr. President may win this time around, inertia and all, and if He does, this could be “The Last Time”.
Modern Liberalism is dead, existing on far out fumes (and “a long-hair like me”) propped up by a Creditialed Class that is rapidly losing the ability to pull $$$ x 10 to the infinite power out of other people’s pockets. Get real D, even Modern Liberals have a limit. The so called “60% of the American public” could care less about Mr. President’s chances when their iPod goes dead because of the envy of Green Modern Liberals, and as an extension, Mr. President’s But Plug policies.
Mr. Gingrich is an indicator. People are beginning to realize that they want it straight, the message is more important than the messenger, and not with as Dr. Hanson alludes to, the play not to lose 2 minute prevent defenses, and Dreams of Some Run Away Joe Father.
“…the outraged segment is not above 35%, but there are another 30% who could become disgusted…”. 65%. Wow.
Hey D-White, sounds like you may be on to something here. Pursue that thought to it’s logical conclusion.
Well I told you once and I told you twice
That someone will have to pay the price
Let’s see if I can simplify this a little for you. The difference is between saying, “these numbers don’t add up and we are sinking,” vs “the narcissist, Commie fraud is trying to destroy America.” Many here, salivate at diction of the latter message, whereas many voters out there would avoid such a speaker. For once, I agree with VDH’s election outcome analysis almost completely.
Do I KNOW with certainty the strength of the Union center? No. Do you? No. I am perfectly willing to admit that I am more nervous about how we pay for everything. We have seen Romney at work in Mass. and he is a reasonable guy. Newt’s stability/abililty to be a day-in day-out President, dealing with the slings and arrows is too much in question for me.
“…these numbers don’t add up and we are sinking,” vs “the narcissist, Commie fraud is trying to destroy America.”
Thanks D-White, you can put away the composition book. None of the above is mutually exclusive.
I can simplify this precisely for you. No Buts about it. $16 trillion of other people’s assets is not enough for some pigs that are more equal.
Nice Romney mask. Did that come “free” with your Mass taxes? Or did Mr. President’s campaign front it to you?
I told you once and I told you twice…
Actually, McGovern was trying to portray himself as the middle-of-the-road candidate, whose only major variations from Nixon were (a) honesty and (b) wanting to get out of Vietnam faster than Tricky Dick.
It was Humphrey who tried to hang the “Amnesty, Abortion, Acid” tag on McGovern, much as Gingrich is calling Romney “Obama Lite” now. (Personally, I agree with that assessment, but that is not germane to the discussion.)
I was 14 at the time, and was studying the campaign in Current Affairs- with a teacher who thought Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report were better CA texts than any textbook. (Each student got their choice of which one for a $10 lab fee; I paid $20 and got a full year of both.)
The main parallel is the dynamic within the GOP right now vs. that within the Democratic Party then. The “battle” you speak of was by no means over after ’68, in fact it was still going on within the party during the primary season and right up to the convention, with the Big Labor (George Meany) and old guard (Richard Daley) factions lining up behind first Muskie, and then (when he self-destructed) Humphrey. They wanted no part of McGovern because he represented not “Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty”, but a transfer of power to newer, younger groups not beholden to them. (If you’d actually read what HST said, you’d already know this, as it was the main theme of his accounts.)
The same dynamic is playing out this year in the GOP. The difference is (and I’m sure to take flak for this), both Romney and Gingrich represent the present power structure in Washington; just different parts of it. Romney represents the East Coast establishment, who are almost indistinguishable from “Progressive” Democrats on almost any subject, and Gingrich represents the Southern branch, who are somewhere in the vicinity of the average “Blue Dog” Democrat. Witness his stance(s) on things like gun laws and immigration, which constantly change but never stray too far from “inside the Beltway” orthodoxy.
The battle here is between two parts of the present GOP power structure, neither of which likes the other very much. Each one wants to be the only game in town, the town being Washington, D.C.
What the front-runners have in common is that both see the present overall government power structure as benefiting them. Just in different ways.
Neither one really has much interest in “de-evolving” power from DC to the rest of the country, no matter what either one says. Neither one frankly trusts the Tea Party, or anyone else outside the “ruling class”, all that much. They just differ on which part of said “ruling class” should be leading the orchestra.
As for Ron Paul, he would require a strong centralized government to carry out just half of what he claims to be for. He just won’t admit it in front of a microphone. If he doesn’t get what he wants, at least in the party platform- which seems to be isolationism in general and a kiss-off for Israel in particular- I expect him to bolt the party, much like John Anderson in 1980. He could end up as a spoiler for the GOP, much like H. Ross Perot is considered to have been in 1992. ( I question that, but the theory exists.)
The rest are as irrelevant to this campaign as John Lindsay was to the Dems in ’72. HST was surprised to learn after the primaries were over that what he thought was Lindsay having his own version of McGovern’s detailed “ground game” in the primaries was nothing but Lindsay’s staff “winging it”- making it up as they went along. Which was why Lindsay was out of it before Florida, and frankly was a non-factor before Ohio; which reminds me forcefully of Rick Perry.
I have come to the conclusion that, as HST related re the Dems in the general election part of ’72, the present GOP leadership is willing to trade Obama “Four More Years” if it means that they can retain control of their own party at the national level. They would settle for regaining control of the Senate and keeping the House, but if that required letting the “radicals” (like the Tea Parties) have a seat at the table, they’d take a dive on those, too.
They seem to believe that once The One is gone in 2016, they can run “one of their own” to beat the presumptive Democratic candidate. Which they do not believe will be Biden, who would lose to a wet paper bag. (Best guess- they think they’ll be running against Hillary, who just can’t release.)
BTW, a cousin of mine ran for office here in OH 15 years ago- and was stunned to find the leadership of the county GOP (which she was running for) lining up with their supposed “opponents”, the Democrats, to put a Democrat in the county prosecutor post she was campaigning for. Because the Democrat represented the existing power groups, and she was not part of same. She was devastated, not least because one of the GOP leaders who helped torpedo her campaign was a lifelong friend of her father’s.
I had suggested that she read both HST’s book and “Executive Orders” by Tom Clancy before starting out, but she didn’t consider either one relevant. After the fact, she did read both, and acknowledged that she should have read them first.
Like my cousin, you need to look past the surface appearances (which are crafted by media experts, after all) to see what is going on where the real work is done.
Of course, like laws or sausages, observing the process of creating political campaigns is not for the sensitive. What comes out at the end may not necessarily contain what you think it does.
And unlike foodstuffs, there is no such thing as a “Truth in Advertising” law in politics.
cheers
eon
I have no problem with most of your analysis, but once you say, “The same dynamic is playing out this year in the GOP. The difference is (and I’m sure to take flak for this), both Romney and Gingrich represent the present power structure in Washington; just different parts of it.” OK each pair represented different parts of the power structure in their era, but how is that different from let’s say Kennedy-Carter, or really any time various wings of either party are going against each other? There are always wheels within wheels and various groups going against each other, making deals, being political.
I still don’t see any kind of unique parallel to that election. A generic one, yes. In that year you had the 800 lb gorilla of the war and LBJ not running, a couple circumstances sufficiently distinctive to make parallels to this year not ring true for me, but in your case, you were learning about the workings of our political system, and those “truths” you learned, may well apply most of the time.
I do expect people like you to have enough common sense and honesty to put today’s problems in the proper context, because if you lived through those times…these ones ain’t so bad, but then such an admission would negate the terrific melodrama you guys need to generate about the death of the Republic. Remember the societal disorder, demonstrations, riots, subsequent stagflation, wage and price controls, devaluations of our currency? I do.
Proreason, as I recall, claims to see some huge difference between LBJ and Obama because LBJ was a “patriot,” but good grief; if you want to talk about a man changing the country radically in a direction which you guys don’t like, that guy would be LBJ and FDR earlier. Obama has hardly done anything compared to those two; it’s just that you folks were not at the height of your melodramatic powers even if many others were. I guess you have to deal with the cards you are dealt and see the Bogeyman with a capital B in your own era, otherwise life just ain’t that exciting.
Cheers,
We seem to be pretty much on the same wavelength, which sort of surprises me. Then again, contrary to popular belief, I’m not a “conservative” per se, falling somewhere in the Truman/Eisenhower area.
The thing I see is that even with all their flaws (and we don’t have a year or so to go into them), practically any of the GOP candidates (except RoPaul) would be an acceptable alternative to the present occupant of the Oval Office.
Romney would be a “Mend it, don’t end it” Chief Executive where most of Obama’s brainstorms are concerned. Gingrich would opt for something along the lines of “End a few of them, and tweak the rest around the edges just a bit”.
The difference is that unlike The Self-Exalted One, neither one of them is an ideology-driven, dogmatic, arrogant, egomaniacal, narcissistic jerk. (Which is why I equate His Oneness with Nixon, who had all those faults and then some.)
At the time (1972-74) I didn’t think Nixon was a Bogeyman; just an egotist out of his depth. The entire Watergate business amused me; as I told people at the time, the jackass had gone to elaborate and illegal lengths to win an election, against an OPFOR that was too busy fighting among themselves to actually come up with a candidate capable of defeating him.
Others may have found Nixon threatening; I mainly considered him pathetic. When Sun-Tzu said “choose your battles wisely”, he didn’t just mean to avoid ones you can’t win, he also meant that you shouldn’t go out on a limb to fight a battle you don’t even need to have to start with.
Obama, the Great Uniter, seems to revel in picking fights with anybody and everybody in America who he perceives as less perfect than he perceives himself to be. Nixon had more or less the same problem.
Whatever the outcome of the primaries, I will most likely vote for whoever the GOP nominee is, just on the grounds of getting His Immensity out of the White House. I just don’t expect any of the alternatives will be a man on horseback- and those are overrated anyway.
cheers
eon
To give Nixon some credit, the level of the problems he had to deal with (ones I enumerated earlier) were daunting, but I absolutely agree about not fighting the battles that you don’t have to; that point just hits one in the face, with him.
The evidence is, though, (and from his former pals) that Gingrich IS the narcissistic jerk. Obama does what he does, but does not seem to have the undercurrent of hatred from his underlings and colleagues, which Newt did. If you have a violent allergy toward him, as the left soon did for GWB, then everything he does makes you break out in a rash and shallow breathing. He was under pressure to get healthcare done while they owned both houses of Congress, and he did. Had he not done so, would the right despise him any less? Their boast from the get-go was that they would stop healthcare and make him a failed President. That has worked out in an odd fashion as things usually do.
I didn’t pay that much attention to political forums during Bubba’s time, so I can’t really say how much the right hated him compared to Obama, but I am guessing that by Monicagate time, folks were into a serious rant, with a lot of “worst evers” filling the air. Yea or nay?
Bottom line: I would probably support Romney over Obama, because he would have (if elected) a base in the center, which would permit him to trim. Obama’s base (or deep belief, if you prefer) doesn’t really give him the option to trim. Newt is just too unreliable. The Obama haters here claim not to care about that, because Obama is so bad. I fear that Newt could be worse, in the ways that Nixon proved to be worse; a man capable of destroying himself with the accompanying collateral damage to the country.
Having also lived though the time in question, also in Paris, I must point out that the hippies’ idol Hunter Thompson missed the real revolution. It was in 1968, NOT 1972. It started in Paris on Mayday and swept around the world like Bolshevism.
Chicago 1968 Dem Convention riots and burning of our cities by the Entitled quickly ensued. I left and haven’t been back but to visit. Every visit shows me that well meaning intellectuals like you, EON, didn’t really get then, nor do you now.
Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” and the “long hot summer” is being unleashed now to ensure The Annointed One’s coronation in November.
The hoi polloi enjoying the bread and circuses on your dime are today the 47% that don’t pay taxes,97% of the 13% Blacks,85% of the 16% Hispanics, the 45 million food-stampers, 100& of all Unions, 95% of all Media, and the ones who brought it all on our heads, the ones that ensured the Entitled’s mass ignorance: the traitorous TEACHERS.
Think there’s a chance a few fly-over country holdouts haranguing each other at their Rotary meetings can stand up to O’s mobs and O’s treasury like we’re in an old Western?
Do what I did before even 1972. Go Galt.
