You’re 24 years old. You were 11 the last time Newt was actually in the House. You don’t seem wise about him, you seem ignorant about his history. Newt was the leader of the hard-line conservative Republicans in the 1980s. Newt pushed the Republican platform further to the right when people like Bob Dole wanted to raise taxes and not make a pronounced issue out of the Soviet Union, for fear of losing American liberal votes. Newt fought against and publically embarrassed Bush, Sr. when Bush, Sr. reneged on his campaign promise not to raise taxes. Newt was reelected in Georgia for 2 decades. Newt educated a generation of conservatives through his political action committee GOPAC and led them to take over the House in 1994 when the Republicans hadn’t held the house for 40 years. Even Dick Cheney said he never thought Newt could pull it off. Newt presided over the most conservative House as Speaker that anyone in modern times can remember. He was despised by liberals and viciously attacked throughout his career as Speaker. His fellow Republicans more often than not cowardly caved in and threw him under the bus. They then went on to go on a spending spree under Bush in the 2000s and eventually get voted out of the House in a Democrat sweep in 2006.
It would have been nice if Newt had done something to stop them, or at least protest.
I guess he has an alibi: he wasn't around. But that works better for somebody who hasn't been elected yet, not for somebody who's been in Congress for 20 years and then leaves and doesn't look back.
It's convenient to say now that Newt wouldn't have done what the rest of Congress did. But given that he didn't protest, some of us are going to conclude that you're drawing a false distinction between Gingrich and the rest of Congress.
All this bickering and people are missing the big point of this poll.
31 of the 76 delegates in GA are allocated by the statewide vote, but there’s a 20% threshold to get any of those. If Romney falls under 20%, he’s out of luck on those.
The other 42 are allocated by CD. If the winner of the CD gets more than 50% in that CD, they get all 3, but if they get less than 50%, then it’s a 2-1 split. This means Santorum can finish 2nd in a lot of these CD’s behind Newt and still get delegates.
Newt may win GA and even several CD’s with 50% of the vote, but over 50% statewide may be a tough task according to this poll.
I remember Newt. My family remembers Newt. We don’t exactly look back wistfully at the Gingrich Congress.
That being said, he is quite a formidable politician.