Not a very good way to start a week on this Monday morning. If you read this piece by VDH and then the comments that follow you get the vey uneasy notion that we’re beginning to prepare ourselves for the very real possibility of defeat come November. Not just in the election but for America generally. We have a president who should be so despised for what he has brought forth that he cannot possibly survive re-election and here we are talking about how we will probably not be able to pull off a win for our great America. How did we get here?
To answer your query: we got here because Karl Marx finally had his dream come true; the middle class joining with the lower class in class warfare against the upper class. Who would have guessed it would happen in the Republican Party? I would like to believe that this is a set up by moles and trolls, but I am afraid it is not. When Victor Hanson is attacked, as you have seen today, because he won’t come out and endorse Newt we have gone over the edge to the unreasonable man. It reminds me very much of the attacks on anyone who had a little doubt about Sarah Palin. In fact her attacks (though justified) on the press worked so well, Newt decided to try them. For a long time Sarah went up in the polls for attacking the media; so has Newt. Unfortunately, the media is not on the ballot in November. I’ll give Sarah one thing, one patriotic thing, she knew she couldn’t win, so she stayed out of the race, for the good of the Republic. She could have tried for ‘vindication’ and revenge; but she knew she would loose. Having gone up head to head against Barack Obama she knows just how important it is to remove him from office. Unfortunately, Newt’s ego has no limits. He has 20+ years of vindication against Democrats and Republicans to make up for; and he doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. Probably because he is one of the true boomers and Sarah is not makes the difference. There is no entitlement generation bigger than the Boomer Generation; right wing or left wing. That is how we ended up here with people trashing VDH and opting for brawn over brains. If you read the posts you will notice, it is not Newt’s brain that attracts them it is his mouth. Isn’t it funny that is how Obama got elected; style over substance. People fall for it every time. This time there will be no recovery.
As for me, this is my last post on any forum.
Thank you Victor. I will keep reading.
No, with all due respect, I’m going to disagree with you. It isn’t, in this election, simply ‘style vs substance’. It’s much deeper. You are ignoring that it’s the infrastructure that is up for grabs, not the rhetoric.
That is, we are not talking about a stable, common infrastructure and the only difference in leading this infrastructure is between a leader who is glib with the words vs one who is a thinker. That’s not the situation this time.
It’s a deep tectonic shift – of a nation’s infrastructure that is at the tipping point. Over the past decades, the US has insidiously moved this infrastructure from a republic based around individual rights, responsibilities and freedoms, to a statist system based around a dependent non-productive population based around entitlements. Economically, to sustain the statist system, which is by definition, incapable of producing its own wealth, we have had to borrow money from others and from the future.
We are now at a crisis point. Do we/can we continue with this socialist statism or do we/can we rip out this insidious infrastructure and return to our basic original structure of freedom and our capacity for wealth-production?
When you have an infrastructure as badly damaged as ours, an over-the-counter pain-killer, such as cutting a few services, setting up study commissions, and borrowing more – won’t work. It has to be an operation. And that means acknowledging that the infrastructure is damaged. We, in our political correctness and growing culture-of-entitlements, have refused to acknowledge this. But – we either flip totally into statism, and remember, statism is incapable of wealth production – or, we return to our basic system.
Nothing to do with style vs substance.
“As for me, this is my last post on any forum.”
Reconsider. You’re doing good work!
Bain Capital Owns Clear Channel (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Etc.)
Dear Ione,
Your intellect and writing skills belie a great intellect. Don’t ever for any reason refuse to contribute as you have done to this Comment Section. You are heard loud and clear. Keep fighting. Don’t give up. Keep contributing.
Thank you Vincent and Yooper. I will consider your kind words. Class warfare is just so very ugly and very against the individualistic ideals of our country where a man is to be judged on his merit, his ideas, his character and not his bank account or academic degree whether large or small, long or short. It is especially discouraging when I see it coming from the party that has reflected those ideals best. I expect it from socialists and Democrats.
When I hear upend the institutions, rip it out root and branch I want nothing less; however I remember the parable of the wheat and tares and warning about ripping out the tares, lest you uproot the wheat as well.
And days like this it is like screaming into the wind.
But, I will consider your words. Thank you so very much.
We got here because of perfidious TEACHERS since the 1960s.
But MOM-ism (remember Phillip Wiley?) is so alive in America that teachers are seen as Moms, no matter how evil their results.
Moms. Everbody has one, right? Can’t blame them, only the Dads.
Teachers. Everybody had some, right? Whatever gender, they were surrogate Moms — and cannot be blamed.
Well, think about it hard. How ELSE did we get here but their failures?
Why does anyone on Planet Earth think that Gingrich is a true conservative? Not only that, but he is remarkably unstable, capable of irrational acts and has a really destructive temper. His anger toward Romney when he thought he had been hurt by Romney ads, was palpable. Do we really think a man like that can win the White House. No, because before the campaign is over, he will show his true colors and that will be it. Plus, does he know anything at all about creating jobs?
This election isn’t about personalities, in the sense that all we are looking for is a stable ‘hand-on-the-tiller’ individual to carry on a stable infrastructure and tweak a few problems on the way.
This election is about the essential infrastructure of this nation. We are at war but the war is an internal one, a disease that is rotting our essential nature from within.
The question is, as more and more people have outlined it clearly: Do we want to change our Republic with its infrastructure as clearly articulated in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence and history, from its ideals of freedom, individual rights and responsibilities, innovation and entrepreneurship — to one of statist dependency, a rejection of the individual, a focus on collectivist rights?
This is not an intellectual question but a basic one; it is basic because we have been quietly moving our infrastructure and our ideology into a statist socialism over the last decades and more and more of our abilities to be free have been removed from us. What are they?
Just a few: high taxes, crippling corporate and business taxes, vote-buying entitlements creating almost half the population not paying income taxes, smothering regulations that insidiously stamp out private businesses.
A culture that rejects wealth, that sneers at private business, that expands and protects the bloated public bureaucracy with their unions, their anti-business agenda…..
There’s no need to outline how the infrastructure has unravelled.
What we have now, is finally, a crisis point, where people have become aware that the infrastructure of the Republic is damaged to a critical threshold point. What do we do?
We don’t need a CEO, we don’t need a ‘just a few tweaks’ leader. We need, as I’m now realizing and as others (cfbleachers in particular) have outlined, a Hero. Someone who will openly confront this insidious disease that has been creeping up in us, call it out by name, and fling it out.
That is all, that is the only task, of this next president.
Whether he is a womanizer, an unethical fighter, a morally bereft individual in his personal life – is utterly irrelevant. He is not chosen as a metaphor of The Great American, assumed to embody our virtues, but as a deadly vicious warrior who will confront what we have refused to confront, bring out into the open what we have refused to speak about – and face its reality.
Gingrich is doing this, with his simple, clear outline of the choice we have – between a statist authoritarian govt that makes everyone dependent on the state vs a govt true to our Constitution that is based around freedom of the individual. Dependency vs Independence. Statism Rule vs Freedom.
And – a Foodstamp President vs a Paycheck President.
Romney can’t confront and deal with this kind of basic vicious gritty war; he’s someone in the boardroom. Not the trenches.
What Gingrich has to understand is his role: It’s to fight for the Republic’s basic bones…and then…win. And then leave.
But without this war, and it is a war, Obama and statism will continue.
Obama is not just one in a long line of soft socialists in the US; he’s a malicious, vicious and unethical agent for socialism. He is all of this because he is also a pathological personality – a malignant narcissist who wants power because he needs power, who denigrates America and Americans because he needs power.
Think – have we ever had a president with such contempt for America and Americans? Who goes around the world apologizing for America? Who calls Americans: lazy, ignorant, racist, bigoted? Never.
I’m for Gingrich, not because of who he is, but for what he is: a scrapper, a fighter, a confronter. And I’m for him because this year is a crisis year for America, confronting an evil akin to that within the Third Reich in WWII. At that time, the German people had inadvertently and intentionally, chosen a destructive path. They needed external help to get out of it. We have inadvertently and intentionally chosen a statist socialist path that has reached a tipping point in our self-destruction. We can get out of it on our own, but, we must confront this internal disease openly. It’s not a normal business process but a kind of civil war. That’s why we need Gingrich.
A further thought about our situation. Americans have been so manipulated and brainwashed over the past decades as this insidious socialism has developed within our infrastructure that we find it almost impossible to confront both the disease and its current agent, Obama.
Think how Obama has thumbed his nose at us – with his contempt for and denigration of Congress. Congress: the elected voice of the people. But Obama has demoted it to being an impediment in his Glorious Path. Insisted that it pass His bills without reading or debate. Used false arguments of fear and apocalyptic scenarios to scare us into passing the Stimulus and the Health care – without reading or debate. False arguments, for there can be no proof for Obama’s threat that without the stimulus we’d be in a depression. False arguments that doctors are evil, greedy and cut off limbs for money. Can you imagine – a president who talks this way to us?
And if we object? We are racists. Obama has used this tactic all his life. And we back down and return to our hovels in shame.
Ignoring Congress and inserting Czars who run the show without our input or will.
Ignoring the 2010 election, and ruling by executive fiat.
Ignoring Congress and its rejection of bills (Envtal) and having the EPA rule outside of Congress with its crippling authority.
Ignoring Congress and moving into Libya as war – but, telling us that it’s not a war because war means ‘boots on the ground’ – not dropping bombs from the air. So, rather than confront these blatant manipulative lies, we crawl back into our hovels. Or, we’ll be called racists.
Refusing to carry out his responsibilities to protect our borders and suing, actually suing, those states who try to protect their people and their taxpayers from illegal abuse. And we do nothing. Because if we do, we are called racists.
We are at a stage where we require a Hero, someone who can and will openly confront this insidious disease and its current Leader. In that sense, the personal baggage of this Hero is irrelevant; his role is not to be The American Man but someone, yes, as street-flawed, bloodied and ambitious as the Opposite Side, who isn’t ‘nice and politically correct’ but who can call a spade a spade, so to speak. And a Foodstamp president vs a Paycheck president..
ETAB, the first half of your rather lengthy comment is right on target. But then you arrive at this point…”Whether he is a womanizer, an unethical fighter, a morally bereft individual in his personal life – is utterly irrelevant”..and the whole train goes off the rails. It is immaterial who you or I would vote for. It’s all about who the average disinterested bozo would vote for. A candidate Gingerich will come off for the average voter as what ever the MSM can make him appear which is to say as a pompous bore who is full of himself as well as being full of unrealistic ideas…and an immoral lout to boot. I see him as a Bill Clinton but with the correct political set of values. I can live with that. Not thrilled by it but just live with it. But the average voter won’t. On the other hand, Mitt’s negatives could be easily overcome with we conservatives if he were to select an articulate and genuine conservative running mate and pre-announce a conservative cabinet. He looks presidential to the average guy and, most importantly, gal. How on earth will the Obama jackals, with any credibility, attack Mitt on the class warfare front when they are surrounded by those who are wealthier than Mitt. Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi with her mega-million dollar net worth trying to disparage Mitt for being a “rich guy”. Or Obama as he phones in from Hollywood or Marth’s Vineyard. Have at it. That attack may impress some but not in a very significant way.
Look, let’s just win the damned election. If we don’t we are finished in total. That accomplished then we push, push, push for conservatives to be elected from dog catcher on up. That’s how America will be saved. Save the controversial flame-thrower types for another day when we have a non-biased media to work with. Newt? Not now.
Interesting comment.
You write: “A candidate Gingerich will come off for the average voter as what ever the MSM can make him appear which is to say as a pompous bore who is full of himself as well as being full of unrealistic ideas…and an immoral lout to boot.”
Substitute ‘Obama’ for ‘Gingrich’ and you arrive at the same description.
Now, consider the images that are accepted already by the average voter. They have accepted Obama’s class warfare, his rants against ‘millionaires’ whom he defines as anyone making over 200,000 a year. Does anyone call him on this unethical manipulation? He’s surrounded by millionaires such as Pelosi; he vacations at Martha’s Vineyard, and Costa del Sol; he spends most of his time campaigning rather than governing ..and golfing. Does the average voter call him on that? No.
My point is that Obama, within the persepctive of the average voter, gets away with anything and everything. As a person.
I’m saying – the same with Gingrich. Ignore all of that as it is ignored in Obama.
All that matters is confronting Obama past all the rhetoric in which Obama is so skilled. We need a confronter who will cut-the-gab from Obama and expose him as not merely empty but harmful to America.
You are suggesting that Romney’s inability to do this would be countered by a pre-nomination/pre-election outline of a very conservative cabinet. That’s great and he’d need that.
Gingrich could deal with this situation the same way, putting in stable, non-confrontative conservatives.
I don’t think that Romney can take out Obama and the MSM and the decades old disease of entitlement, non-contributing citizens; the decades of fear of confrontation because of ‘racist accusations’.
I think that Romney can govern, with a conservative cabinet, as a conservative. No doubt about it.
I think that Gingrich could govern, with a strong conservative cabinet who would rein him in. I’d like Gingrich for one term only; he has one role: take out Obama and enable the return of the basic infrastructure.
My concern is that the Republic’s infrastructure and its people are so beaten down, so repressed against confrontation and standing up for American values, that a Romney couldn’t win the election. Romney talks about governing; Gingrich talks about the infrastructure.
After all – Obama is going to retain the environmentalists, the unions and those on welfare. It’s the independents as we all know who are the key. Obama is setting himself up, this election, as ‘one of the boys’ (singing love songs to the public…reminds me of Mubarak telling Egyptians how much he loves them)..
We need someone to define him as he is, not as how he defines himself. The outline that Gingrich provides – that binaristic choice between statist socialism and freedom; that choice between a Foodstamp vs Paycheck president… that’s what is needed.
And, we need the anger at Obama, that anger that we who are politically correct, cannot articulate. Because if we criticize him he’ll instantly accuse us of ignorance, of bigotry, of racism…as he’s done already.
A favorite moment of mine occurs in a week when VDH has a fresh article, followed by comments from ETAB.
I am promised clear thought, critical thinking, reasoned argument and thoughtful articulation …almost always spot on.
My dear VDH, today’s column will get you called part of the “ruling class”, who cannot see the clear, bright path to salvation because YOU are “one of THEM”.
When Perry and Gingrich threw up the neo-Marxist sellout gambit, for the cheap price of the soul of the Republican Party, it should have turned off every one of your readers. It didn’t. It sent them into denial. What you see, of course, is what so many other clear thinkers saw. A travesty, a lack of honor so jarring, businessmen all over Texas abandoned Perry or scolded him, Limbaugh, Hannity, Krauthammer, John Hinderaker, Mark Steyn, recoiled in horror.
It mattered not one whit what they…or you today…say. There is no honor in defending capitalism against the Marxists or neo-Marxist attacks. YOU will be attacked for doing so. Please don’t persist. It isn’t worth it. Roll over and accept that ANY critique of the dishonorable will fall on deaf ears.
Most especially, if you dare to point out that Gingrich is erratic, has mile high negatives, is brand damaged and is therefore more likely to lose the most important election of our lifetimes…to the real Marxists.
Or, what really gets the froth going…if you say that Romney is ….well…ANYTHING…that isn’t an out and out insult to the man.
For me, I think the Stupid Party has done it again. Snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Both of these candidates…equally, but for different reasons as possible…are consummate “B” teamers who are not up to the task.
Romney can’t deliver a message…one that is as desperately needed as ETAB so eloquently points out…we are at the hairpin turn of the human roadway. Barreling down the slippery road at breakneck speed, with Europe nearly in its last dying gasp, the Middle East a tinder box, and America in a stranglehold…we needed the Republican Party to assemble and provide a team to save the world. They failed miserably.
We needed someone who would serve not for his own bloated ego, self-promotion and vainglory. One who possessed a deeper intellect, not a dorm room spouter of ideas…equally creative and often inane, but usually unworkable and not real world. That type of “intellect” impresses the easily swayed, facile with language, outside the box in idea creation, but empty calories of unmitigated pap when it comes to real world solutions.
We needed someone around whom we would coalesce. The Stupid Party provided people who had entire staffs walk out on them, or who can’t connect with people…robotic, stiff, walking… talking…empty suit sloganeers. Platitude sputterers …weak, vacillating, milquetoast, uninspiring, out of touch, with a “belief” map that has wandered around like a drunk on a bender.
We came to this hairpin turn, being driven by Obama/Soros/Ayers…and we have been a choice so weak, so abysmal…that no matter what we choose, we are likely to have sealed our fate.
We come to the crossroads, being driven in a clown car.
There were two guys, I believe, who had what we needed. Neither ran. One of them, is giving the Republican response to the SOTU address. He graduated from Princeton, governed a state that had a deficit, worked in business development for Eli Lilly. He ran the office of Management and Budget. But, his wife would have been savaged…in the very way, VDH, you said the propaganda machine would do it.
The other is Paul Ryan.
Both understand service to country over vainglory. Both understand how to manage a budget. Both are elegant thinkers and speakers.
Alas, neither is running. And, because of that, we are going to have to settle.
Romney is clearly not what we need. Gingrich, while he takes the fight to those who mean to destroy us, something Romney can’t, won’t, doesn’t have a clue how to do…Gingrich has shown he will sellout at a moment’s notice, not maintain a loyal staff and turns off/polarizes so many…he is nearly a sure defeat awaiting a rigged process by the propaganda machine.
ETAB, my favorite commenter, is willing to settle for “one term” of this wild ride, to forestall the overthrow.
I see it differently. I see a monumental loss in the offing. Maybe even dragging down the House and Senate into one or the other being lost. The Supreme Court being lost. America being lost.
I’m not willing to accept that without a fight. We must DEMAND better from the Stupid Party. If we don’t do it now, we will be taking that hairpin turn on an icy road…and taking the world with us.
I can’t accept that outcome…without trying to resist it.
Welcome to the hated “ruling class”, VDH.
And, for you, ETAB…keep working on this, my friend. You are one of the last hopes for the thinking man to come up with the right solution.
cfbleachers- this needs more discussion. I’m not sure what you are advocating but it seems to be a rejection of both Romney and Gingrich, each for their own faults, and insisting that the GOP Executive offer up another candidate. I certainly see and accept your point. My focus is ‘what if’ I have to accept either candidate? What then?
My concern about Romney is, as I’ve pointed out, that his message delivery won’t knock out the Obama message. Obama has no message; he offers only the external skin of a message: its musical sound, its scent. You fill in the actual real content. You have to watch the results of his tenure and those results slither in as silently and without direct causality as a fog. He’s amorphous; he denies causality. And, he makes you feel sullied and racist if you confront him and ask for accountability.
Therefore, in dealing with such an insidious Being, we need someone to confront it and remind Obama..and us…that he and his agenda and its results are real. And have real consequences that are not in our ignorant, lazy and bigoted minds. But are real in the outside non-subjective world. So, he IS actually, really, the Foodstamp President.
This confrontation with the amorphous and insidious is very, very different from governing. This forcing the imaginary to confront reality has nothing to do with governing. That’s a second step.
What we have now are two different tasks. Can one person can accomplish them both. Well, maybe a Paul Ryan..or a Christie. I don’t know about Daniels. But I think that the public has recognized what the GOP Executive have failed to acknowledge – that there are two tasks. The GOP are concentrating on governing, and Romney would be, especially if backed up by genuine conservatives, a good choice for that task. But – he can’t confront Obama and The Obama Gang.
Gingrich can; he can slice through that manipulative rhetoric, those non-facts, those racist taunts – like butter. Can he govern? Ahh..maybe, but he needs a strong team to rein him in.
Then, there’s cfbleacher’s and other’s fear that a Gingrich nomination would scare the independents and empty the Congress of GOP members. I don’t know about this. I really don’t have a ‘feel’ for this event as yet. Certainly, I can see that a Romney nomination might go either way and possibly, maintain or increase the GOP control of Congress.
But we have two tasks and the public recognize this far more than the GOP Executive who are bubble-wrapped in Washington and think that all that’s needed is to change the leadership. As in 1776 – we need to remove one infrastructure and then, insert another one. We need, now, to remove the socialist infrastructure that has reached a critical threshold of domination in our nation, and – not insert another one -but acknowledge our original constitutional one. And THEN – govern…
Two steps. As in 1776.
Again – can one person accomplish both tasks? Or will it take a team? I think that Gingrich can accomplish the first task but must be embedded in a team to enable the second task.
Could Ryan do both? I had hoped for Perry. Who?
It’s an amazing comment. You have somehow convinced yourself that the marxists won’t attack McRomney. If you can believe that, you can believe anything. ANYTHING
As for Newt’s negatives, it wouldn’t matter is he was a monk who had been locked in a cell for 68 years. They would simply make that into a negative. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT HE HAS DONE IN HIS LIFE. They aren’t limitted by the truth.
If any voters, anywhere anytime would hold Newt’s past against him, they would be the voters of South Carolinians.
We don’t give a shit. Our parents, our siblings, our children, ourselves have been divorced, and some of those divorces have been ugly. We aren’t saints, We are far far past the idea that purity of essence is a requirement in our leader. We want to DEFEAT OBAMA. Everything else is subordinate.
Newt, for all his faults, will fight. And he’s pretty damn good at making a case, including turning pravda’s attacks against them.
Well, I find it interesting, and encouraging, that PJM’s most intellectual commenter has come to the same conclusion as us Rubes. Well done ETAB.
The only thing I would add is that an important new factor that has been bubbling around for years has finally broken the surface in a major way. The republican elite, our supposed allies for the last few decades, have now unmistakedly shown their true colors. If there had been any doubt before, there is none now; they stand for their own wealth and power, not us rubes. And like animals caught in a trap, they will do anything to survive, including, I believe, supporting obama if newt goes on to win the nomination. If someone doesn’t believe this, spend 15 minutes with allahpundits recap from last night:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/22/quotes-of-the-day-920/
I would never have imagined that we would have to defeat our own self-styled better to claw our way to obama. But it’s true.
Bring it on.
That’s an interesting HotAir analysis – the fear that a Gingrich win would cost the GOP the Congress – ie they’d lose the local elections. I wonder.
I’m opting for Gingrich for one task only: Get.Rid.Of.Obama.
The method is not the method of Romney which is within rhetoric, the around-the-boardroom discussion of the best road ahead.
That’s because Obama’s rhetoric is …let me try to describe it..it’s without content, it’s empty…it’s all sweet music and fragrance..which YOU, the listener, fill in with whatever content you yourself add.
You cannot rebut or remove such rhetoric in a debate with Obama, because, again, THERE IS NO CONTENT. The content is hidden, like his school records, like his past history…elsewhere. The content is within each and every listener to Obama, who adds their own content.
The only method to deal with an opponent whose rhetoric is empty, is to attack, not their words but their actions.
So- you define Obama as the FoodStamp President; his words won’t be able to deal with that, even if he denies it.
You define Obama as increasing dependency, reducing freedoms, etc etc.
This is what Gingrich has shown he can do: he cuts past the rhetoric of the MSM, of other opponents and of Obama.
Now, to deal with the fears that he is unstable, mercurial over the long term (and remember, I’m saying he has ONE task: Get.Rid.Of.Obama) – you add, as has been suggested with Romney, a pre-nomination, pre-election Team of stable, conservative agents – everyone from Ryan, West,Rubio, Christie…whoever..who will function as the GOP Team.
My concern with Romney is that his focus on rhetoric isn’t sufficient to take out Obama, who ALSO focuses on rhetoric. So, Obama’s slickness and lack of content is similar to Romney’s slickness and lack of content. Then, Obama will create a crisis (an external war?) inthe last months of the campaign to frighten and manipulate Americans to staying with him..as happens in war..
Go with Gingrich for that one key task.
Yes, I agree completely.
You can’t govern if you can’t win. Winning is paramount.
Romney won’t have a chance. A candidate who can’t make the decision to release his tax return and loses a key primary because of it is not the candidate to react to a shooting war that pops up in October.
The only people the elite candidates are willing to attack are their own serfs and the man who is willing to speak in their behalf.
The very thing they want us to believe should eliminate Newt…the unpredictable behavior, the mecurial mouth, the inability to control his anger…are the only characterists that can punch through the make-believe aura that has been created for obama.
ETAB, if my choices are binary…be eaten by a bear or die of open, festering, seeping wounds…then, you and I can discuss which is the least vicious path to the ultimate demise.
Gingrich is not merely “mercurial”…that which he surely is, in spades. It’s not merely that he is reckless, that he surely is as well. It’s not, for me, anything to do with his personal character, how many wives he has had, mistresses, or any such thing. I could care less at this moment in time.
Yes, character DOES matter, but it is trumped by necessity to beat back the revolution, avert the overthrow.
And, ETAB, it has very little to do with whether Gingrich is “better” than Romney at “setting the table” for a fight with Obama. Gingrich is a table set with all red meat. Great. I get just as much visceral satisfaction when he gets in the face of the propaganda machine.
But, let’s get down to brass tacks. His negatives are off the charts. He is brand damaged and the numbers show it. His (in the words of VDH) “neo-marxist” attack on capitalism and the free market was so lacking in honor, so beneath contempt…it highlighted just how easily he would sellout free market foundational principles…to soak and gouge “the rich”, and enhance, not fight off…Obama’s class warfare gambit.
His sitting on the couch with Pelosi, his hiding of the truth behind the Fannie and Freddie collapse, his amnesty positions, his selling out on nearly every key component of the fight AGAINST Obama…is not “mercurial”, ETAB, it’s mercenary.
However, I don’t automatically default back to Romney. If anything, he’s worse in many ways. He couldn’t carry a message forward if it was tattooed on his forehead.
He’s a wimp, in the Bush 41 mode. Unwilling to fight, easy to cower, ….where Gingrich is all red meat, Romney is watercress on white bread, lady finger sandwiches.
Gingrich is a pugilist. Romney is Girl Scout pillow fight.
But, ETAB…if the first order of business is winning against the Marxists, staving off the overthrow…then assessing the chances of losing must be an imperative.
Looking at the sky high negatives and assessing them can’t be done with myopia and blind fanaticism. It takes a cold, hard look..
Gingrich is clearly better at throwing punches. Romney doesn’t throw many and he hits like a sissy. But when the ref and the judges are crooked, we needed someone who is fighting for us, not his own ego.
And certainly not someone who is willing to take a dive for neo-marxism.
My current default position is a third option. Not Romney.
If you believed, as I do, ETAB, that the risk of trying to get Gingrich “one term only” was so high as to throw away the entire country…would you still support it? It’s a rhetorical question. I know you would not.
That’s where I am today. I’m not willing to lose the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court just to fill Gingrich’s bloated ego and his willingness to do any more “neo-marxist” class warfare damage to the foundational principles of the free market.
I also am not willing to “settle” on Wilbur Milquetoast, the sissy robot, who wants to moonwalk into his “entitled” selection as the Stupid Party “wimp of the moment”.
It is too important a moment in world history to allow ourselves to be given a crap sandwich and to smile and just swallow. I say no…hell no…to BOTH options.
We should DEMAND better. Think of this. We are debating about whether a guy we trust so little is worth a chaperoned (by “A” team baby sitters) for ONE term…(that’s quite the ringing endorsement), or the wishy-washy, limp, lame, uninspiring guy who is like buying a Cavalier King spaniel puppy as a guard dog.
If you believed that sellout “neo-marxist” would take down the whole downline slate and “Fifi the puppy” would not fight off the propaganda machine’s favorite overthrow…and they were not our only options…would you not DEMAND a third choice instead of them?
I sure would. I am. Too much depends upon us not accepting our destruction without a fight.
Ahh, but you, cfbleachers, have introduced a third variable into the formula:
‘Neither A nor B but X’. With ‘X’ being, obviously, an unknown nominee at the moment.
Or perhaps I should write that as: ‘Neither R nor G but X’.
I’m working only with two variables: Either R or G.
I think that you and I and many others acknowledge two different tasks for this agent. It must remove ‘O’ and also, govern.
So, to continue with the format:
The current situation is: (R)OR (G) =(Not O) AND governing.
You are saying Not R and Not G but X = (Not O) and governing.
The problem with both R and G is that each seems able to do ONE task but not the other.
Is the GOP Executive willing and able to offer us ‘X’- that other candidate?
If not, then, what do we do? At the moment, and I acknowledge, fully, all the criticisms of Gingrich – all of them – and that includes his presumed inability to govern – then, how do we take out Obama?
Remember, Obama is a vicious, malicious, unethical and by now, near if not full sociopath, whose focus is only on power. He lies as he breathes, not because he’s aware of the truth but because he’s totally, utterly disconnected from reality and lives within his imaginary world of his own power. And his emotions, which are hatred for America and for ordinary people (who are lazy, ignorant and religious).
He’s run by hardcore socialists whose focus is on their own wealth (Soros, Pelosi, etc).
That gang will stop at nothing to retain power.
How do we, given the ‘dregs’ we are given (Romney and Gingrich) deal with this situation?
You say that we insist on a better candidate. Why don’t those with so much to lose – Christie, Ryan, Rubio, West, Daniels..and others – why aren’t they knocking on those GOP Establishment doors to insist on such an action?
Gingrich’s negatives have been very carefully engineered by the elites for years.
The only thing 80% of people in the country know about him are the tidbits that pravda has fed them. All that will change when Newt wins the nomination because they simply won’t be able to keep him off tv, and he will be able to make his own case.
Marital issues are irrelevant. This has been demonstrated numerous times, including last Saturday. His ethics “violation” was a joke. He was acquitted of the same in a court of law. Your claim, cf, that Newt is against capitalism is a deliberate distortion that should be beneath you. You could make your point with many other forumulations. By saying it the way you do, you reveal your own biases, nothing more. The silly nonsense that people bring up about Fannie Mae and the ad with Pelosi demonstrate that Gingrich doesn’t march to the rigid drumbeat of the self-styled arbiters of conservatism. If he had proposed some wild scheme to consolidate more power in DC, or somesuch, it would be different. But of course he did not. If an effort to find common ground with a political opponents is a mortal sin, then let the person without sin make the charge.
You know who would be a candidate even more disastrous then RoveRomney…Mitt Daniels is the man. If we assume that his wife would give him her approval to run for President, the country would soon be asking whether she would also have to give him permission to deploy the navy. Paul Ryan wouldn’t be much better. The poor man would be ripped to shreds on medicare. Good intentions don’t count. Gingrich, by constrast, smartly distanced himself from Ryan’s plan. Because Newt is a very shrewd politician.
The choice boils down to a businessman who has failed as a politician over and over. He can mouth a few conservative platitutes, but can’t even defend his own business record. The other choice is a yard dog who is the central character in the most consequential conservative achievements of the last 25 years. He has been able to fend off three dishonest attacks and still rally the public behind him in the last six weeks. Like Ulysses Grant, he fights. People like that.
Get over it. Get real.
ETAB, let’s take Ace of Spades and Ed Morrissey off our Christmas Card list as well.
Here is Ace of Spades on Romney and Gingrich:
http://ace.mu.nu/#325959
Can he view this as a horribly mismanaged business, full to the brim with corruption, payoffs, wishful-thinking, laziness, and stupidity, and channel some palpable anger about it at Obama?
That, I think, is something he should be able to manage. It fits with his campaign narrative. It probably fits with his psychology.
I don’t think Romney’s good at politics. I think he’s a smart man, but he seems rather dull when it comes to reading people, reading the room, taking the political temperature. His instincts are poor.
Maybe that can be overcome.
I’d like to see him try.
But if he doesn’t do that, then he’s dumber than Rick Perry, at least at some things, at the things that matter in politics. And then I’m not sure I’d say he’s smart enough to be Commander in Chief.
He says he’s the kind of guy who loves to “wallow in data.” I respect that. But then he should check the data– the Republican electorate, whether it’s right or wrong, wants some anger. Directed at Obama, and not at Perry or Gingrich or other conservatives.
Can he read the data and come to a good solution? Or is he just going to ignore reams of data screaming in his face?
I have to stress I’m actually more on Romney’s side as far as this whole “say counterproductive things to show how angry you are, because of course voters really love a commander in chief who’s only barely keeping it together emotionally.”
But I’ve lost that argument. So has Romney.
And if he can’t at least muster some righteous anger about Obama’s efforts to quash virtually every business venture — this sap doesn’t understand that making things is dirty and sweaty; it’s not all passing files back and forth as in The Only Industries That Are Noble, law, media, and academia — then he’s not the candidate for me.
Even though I really want him to be. Because while Newt can throw out red meat like a champ, I really think he’s a walking disaster area.
And here is Ed Morrissey:
Let’s take these premises one at a time. First, despite Gingrich’s optimism on this point, Obama will not agree to seven 3-hour “Lincoln-Douglas style” debates with Gingrich, or anyone else, either. It’s fascinating to contemplate, but Obama will probably only accept two 2-hour debates, three at the most, in the general election, and only in the traditional media-moderated format. Why would he agree to do anything different than George Bush did in 2004 and 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1996 and 1992? And while Gingrich would still out-debate Obama in those formats, so too would Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney. Obama’s not really that good at debates; John McCain was just worse at them.
On “winning” debates with the media, that’s even more of a fantasy. Gingrich certainly would win with conservatives, but the media will take those kinds of attacks and turn them into either (a) pandering or (b) paranoia. It will be fun to watch for conservatives, and it might produce a few surprises, but it’s more likely to add to Gingrich’s negatives among the general electorate than improve them. And his negatives are pronounced even among Republicans, as today’s Rasmussen poll in Florida shows even while he leads.
ETAB, when John Hinderaker, Ed Morrissey, Ace of Spades, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, VDH, Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, …ALL SAY YOU HAVE A PROBLEM…then it is time to examine the problem.
However,…I don’t know…and have NEVER defaulted back to Romney. (and I most certainly would never consider the certifiably insane…and Ron Paul is one guy running as a “Republican”, phony as that is for him to do…for whom I would NOT vote, even against Obama. I simply won’t vote. Not because I don’t agree with him, but because I believe he is just as, if not moreso, dangerous to the future of the country)
I have been calling for a brokered election because I see the path to disaster.
I have never once advocated for Romney.
And…I have never said that if forced to support a “B” team candidate, all the remaining other than Paul would get my vote.
But, I look out at the landscape, ETAB and I see disaster looming. The real thinking man must not start foaming at the mouth and fall into what Ace calls “Cheap Date Conservatism”.
Personally, I think of this as Cheap Date Conservatism, if we don’t bother to check if Gingrich is really promising anything “fundamentally transformative” in substance, and instead focus on the soundbite or taunt which has an emotional payoff but doesn’t actually advance anything in terms of persuading independents or making promises to the conservative base.
Do you, ETAB, buy into this “ruling class” warfare technique such that you agree that VDH, Ann Coulter, Krauthammer, Rush, Hannity, Christie, Nikki Haley should all be thrown under the bus as enemies of “true Gingrichism”? Are you on board with that?
It seems our best and our brightest are making an assessment of “Not G”, because of the severe damage it would do to the prospect of “Not O”. I don’t see some grand muftah conspiracy nor do I feel that my IQ has dropped 150 pts, such that I “can’t stave off the impact” of some mythical “conservative MSM”.
I find such an argument devoid of persuasion…what about you?
To the contrary, I find the fear of handing “O” the reins to the entire kingdom so repulsive, I am continuing to swim hard upstream in the “Not G”, “Not R”, “Not O” current…alone if I must.
Myra Adams pointed out that Newt currently loses by double digits in the general. For that, she was viciously attacked.
Pointing out the rationale for well deserved concern, sends the frothing into full foamery.
But, it doesn’t eliminate this fact: Newt is brand damaged, he is erratic and he is self-aggrandizing. He is off-putting and he is polarizing. The propaganda machine will chew him up and spit him out when it comes to the general election.
Romney is a “take a knee” quarterback. He won’t pass, he won’t run…and his hardest hits are on the guys wearing his own uniform.
If you and I are right, ETAB…defeating “O” is job one. Rooting out the hidden landmines is job two. Saving the country from Marxist destruction is the sole goal.
These two guys show no signs of being able to accomplish the goal. I’m not picking up pom-poms for either of them. Get them off the field, before it’s too late. Our best minds, our greatest thinkers, all our “A” teamers say the same thing. It’s about time to start listening.
cfbleachers – I agree with you on all your points – and you are basically saying what I am saying:
-that Gingrich can’t govern but he could take out Obama;
-that Romney could govern but he can’t take out Obama.
So, where does that leave us? You are saying that even though Gingrich could win a debate, he couldn’t carry the election with the Independents. That would lose Congress and of course, the Supreme Court as Obama would stack it.
By the way, I don’t think that Santorum or Romney could out-debate Obama. The reason for that is because none of them would confront the Imaginary Realm in which Obama’s rhetoric exists. Gingrich would; he’d say: “With all due respect, but your outline is pure fiction: the facts are….”. And he’d do it in a manner that would confront rather than sound like two drones discussing pins-in-a-box around a boardroom table.
I certainly respect all the pundits you mention but I wonder how many of them are trapped in the Washington intellectual bubble, which sees the US as simply ‘unfocused’ or ‘too socialist’ and don’t actually see the deep tectonic structural fault-line that has emerged.
You are essentially saying that both candidates are so deeply flawed (and I agree with their flaws) that neither must be allowed by the GOP to get the nomination. And the GOP executive must provide another nominee. I agree.
But – what if they don’t?
Much of the Tea Party is against Romney. Do they support Gingrich? I don’t know.
Are Independents fed up, enough, with Obama, that they would accept Gingrich? They might not; they’d accept Romney. But if the Obama Gang self-define themselves as ‘similar to Romney’ (and this is what they’ve been doing so far) and engineer a crisis in the summer – then, the OB gang win.
So, my question is: IF the Obama Gang define themselves as no different than Romney – and remember, they’ve been doing this rather well so far – and simply slip in a crisis or fake statistics – then, they win.
The candidate has to be NOT-Obama, in a very real sense. Of the two, that’s Gingrich.
So- GOP Executive – offer us someone else who can carry the Independents. Will you do this? Or?
Morrisey changed his stripes overnight when Townhall bought Hot Air. He instantly became the corporate mouthpiece. It was the most obvious sell-out I’ve ever seen. I’m not the only one who noticed it. Other people who utilize critical thinking saw it as well. If Hot Air didn’t have such a good format, that site would be losing a lot of business.
Ace has been much more independent. He was for Perry, and now doesn’t favor any of the remaining three. He is probably the best web-site observor around, including all of the pundits at PJM. It will be interesting to see where he lands.
But what I can’t understand is why cfbleachers goes off on these laughable leaps of fantasy.
“Do you, ETAB, buy into this “ruling class” warfare technique such that you agree that VDH, Ann Coulter, Krauthammer, Rush, Hannity, Christie, Nikki Haley should all be thrown under the bus as enemies of “true Gingrichism”? Are you on board with that?”
First of all, you should have the courage to argue directly with people you disagree with, not this kid stuff of asking ETAB a question when you really mean me. I know I piss you off. Just admit it and address me directly. “ruling class” is obviously an attack on me, even though nobody talks about “true Gingrichism”. But the thing is, your attack is simply wrong. I have never lumped VDH in with the traitor pundits Colter and CK. I have had a few mild disagreements with Rush, but basically consider Rush to be the best analyst around (unlike you, I don’t lap up every word of my heroes. Actually, I don’t have any heroes). Hannity has been the best talker this season. He has provided a platform for all of them and asks the tough questions that have to be asked. He favors Newt, but like you, cf, he was lured in to RoveRomney’s junior high but effective attempt to turn Newt’s legitimate criticism of McRomeny into the laughable claim that Newt is anti-capitalism. Rush and Levin handled the issue better than Hannity. Christie is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, but he would be infinitely better than Mittens. I’ve never critized him. Coulter was right about him. Poor Haley has ruined her political career by buying the RoveRomney spin. But for playing the ruling class game, she will be rewarded with a lobbyist position after she loses her next election.
I don’t believe at all that Obama could control the spin on an external crisis. Not here not now. I could be wrong. I will vote for anyone but O (although it likely won’t matter). Being a sales guy, I learned how to maneuver around the opinions of others to find common ground, and a buying opportunity if it exists. I’ve talked to many liberals. You really have to know your competition. Read their writing. Know how they think. I’m not sure everyone is getting it here. (I was surprised to find a number of liberals actually are favorable to Romney) You can’t win a war in one battle when you’ve been in denial, losing this badly. Demographics do mean something. Newt lost me a couple weeks ago. When the smartest guy in the room won’t acknowledge he doesn’t know everything, that becomes his weakness…as with Newt, as with Obama.
This is one time I started with the comments first…now on to the article
The way I see it is if Mitt wants to win he needs to act like it instead of acting as if he already has. Mitt needs to steal some of Newt’s thunder by also telling the truth and calling the media on it and please for God’s sake drink some Redbull and energize his base. Mitt just acts as if we are not worth his dog in the fight. As far as Newt, he is reading us like a book. Is he a player or real? We’ll be the judge. Rick Santorum is a really good guy and would make a good president but he cannot raise enough enthusiasm. We can judge for ourselves without all the media scrutinty. I like Mitt but he acts more like a stiff than a real person. Someone please tell him to learn some things from Christi and fight for it!!!!
Santorum beat Romney in Iowa.
Gingrich beat Romney in South Carolina.
In the least conservative state of New Hampshire, Romney won.
Beginning to see a pattern?
Romney is the most likely of all four candidates to lose to Obama. He will, as the Other McCain says ‘give a gracious concession speech’. Ron Paul would be difficult, but he could do it. Rick Santorum can win Michigan, and really deal a smackdown to Romney.
Really, the race is wide open folks. Calling it for Gingrich or Romney is waaaay premature. Calling it for Romney is ignoring the effect of people who like VDH in other words, conservatives because conservatives don’t like Romney.
[i] I cannot vote under any circumstances for Obama and would not vote for Paul, but, for now, would find any of the remaining three candidates far better than what we have in the White House.[i]
Amen to that!
Doc, it pains me to read this convoluted, disappointed and disappointing outpouring of impotence from one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever had the good fortune to follow…
You need to say a MEA CULPA, Doc, not for your own self-generated regrets, but for the fact that you, who were, and still are in a position to do something about it, Doc, you stood by, arms akimbo, and watched one flawed candidate after another destroy your Party’s chance to destroy a destroyer!
That’s because Obama is a destroyer of worlds, your world, my world, our world…and you, ONLY YOU, have the knowledge, the rhetoric, the nous, the tongue, the vision indeed all the wherewithal necessary to destroy him.
But no! You stand on the sidelines and now you scoff at the choices your people have made.
If not YOU, WHO? And if not NOW, WHEN?
Hanson/Palin 2012
it should be Palin/Hanson
If Republicans are dumb enough to hand the nomination to Newt, we’ll have 4 more years of Obama guaranteed.
I think we can all agree that at some point, a person can have such a checkered past that people are going to be disgusted with them, regardless of their ideas. Newt is a con man of the worst sort.
I can abide a Republican that’s not ideologically perfect, but I CAN’T abide a corrupt and unstable Republican. If Newt is the nominee, I’ll likely pull the handle for a 3rd Party and watch the US crumble. The GOP needs to once again be put in the wilderness.
“checkered past”
How so? How many women has he raped? How many interns has he fondled? How many Socialist conventions has he attended? How many women has he drowned? How many crimes has he been convicted of? How many shady real estate transactions does he have? How many insider trading violations does he have? How many bribes has he taken?
Look, swallow RoveRomneys patter hook line and sinker if you want, just don’t repeat to quote nonsense here without challenge.
Well said! For example, the media meme was that Newt stayed in the race after Iowa because he was so angry at Mitt. Really? Based on what facts? They say his anger is uncontrollable – show me the irrational rants and tirades. Newt said that some of his baggage is real and some was generated by the media when he was Speaker, and we voters need to be able to separate the two. I agree.
So much of this is the leftstream media force feeding us a predigested image of the candidates. Sadly, they will continue to do so, and I think Newt has the ability to challenge them on it. He is willing to engage in the down-and-dirty stuff of politics that will allow him to take on a Saul Alinsky trained Chicago style politician.
Didn’t he run a male whorehouse out of his basement? Oh no, that was some other guy with a funny first name.
Kent:
Thanks for articulating my thoughts on VDH and Newt.
I, personally, am torn between Romney, Mr. Concilliatory, who would be a better president of the great majory of Americans, who has a capitalist business sense, and Gingrich, who would take the MSM and far leftist Obama administration to the woodshed in presidential debates. The need for come-upance and payback is strong, which favors Mr. Acidic. That may not be the right choice, but there is a tone of “social justice” about reversing the lies and damage of the last 3 years.
My only beef with the good doctor’s analysis is his minimizing of Gingerich as an intellectual. It seems Dr. Hanson is smitten with the professor’s disease of thinking only those who can quote obscure sources is a true intellectual. Gingerich has written 24 books. He knows history. He is extremely fluid in debate. He is truly intelligent unlike the imposter intellectual we have now in the WH.
Obama brags of killing bin Laden, without the slightest concession that he employed protocols to do it that he once smeared, or that he got the troops home for Christmas, without a peep that he followed the Bush-Petraeus plan and not his own that once called for complete flight by March 2008.
In a speech about 3 weeks ago, Obama named these events as evidence that he’d fulfilled his promise of change, completely ignoring the fact that was hardly how he conceived “change” in January 2009.
Poor conservatives: should they praise (Obama) for get-real flip-flops or damn him for his hypocrisy and the damage he once did as a critic of what kept us safe?
No dilemma here. Not an ounce of praise for the many realistic things Obama has been forced to face up to, facts that ran counter to his preferred narrative & all the high falutin’, vapid claims he made while a candidate that bore absolutely no resemblance to the truth he encountered once elected, or selected.
Something Newt did in the last debate that had nothing to do with tom foolery…spoke of the bias in “elite media” with passion and conviction.
Not very well thought our article unless one is shilling for Willard. Re TAXES – it’s not Newt who has to show his 15% tax rates it’s Mitt. Mitt’s father said exactly what you infer by saying release three years except Mitt’s father who was the first to do it released 12 years. Mitt’s not even going to be 1/6 his father. His father also said some people can make their taxes look good when running for office by releasing only a few years and he wanted to show a pattern. Mitt is hiding something just like he was hiding something when he scrubbed all those computer hard drives. He will be savaged by Obama unless we really vet him and then he will just be burdened by his terrible personality and inability to connect to voters – just what we need
Professor, why do you consider Santo unelectable? Wonderful analysis and discussion, but I don’t grasp that conclusion. Thanks for all you do!
Appreciate many of the comments above.
We can dissect personalities and foibles until hell freezes over (and, unfortunately will do that right up to election day 2012) but the only thing that matters is statism versus what is left of the functioning republic.
Update: Supreme Court limits police use of GPS to track suspects Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:22am EST
http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE80M1E120120123
‘He either fears his fate to much, or his deserts are small, that dares not put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all.”
If Romney wants to be president, he has to understand that he will never get the vote of Obama’s base but he must get the vote of his party’s conservative/libertarian/tea party base. Timidity won’t do, being coy or uncomfortable about who you are or what you have done with your life won’t do.
Gingrich appeals because he is willing to fight. Ann Coulter’s claim that Gingrich won S.C. because of the appeal of the snotty remark, not his electability, is rich considering that snotty remarks are her bread and butter. She and the other ‘country club’ Republicans need to reflect on why so many Republicans resist Romney’s “inevitibility” while rallying to a firebrand like Newt.
Ann Coulter has slipped in my estimation and appreciation of her own talent for snarkiness.
The doggedness with which she hangs onto the Romney thing is uncharacteristic.
It’s ASIF the republican machine has enlisted the likes of Christie, Coulter, N. Haley and other prominent republicans to push for the inevitability of an anointing of Romney.
it will be interesting to see the sales figures for her next book.
But she certainly has factored that into her decision to ally with the republican ruling class and attack the base as a pack of fools.
Who knew the contempt she has for us?
Months ago Coulter was on Hannity all dejected because Christy refused to enter the field. Then she jumped on the Romney wagon, and this was a surprise since she is usually so fiesty and combative. Now she declares Tea Party members and South Carolinians fools for listening to Gingrich. I am figuring this opinion of hers will continue throughout the season. She lost my respect when I found out she is friends with Bill Maher. Now, none of my business whom she pals around with, but he is an ass, thinks conservatives are idiots or worse, and has such despicable things to say about anyone who is Judeo/Christian. So I don’t read her columns now, just tired of her of attacks on decent people.
P.B. Shelley…
On Political Greatness
Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
VDH I’m glad you’ve gotten away from telling us Conservatives to just take our Castor Oil (ie. Romney the moderate).
Do you notice all Conservatives with convictions come off as disagreable – I think it is an inevitible unfortunate byproduct of standing up for a standard of morality and nobody wants to be told to do the right thing (they’d rather have their itching ears scratched and their divine belly rubbed). Only Reagan was able to pull it off with a smile.
To those of you who have your togas in a knot about Newt: Rush is playing soundbites that indicate the pressure is on among Republican establishment officials to prompt some of the first-string pols to run.
So chin up! There is manipulation out there in play; nevermind what the voters want. That be damned! :-D
After watching Marianne’s interview I started thinking she might have been the cause of Newt’s late ’90s breakdown.
I mean when you get FBI agents asking why your wife is meeting with arms dealers in Paris you are not going to be completely on your game.
What is it about you guys and gals that you do not understand why Mitt Romney is not catching on with the Conservative crowd? For you Romney supporters, I will vote for Mitt if he wins. But if Mitt is your only choice for candidate, he cannot beat Obama if he is to play nice, mouth platitudes, and make friends with the media.
Why I am so fearful that a nomination of Romney is a election for Obama? I don’t dislike Romney. But I fear he is absolutely the wrong guy for the job at hand. If this were a typical election year, maybe. But we are hanging on the edge folks. We are $16 trillion in debt with a President hostile toward free enterprise – and there is no end in sight of the debt incurred. Almost one out of six people in our country is on food stamps. Peter Schweizer has beautifully documented how corrupt this entire administration is. Obama is damning us with his audacity toward a western European model that is imploding in Europe as we converse. We have the Arab Spring which will shortly turn into the Arab Winter, with the guns first pointed at Israel, then us.
Understand this. It is as predictable as the sun rising. Obama is diablo grande with a white, toothy smile – a rotten SOB that will use every despicable tactic, every divisive stance, every piece of propaganda ever propagated by an equally filthy media, already in the tank for Obama. That’s been perfectly clear since the beginning of the debates and the only one that has called the media on its egregious lies is Newt Gingrich. The only one.
To these Obama reprobates, anybody not fawning for Obama is the enemy. They have no need and no use for you, and they don’t give a damn about you. They would sell you out in a heartbeat, if it meant keeping power.
That is why we need a SOB of our own. WE have got to learn as a party to fight fire with fire. You don’t coddle these bastards. You bust their balls like there is no tomorrow.
Because with four more years of Obama, there might not be.
Someone should tell Mitt Romney to stop talking about himself. All assembled crowds are waiting to hear what he can do for them. Sorry but saying your for capmitalism is not and has never been enough. He should start talking about what is right and what is wrong. He should stop talking about a balanced budget and start talking about the budget. Copy what Ron Paul says. At 25% of GDP the budget comes to 4 trillions. Then there are all of off budget costs and state and local government budgets. Ron Paul says that he will cut a trillion dollars but he doesn’t say from where specifically. Ropmney in Florida should assure senior citizens that he won’t allow death panels and he will continue social security just like Paul Ryan said.
Mr Hanson, It has gotten real old having Obama telling us what we all know! Don’t start! Your comment, “By now we all know his strengths and weaknesses. He is the most stable and judicious [5] of the candidates. He looks presidential; his family is Rockwellian. He is a Mormon who, after five seconds of seeing and listening to him, might as well be a Methodist. His manners and graciousness and personal probity reflect the best of the American patrician class: George H.W. Bush fair play, hard work, and noblesse oblige.” Is an unsupported opinion and therefore BS!!! The problem with Mitt Romney’s campaign is Mitt Romney! He could have taken the fire out of the Bain Capital issue by talking about it up front. Explaining that they bought troubled companies and SAVED those they could, along with most of the jobs. He could have named some of the companies saved and the number of jobs saved in each. He didn’t and was surprised that anyone would bring it up. Smart move right!?! The dance he did around his tax return/financials had all the grace of a PERP-WALK!!! What did he hope to accomplish by delaying disclosure until April? Deceiving the voters in SC and Florida?? His responses were, as the Brits would say, “Too cute by half!” Surprise of surprises the good people of South Carolina were not amused! It seems the voters of FL are like wise not amused and getting more so. If Romney crashes, he did it to himself. If he survives and gets the nomination, he should send flowers and gifts to Gingrich for the rest of his life. If Gingrich didn’t get those two issues off the table he got them to the edge, without Romney assisstance!
As so often, Dr. Hanson has articulated clearly the scattered thoughts that have been churning my brain and my gut. Not much here I can disagree with. My view of Romney has been a fairly flat, level, “vote for him if I must” blandness. My view of Gingrich has been a roller coaster of cheer him one day, hide from him the next. We must replace Obama and hope the replacement has the strength, wisdom and courage to turn us back from the abyss. 2016 will, I fear, be too late. I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to help wounded veterans
For a free PDF of my book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
I have always felt that the entire campaign trail is nothing more than a staged play and we are the audience. Obviously, none of these candidates have accountability, responsibility or integrity, and these are the role models for our children???? Just like Hollywood… So, who will win the, “Academy Award of Candidates”? It is truly sad and pathetic, to say the least…
IF NEWT is not electable then why is he the frontrunner? Nobama will lose because of the anger towards him that was first expressed last Nov. Also Either Nwet or Mitt present much better than Mccain.
Newt is forcing Romney to the right, a direction in which he desperately needs to move. The Democratic machine is not going to be passive in 2012. Witness their actions in Wisconsin to include the recent attempts at identity theft. Conservatives will never retake the high ground with passively indecisive leadership.
Romney reminds me way too much of Obama – a bright technocrat who doesn’t have a whole lot of interest in anything beyond his narrow area of expertise. The difference is that as a consultant Romney learned the necessity of delving into a new topic in some depth as part of the job but he doesn’t have much curiosity for curiosities sake. In the closed system of Chicago politics Obama never had to delve into new issues. This is one reason Romney can’t connect with people on the campaign trail. They can sense he just isn’t all that interested in the lives of average Americans. Neither is Obama but long ago he learned that he could play on white guilt to get voters to want to relate to him. Newt probably has way too much curiosity but it helps him in the retail politics of the campaign trail. Indeed the only parallel I see between Newt and Humphrey is a flair for retail politics. If Mitt Romney’s campaign caravan ran into a traffic jam because of a stalled bus he’d pull out the GPS to find a detour that would keep him on schedule. Newt, like HHH, would see it as an grand opportunity to shake the hand of everyone on the bus.
cfbleachers – I agree with you on all your points – and you are basically saying what I am saying:
As usual, ETAB, you and I agree on most all of the salient points. What we must do, is hone them and come to some final agreement on best solutions to move forward with a unified voice.
-that Gingrich can’t govern but he could take out Obama;
-that Romney could govern but he can’t take out Obama.
Let me be crystal clear. Gingrich can take down Obama a peg or two in any one on one contest of ideas. The problem in a rigged general election against the Marxists and their propaganda machine, it never truly is a one on one contest. It’s one on Obama, the propagandists, the crooked moderators, the stacked audience, the unfair questions, the fixed shot clock, the bribed scorekeeper, the photoshopping cameramen, the reddening of the eyes magazine cover creep, the forged document committees at CBS, …all pointing at the low information voters in the middle who swing every national election.
Now, Newt certainly can go ample belly to flat belly on arrogance and self-congratulation. But Newt’s sky high negatives and his existing brand damage (however it was caused, either by the propaganda machine’s dirty work or self-inflicted wounds), is a LEGITIMATE cause for grave concern. A current double digit loss to Obama as predicted by current polling is not something that a thinking man should sweep under the rug, gloss over, pretend does not exist or fantasize some excuse about.
So, you and I ETAB…are forced to consider those things in the harsh, cold light of reality. We can’t afford to to conjure up phony “ruling class” warfare “enemies” and include nearly every major thinker in the fight against the overthrow as targets of derision and foam-flaming. We can’t build an imaginary enemy to fight an additional fake flank war, when the real enemy is standing right in front of us. ETAB, we MUST make a real assessment…so that we do not flounder, falter and fail at the task ahead.
So, where does that leave us? You are saying that even though Gingrich could win a debate, he couldn’t carry the election with the Independents. That would lose Congress and of course, the Supreme Court as Obama would stack it.
What I’m saying, ETAB, is that Gingrich can satisfy an emotional need for someone to punch the leftists in the nose. God Bless him for that. But, if the ultimate outcome is a punch in the nose to the Marxists and their propaganda machine lackeys…AND…giving the country away to the Marxists, I want a different choice. Given the following options:
A. No punch in the nose AND a loss…I vote NO.
B. A punch in the nose AND a loss, I vote NO.
C. A punch in the nose and a win, I VOTE ….ABSOLUTELY YES AND TWICE ON SUNDAY.
D. No punch in the nose and a win, I vote…it’s better than A or B.
By the way, I don’t think that Santorum or Romney could out-debate Obama. The reason for that is because none of them would confront the Imaginary Realm in which Obama’s rhetoric exists. Gingrich would; he’d say: “With all due respect, but your outline is pure fiction: the facts are….”. And he’d do it in a manner that would confront rather than sound like two drones discussing pins-in-a-box around a boardroom table.
Ok. It wasn’t my position, it was Ed’s. (and Ace’s perhaps…and probably a number of other folks as well). I will accept your analysis, certainly as it applies to Romney. Romney strikes me as a guy who has shrink-wrapped slogans sent to him by committee, memorizes them and delivers them with “I love America, which is the America I love and all the American love I can muster for America, the greatest nation with the greatest love of America, love, great, love America”…thrown in. Cheap, smarmy, unconvincing, pap.
Right words, right sentiment, probably means most of it…couldn’t convince a bulldog to eat a pork chop.
Newt can zing opponents and cut to the heart of Obama’s BS. In those TWO debates, it would produce some fun moments. Great. I would pay almost any price for front row seats. Then what? Obama will have all the rigged, bribed, fixed, ready and loaded for bear. Traps will be set for Newt…and they will give him all the airtime to snare himself. And, they will crush him…and ONLY play the crushings against him. Over and over and over again. And ONLY talk about them. And redden his eyes. And, the low information voters for whom he is ALREADY brand damaged will absorb that and only that.
And…the folks on OUR side…will say “I told you so”. Newt will implode, given enough time to say something mercurial, far-fetched, polarizing, off-putting and catastrophic. And when Newt is desperate or when Newt is in full self-aggrandizement mode…he is at his worst. Game, set, match. For Congress, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court. What then?
I certainly respect all the pundits you mention but I wonder how many of them are trapped in the Washington intellectual bubble, which sees the US as simply ‘unfocused’ or ‘too socialist’ and don’t actually see the deep tectonic structural fault-line that has emerged.
Is this a concern for VDH? Mark Steyn? Rush? John Hinderaker? Ace? Ed Morrissey? Me? That seems too pat an answer for us to accept, you and I…ETAB. I certainly, on these pages on numerous occasions have talked about that very fault line. Steyn has. Peter Wehner and the Commentary crew have. I see nothing to suggest that VDH doesn’t “get it”. Do you?
You are essentially saying that both candidates are so deeply flawed (and I agree with their flaws) that neither must be allowed by the GOP to get the nomination. And the GOP executive must provide another nominee. I agree.
But – what if they don’t?
I don’t arrive at the “what if” yet, ETAB. I refuse to stop swimming, only to tread that toxic water. For the sake of answering the question, we have to go back to the four options above and decide which gets us to where we MUST go. My first vote is Option C, but…if I feel it is not going to happen, then I MUST vote for Option D. If we stop swimming, our ONLY analysis left is between Option C and Option D. I don’t want to stop swimming yet, ETAB. Losing is not a viable option. Where Obama and the Marxists take us next is NOT acceptable. Period. Full stop.
Much of the Tea Party is against Romney. Do they support Gingrich? I don’t know.
Are Independents fed up, enough, with Obama, that they would accept Gingrich? They might not; they’d accept Romney. But if the Obama Gang self-define themselves as ‘similar to Romney’ (and this is what they’ve been doing so far) and engineer a crisis in the summer – then, the OB gang win.
So, my question is: IF the Obama Gang define themselves as no different than Romney – and remember, they’ve been doing this rather well so far – and simply slip in a crisis or fake statistics – then, they win.
The candidate has to be NOT-Obama, in a very real sense. Of the two, that’s Gingrich.
So- GOP Executive – offer us someone else who can carry the Independents. Will you do this? Or?
Obama and his lackeys came out today jabbing a thumb in Romney’s eye. Not Gingrich. I think the candidate has to be the one who does not take us into the abyss of total Marxist reign. To my eye, that is NEITHER Romney nor Gingrich. If forced to choose between punching the Marxists in the nose and losing or playing patty-cake with the Marxists and losing…I choose not losing. At least for now.
The Obama lackeys have come out today in very strong force with a plethora of attacks against Gingrich as ‘racist’. Why? Because he’s defining Obama as the FoodStamp President.
What the h– does that have to do with racism? Are ALL black people on food stamps? No – and if many are – is that because of the culture of dependency created and promoted by the socialist Democrats?
Is it racist to tell the truth and confront the truth? The truth is, under Obama, the use of foodstamps has exponentially increased. And jobs, except in the public unions, have decreased. Oct/11, over 46 million Americans..an increase of over 60% since 2007.
Therefore since Obama MUST acknowledge his role in the economy – his stimulus which was a debt and went to help his unionized votes in the public service; his refusal to cut corporate and business taxes; his attempts to tax incomes over 200,000 most of which are actually small businesses; his health care; his strangling regulations etc…THEN – the rise in food stamps is Obama’s fault.
Nothing to do with ‘racism’. BUT – that’s a basic default tactic of the Obama gang. Criticize Obama in ANY WAY, ANY WAY whatsoever – and you are automatically defined as a racist. The One Must Not Be Criticized.
The problem as I see it is that the Obama Gang can, and are, defining Romney as virtually identical to Obama. And Obama can outdebate Romney in a nanosecond, and, Obama you know – well, Obama sings to the people. He croons love songs to them. That gets votes.
Romney is a mean capitalist Rich Man..and Obama doesn’t like Rich Men (at least, those who don’t purchase 35,000 a plate donation dinners for Obama).
Now, cfbleachers, you opt for ‘no punch in the nose and a win’. Well, don’t we all opt for that. But who can achieve this??????
ETAB, I vote for a win.
First.
Foremost.
I vote AGAINST a loss.
Pigeon-holing Gingrich as a racist isn’t going to have much impact on his own base. African-Americans are going to fall into line at a clip of 95% for Obama, unfortunately. No matter who the Republicans put up. The racial warfare card is so hard-wired in some communities, it would take decades to overcome it. It’s despicable and a shame. It’s also reality. Gingrich isn’t a racist. It’s a slander. It will be the first of many. He’s a target rich environment for the propaganda machine. We will have to defend him harder than almost any other candidate.
The class warfare card is where the Marxists have a fight coming to them. In trying to overthrow capitalism, the Fabian in the White House was going to have to tread carefully. Then…he got the assist by the Neo-Marxist assault…that infuriated Rush, Hannity, the guys at Commentary, Krauthammer, the NRO crowd, VDH, and everybody thinking person who wasn’t in the tank for Gingrich or Perry.
Oh, the alibis flew…fast and furious. And…some have doubled down on the neo-Marxism…calling everyone who saw it for what it was…”the ruling class” or “the establishment” or some such thing. And that Rove was behind it all.
The brunt of the attack now became AGAINST REPUBLICANS, AGAINST THE FREE MARKET, AGAINST CAPITALISM. That’s Obama’ breeding ground.
Cayman Island, tax returns, capital gains. That’s Obama happy hunting grounds.
The “ruling class”, “the rich”, …anyone who is successful in the private sector, became “the enemy”. As did anyone defending that very success.
Watch as the Obama gang begin to identify Romney as the polar opposite of Obama. He has been handed “all that is wrong with capitalism” on a silver platter.
And the Gingrichites can whipsaw Romney with neo-Marxism on one side and the real thing on the other.
Fine. Let them take Romney down. I could care less. But where does Gingrich go from there? Back to the couch with Pelosi? A little more propping up of the fraud in Fannie and Freddie’s role in taking down the economy because of that awful “capitalism”? An attack on Wall Street?
Where do the neo-Marxists pivot when Obama agrees with them and magnifies their assault with their own words and sentiments? When Obama rails on the “ruling class”?
The low information middle that swings every national election…doesn’t have anyone defending the issue to them that you and I see as mission critical. That tectonic plate shift is guaranteed to punch US in the nose. We lose.
I vote not to lose.
Nobody on this “B” team slate has the right stuff. Nobody. Bill Kristol agrees with me. So do some of the best and brightest. They are NOT “the enemy”. They are NOT “the ruling class”. They are looking at the landscape and saying they see a loss coming that none of us can afford.
Romney isn’t the answer. If he is, I don’t understand the question.
But Gingrich isn’t the answer either. (or Santorum…and especially not Paul).
Who is?
Right now…they aren’t running. My suggestion is that a committee be formed from the “A” teamers. Daniels, Ryan, Cantor, Christie, Jindal, Thune, West, Rubio, Noem, Barbour, …and they create a solution to avert a disaster.
In the absence of that, you and I are going to have to start discussing the best way to survive the most catastrophic loss of our lifetimes.
Watching Romney take us there would be excruciating. Watching Gingrich take us there at least will be entertaining. Until it isn’t.
ETAB, we can cross Allahpundit off the list of acceptable soldiers for our side as well. He, like me…is holding out hope for a late entrant or brokered convention.
I know, I know…just another “sellout”, who can’t think his way out of a paper bag, a “ruling class” guy and an “elitist” who is “easily swayed” by the “conservative MSM”.
It’s amazing how all the guys most people thought were the best and the brightest thinkers…have all come to the same conclusions. It’s them just being less smart than the folks who just KNOW that these people aren’t worthy of our respect or even consideration of their analysis.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/23/new-romney-florida-ad-you-dont-really-want-to-nominate-a-disgraced-freddie-mac-shill-do-you/
“Question: If, like me, you’re clinging to the vaporous hope of a late entrant and/or brokered convention, how should you be rooting in Florida?”
For Newt, right? If Romney holds off Gingrich there, he’s back on track for the nomination, even if the slog will be longer than he first expected. If Gingrich upsets Romney, establishment Republicans will wet themselves in terror at the thought of an allegedly unelectable candidate becoming the nominee and will scramble to head Newt off.
Maybe that means pushing someone new into the race or maybe it means propping the two of them up in various ways so that delegates split three ways between them and Ron Paul and no one has a majority at the convention.
The Mitch Daniels fans are pleading with him again to reconsider, which makes sense insofar as Newt’s rise seems to have neutralized character attacks in the race. (In Daniels’s case, any attacks would be aimed at his wife, not at him, which makes them even more unlikely.)
The problem with Daniels as a late entrant, though, is that he too would be seen as an “establishment” candidate, perhaps even more so than Romney. He’s a Bush guy, after all, and would have plenty of wealthy donors behind him, which Gingrich would frame as an attempt by “insiders” to rig the election twice at the expense of grassroots conservatives after having failed to do it once with Romney.
If establishment Republicans really want to stop Newtmentum, they’d need a candidate with grassroots cred to blunt Newt’s pushback. Jindal seems like the most obvious option to me: He’s a free agent now that Perry’s out of the race and he’s universally respected among grassroots conservatives.
But could he win a three-way race with Romney and Gingrich (or, rather, a four-way race with Paul) at this point? Hard to imagine.
I think it’s brokered convention or bust.
Now, ETAB…I disagree with Allahpundit on his SELECTION. Jindal is an “A” teamer, but Daniels and Ryan are better choices for what you and I say we need.
I also don’t buy into this “establishment” Republican thing against Daniels. He didn’t have anything to do the selection of Romney, nor backing of Romney.
He has the best resume’ of anyone …not even a close second. This “ruling class” argument that the Gingrichites would raise is a phony canard and none of the best thinkers are buying into it.
But, hey…let’s keep throwing EVERY thinker off the bus. And let’s keep trashing our “A” team. All that will be left…are exactly the type of voters the “B” teamers need anyway. To lose. And lose big.
You know, I think that the focus of government in the US has moved from its original outline in the Constitution. The original base of power was: Congress. Not the Executive. Not the President. But the government by, for and of the people. It is Congress that is the legislature, Congress that makes the laws, Congress that approves the budget.
Yet, the focus in the last and more generation has seen a gradual increase in the power of the President. We now have a President who ignores the laws of the Constitution, ignores and denigrates Congress – and governs by executive fiat.
We have a President who openly disparages and rejects the Constitutional laws – and gets away with it.
He insists that Congress pass His bills without reading or debate.
He openly disparages Congress instead of respecting its will.
He ignores that it rejected Cap and Trade and instead, sets up his EPA to carry out massive environmental restrictions.
He ignores that he’s required to go to Congress to engage in acts of war; he simply redefines ‘war’ to mean ‘boots on the ground’ and ignores ‘bombs from the air’.
He ignores that he’s required to submit a budget.
He appoints people when Congress is not in recess.
And, he lies to the people. Constantly. I won’t go into the list; it’s enormous.
The real power ought to be: Congress.
Now – to get Obama out of power, and this is vital, we have to recognize both his socialist agenda, and his personal psychological pathology. Both these needs lead to his denigration and disempowerment of the American people. Oh- there’s also his anti-Americanism, his contempt for Americans (lazy, ignorant, bigots)…
You, cfbleachers, say that neither Romney nor Gingrich can accomplish the task. I certainly see your point; I see the flaws in both. But, it’s up to the GOP to hear us, and offer another candidate.
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and any war-time President had or took a lot of power from Congress. There has always been tension between the branches; it was designed that way. In general, it is probably not a good thing to have all of Congress and the Presidency all held by the same party. Beyond that, you’ll have to do more than list a few Obama over-reaches to support your case. “Strong” Presidents, for better or for worse, take on more power. The term, “Imperial Presidency” did not begin with Obama.
Dwight – my examples of Obama’s behavior as president are not indicators of a strong president but are examples of an abuse of presidential power.
An abuse of presidential power is a sign of not merely a lack of integrity to one’s oath to the constitution but are a sign of weakness.
Obama couldn’t allow his stimulus to be examined for it would have revealed it was not about strengthening the economic infrastructure but about supporting public service unionized employment.
Obama couldn’t allow the health care bill to be examined because it would deny his claims of free choice and options and lowered costs to health care.
Obama’s refusal to go to Congress to examine the Libyan War, was really about his refusal to begin confrontation with a Muslim state; he was shamed into half-hearted participation by France and the UK. And, redefining war as ‘only boots on the ground’ and ‘not bombs from the air’ is shameful and ignores Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the London Blitz…none of which involved ‘boots on the ground’ but were acts-of-war.
Obama’s refusal to submit a budget to Congress, which is, by law, the agent of fiscal operations – yet another contempt of Congress.
And so on. I think it’s clear and your ‘defense’ of these actions, which seems to be ‘oh, we are at war and therefore any executive overreach is OK’ – is unacceptable.
Dr Hanson
As a historian, Do you see parallels between Mitt Romney and Nelson Rockefeller’s bids for the presidency in the 1960′s and could Romney fail for the same reasons?
While most of these comments make sense, it is very important to remember that ever since the first three presidents served, Washington, Adams and Jefferson, this country has prospered in spite of, not because of the presidents elected. This is especially true of the last two, W and O. The passing of Obamacare and all the other social welfare programs since the Democrats took over, plus the excess spending by Bush and his expansion of social welfare programs together will bankrupt the county unless draconian cuts are made in spending over the next four years. The Democrats will vote to make the cuts to hit mostly the white middle class by making Social Security means tested. Read some of VDH’s other articles and become a believer that those that have significant assets will no longer be eligible to receive SS. If you think this can’t happen, then tell me what the alternative is to massively cut federal spending without cutting the multitude of payments and subsidies to those at the lower income levels, without riots in all major cities. As VDH so elegantly puts it, the rules have all changed, and at the same time no one really understands what the new rules are under the socialists who have gained the political power they needed to almost end the capitalistic system they all seem to hate. Can either Mitt or Newt pull this off? I doubt it, the price to pay in civil unrest will be too high. The white middle class will not riot, simply because they are not of this mindset, just complain with little power to change things. What a mess the liberal baby boomers have made of this country in the past 40 years!
I’ve read through many of these comments and I a totally amazed at the brain-washing and programming. All seem to be doing exactly what the whole “campaign” is suppose to do, keep everyone arguing amongst themselves all the while not paying attention as to what is really going on. Like I said before, NO ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY, INTEGRITY OR MORALS in this lot. And these are
ROLE MODELS FOR OUR CHILDREN? What are all of you thinking, or are you?????
Buddha & Jesus have declined to run. Sorry. :(
buddha is too fat
and jesus needs a makeover
thus
not electable
To be fair,
Buddha could get a gastric bypass operation and Jesus could get a decent hair-cut but, to be honest, I still don’t think either one of them would want anything to do with the dirty, grubby skankitude that is ‘politics’. ;)
The Buddha was an Indian who kepr fit by a lot of walking, don’t be fooled by Japanese art.
It’s over.
The fat lady has sung—what do you think the obesity rage is all about?
Too much analysis can possibly lead to mental illness–or at least the need for booze or drugs to turn off the racing mind so one can sleep at night.
Intrade, the betting blog, still has Romney at 65% to win the GOP nomination, and a GOP president around 40% come 2013.
Any awake and sane person would have to shudder that there’s even a CHANCE that Obama is reelected, let alone that he’s favored!
Someone once said the Constitution is not a suicide document. Well, as Rep. Henry Waxman once put it, when criticized from the right about some outrageous act of his party—”SO WHAT!”
We are presently, as Americans, living through—or is it dying as?—the suicide of the West.
The trend is your friend. It’s going to take generations to get over the present USA cultural depression, something on the order of what it’s going to take to defeat radical Islam.
When I was a youth circa 1960, the Arab-Israel fight was a hot topic, and we all knew it would take many years to “solve”. And, now, we’re closer to this “final solution”? ha ha!
My advice is to transcend the mundane CW political crap, and get on with God Realization. Just like watching football games does NOTHING for you, really, obsessing about Obama—well, jeez! What a waste of time!
Via con Dios.
Romney = Romney-Care = Obama-Care; Romney has a historic, verfiable anti-2nd Amendment stance. Romney is not electable.
Gingrich is very much electable; especially if he calls Rand Paul, or some other acceptable Tea Party / Libertarian stalwart, as his VP. That would lock the deal. Is he smart enuf to see that avenue? Probably. Guess we’ll see.
Santorum is a Jesus-come-lately religious opportunist. He knew what would influence the Evangelicals and jumped all over it. He might be Gods RINO, but he is still a RINO and he couldn’t beat the “O” if he got the opportunity.
Ron Paul is the honest of the bunch and that damns him to obscurity and derision. If Paul could just lie about what he really thinks, like all the rest of them – he might have a chance.
Ron Paul isn’t a total loon as some people have painted him to be. I really like a lot of what he stands for (strict to the letter constitutional-ist). He would be a great VP to counter Newt’s hot head (R. Paul is super mellow, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy get truly angry).
Who knows?
It sure is getting ‘interesting’ though!
You’ve got that right about Ron Paul and he is the ONLY ONE with any integrity and that is not what they want in Washington DC. Too many folks believe all the lies and look the other way when it comes to morals and ripping us off. Brainwashed and programmed. The sheep will just follow them right over the cliff and when they realize anything, (if they do), it will be too late. Sad but true…
If there are enough Americans who will re-elect Obama for any reason, then it is likely that he, in a 2d term, minus the need to be nice for another election, will be exactly what we need to start a decline of Socialism-lite in the class that calls themselves Moderates and Independents (or elitists, I expect). Sense, pleading, and teaching may not be enough to convince them, but coming face-to-face with the realities of unbridled Socialism may give them second thoughts about the evils of unbridled Capitalism.
Should we survive the second coming of Obama the Great, I can be found at my undisclosed location in the deep woods, growing strawberries, and other survival things.
It’s going to be hard enough to undo the damage Obama has already done and it may be impossible if Obie wins another four years. We are already at the tipping point of Socialism–>Communism.
At this point, I will vote for a microscopic Who from Who-ville just to get the stinkin’ cretins currently residing in the White House booted.
It does not matter who becomes President. The fed govt spends 4 trillion and borrows 2 trillion. No President can or will change that. In 10 years the debt will grow to 36 trillion. At that point the USA falls into the same dustbin of history where lies the USSR. I’m predicting a break-up of the union.
While we are throwing every voice of ours we can under the bus, let’s take another “ruling class” guy who simply can’t comprehend all the issues.
Rush Limbaugh (via Daily Caller)
Limbaugh explained that Gingrich should focus on his own vulnerabilities, specifically where he has embraced activism for liberal causes.
“Newt keeps pushing off any questions on his anti-conservative statements, and he better not,” Limbaugh warned. “I think Newt is just as vulnerable on his anti-conservatism as Romney is on RomneyCare. ‘What do you mean by that, Rush?’ It’s very simple. Newt has made it very plain two or three times that is open to the concept of global warming… Newt has in the past had some unflattering things to say about capitalism. His time at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a vulnerability saying FDR was the best president and his favorite president. That doesn’t jibe with being a conservative.”
Wow, What a lot of prose about our candidates! I would surely vote for any of them or even a dogcatcher instead of Obama.
Something I never see written about is the fact that Newt had to get attention or the press without much money due to his dead status. This I believe is the reason that he may have made some of the “unhinged” things that he is being tared with today. Think about it, if you were in his position, wouldn’t you have done the same. It was that or give up and quit and Newt isn’t a quitter.
Anyway for my two cents, I give Newt the benefit of the doubt and read his statements with very close attention to what he is trying to accomplish. Then many of the statements are not so wild eyed as all the MSM pundits make them out to be.
Some may even be setting up the debates so as to have a “known” question to be prepared for and hit out of the park with.
Can’t wait for the state-of-the-union…NOT
LORD HAVE MERCY! (BTW GO Santo;)
“Do not take counsel of your fears.”
Patton got that from the inimitable “Stonewall” Jackson.
Did I just sound like Newt there?
ETAB, let’s knock the Wall Street Journal off our list as well.
Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn’t because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November—or, rather, when he does—the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.
What should readers who despair of a second Obama term make of all this? Hope ObamaCare is repealed by the High Court, the Iranian bomb is repealed by the Israeli Air Force, and the Senate switches hands, giving America a healthy spell of Hippocratic government.
Is this our fate, ETAB? Hoping that Gingrich doesn’t pull down the Senate and lose us the Supreme Court? Hoping that Romney, the Tin Man finally finds a heart? Or perhaps Bert Lahr’s courage? Clearly Rick Perry, the Scarecrow might have won, if he only had a brain.
And, ETAB…let’s throw Dick Armey under the bus while we’re at it.
“But what is going to happen as I see this thing is, you’re just not going to have a winner in this primary process. I’m looking for a brokered convention,” former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said on CNBC tonight.
“But whatever — however that works out, at some point they’re going to have to have a nominee. We understood, those of us that are devoted to the small government constitutional limited government movement, we’ve understood for some time unless we get a late entry, somebody like Mitch Daniels, we’re not going to have a reliable small government conservative who we can count on to advance, you know, innovative, creative ways to control this government and cause this economy to grow. So we’re going to have to get the House and the Senate beefed up,” he said.
Do we have a scorecard yet, ETAB, for ALL the voices that used to be on OUR side, thrown under the bus yet?
Rush Limbaugh, VDH, Ann Coulter, Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit, the NRO crowd, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, the Commentary crew, Peter Wehner, Ace, John Hinderaker and the Powerline guys, the Wall Street Journal, Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Dick Armey, ….who is going to be left to carry the banner, ETAB?
Is THIS the best strategy to stave off the overthrow? A double digit loss and possibly the loss of every branch of government? That’s not a strategy, that’s a surrender.
DEMAND BETTER. I have been saying this for months. (and, by the way…I was saying this JUST as loudly, when Gingrich was not a factor and Romney was the presumptive and “entitled” candidate). Look it up.
ETAB, we cannot…we MUST not…lose this election to poor judgment, bad strategy, weak wills and fits of emotional outburst. DEMAND BETTER.
It’s our only hope.
Critical thinking and course correction are mandatory. Now, more than ever.
DEMAND BETTER.
This was excerpted in the WSJ today in a most unfortunate way. Men are heir to weaknesses but only narcissists flaunt them. Newt is the candidate of the perpetually angry who believe that Jimmy Swaggart-like preachers are sincere, that pro wrestlers are real athletes really fighting and that porn is real sex. They have no sincerity detectors and are full of lusts and itches demanding to be scatched. Such men are easy marks for panderers and con-men.
I think Newt is less electable than Romney, but I will not say he is unelectable, since I think he could indeed beat Obama. What worries me is even if Newt wins, I dont think he would make a good president. He is too unstable, and lacks executive experience. Mind you, I would still vote for him over Obama, since while I think Newt might be a bad president, I know for a certainty that Obama is a bad president.
Considering the “junk yard dog media” buzz word “unelectability”, Obama ranks at the top. His record attests to that.
There aren’t any dazzling personalities as in elections past, but this isn’t like any elections of the past.
The Democrat/Socialist movement is the largest we have ever had to deal with in America to date. Foundering economies and craven politicians are ripe orchards for them. This movement will undertake anything to undermine and disrupt the system, and spread disinformation and subversive propaganda to undermine anyone that intends to defend our republic. That is evident. This movement cannot ever be completely defeated, only thwarted for the time being. They shall never rest, and we have to deal with them on that basis.
They have intimidated anyone that has the dazzling personality of a true Conservative with their relentless attacks of innuendo and salacious rumors. This has been effective and they know it. They will utilize this tactic until they are victorious in gaining complete control of the government.
Our forefathers knew how difficult it would be to maintain this Republic, and they seem prescient with the dispiriting scenario we are experiencing today.
We are called upon to make choices we do not like, but, choose we must. For if we do not make the right choice this time, the Democrat/Socialist movement becomes further entrenched, and the battles become more severe and difficult.
Out of the choices we have, we have to keep in mind whom will be the most conservative and whom shall retain the similarities to what the Founding Fathers worked so long and hard to create. I think that narrows the field down quite a bit right there. Which candidate has the most knowledge of what the Forefathers endeavored to achieve?
We don’t have the remarkably clever and astute anti-Obama yet, and that person may never appear. But, that person would never subject themselves and their families to the relentless abuse sure to be unleashed upon the ultimate candidate. The runner up will have to suffice. This election is only one of the many battles yet to come, and you know it.
Don’t let the “attack dog media” intimidate you. Don’t let the incompetent Obama machine intimidate you. Our Republic was founded by people that had the character and intelligence to make hard choices, and we do have the character, intelligence, and fortitude required.
“Let’s roll”.
Weneed the most conservative man who can get elected. Newt is unelectable. Newt has no attributes or characteristics of the Founders. His supporters are angry idiots and stooges.
Conservatives shouldn’t be obsessed with getting a candidate that most closely represents their views this presidential cycle because Congress will probably go to the republicans, and as long as he doesn’t veto their reforms, he’ll be fine. A lower profile moderate like Santorum or Romney would probably do better in deflecting media derangement syndrome and maintaining the majorities in 2014.
Greatly appreciate the summary of important points of the aspiring politicians.
We need more “clear days” with reasonable approach to the important matters before us all. We need a President – Not a Politician. Every time I hear a comment from a sitting President – about what he inherited from the outgoing President – I cringe. The Office of President is a collective history of every President who served in that office. Everything ever done by any President remains with the people and our history. It cannot be ignored and never goes away.