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FReepathon Day 49!!
Posted on 11/17/2011 6:43:59 PM PST by SeekAndFind
When Richard M. Nixon ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he faced a daunting problem: A lot of voters just didn't like him. Nixon had made his name in politics as an angry, partisan hatchet man, famous for lashing out against Democrats and the news media. To win the presidency, he needed to find a way to soften that too-harsh image.
In the months before the 1968 primaries, Nixon's campaign staged gauzy television segments that showed the candidate gently answering questions from ordinary citizens, not pesky reporters. In a nation that was divided by domestic crises and the war in Vietnam, Nixon stressed positive themes and "the lift of a driving dream." Reporters wrote about a "New Nixon" and voters who were rallying to his cause.
Now, almost half a century later, another not-always-lovable conservative is trying to stage a similar comeback: Newt Gingrich. This week's polls show Gingrich, whose candidacy was once given up for dead, in a virtual tie with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Part of the reason, as Gingrich himself says, is simple process of elimination: Conservative voters have tried out a succession of other candidates — Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain — and found each wanting.
But there's another reason for Gingrich's rise: He doesn't sound as angry as he once did. We appear to be witnessing "New Newt."
Old Newt — Angry Newt, the one who entered the presidential campaign last spring — talked in apocalyptic terms about threats to American culture. Old Newt wrote about "a secular-socialist machine" led by the Democratic Party that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."
"If we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America," he warned,
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Also, in regards to what Newt may feel in his gut in regards to healthcare, you want to visit one of his sites, www. healthtransformation.net
It’s some very interesting reading.
“The answer, I think, is that he gets it, more or less intellectually, but it’s not something coming from his gut.”
From where does this spring? I see nothing but damning accusations built on thin air. To what position papers or materials that have left his hands can you point? The silent assassination of character without proof is the tool of the lowest type of character.
Please, your dramatics are killing me!
Disagreeing on whether a particular person is the best available candidate for POTUS is not even close to “character assassination.” Nor are these matters “proven” by white papers.
Get ahold of yourself.
I hope you realize that your opinion of Newt is just as subjective as mine or anyone else’s. You do realize that, right? Good. Now we can talk.
In my view, a person who doesn’t realize that the entire Tea Party movement was catalyzed by Obamacare, specifically the individual mandate, doesn’t get conservatism down in his gut.
In fact, when he’s still flacking this even after he enters the presidential race as a conservative — and when he walks it back only after a huge outcry that put his budding candidacy directly into the toilet — this makes him appear wildly out of touch with not only conservatives, but the nation as a whole.
In my view, a person who doesn’t realize, at least by 2008, that conservatives as a whole had completely rejected man-made global warming and, in fact, found it a matter for disdain and ridicule isn’t getting conservatism in his gut. He has to be slapped around by the movement before he goes, “oh, I get it, dumbest thing I ever did.”
I really don’t care that Newt sat on a couch with Pelosi. I do care that he was so clueless about the mood and thinking of conservatives at that point that he either (1) didn’t know they had already concluded that AGW was a hoax, or (2) didn’t know how strongly they would react to him pandering to the Dems on AGW, or (3) he actually agreed with the Dems on AGW, but walked it back in order to pander to conservatives.
That is a person who isn’t getting conservatism in his gut. He is having to learn what the mood and thinking of conservatives are at this time through politically painful experience.
In my view, a person who doesn’t realize going on an Education Tour with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan, as recently as 2009, to promote Obama’s education ideas just doesn’t get what the conservative movement at this point is about. Nor does he get in his gut what the rest of us have gone through with these jokers, and how we don’t want the pandering photo-ops with Marxists.
Telling voters in Iowa as recently as last Monday that “one of his first acts as President would be to reach out to Democrats” is a stunning failure of conservative instincts. It shows that, if Newt even did a gut check on where conservatives are in 2011, he came up empty. The last thing most conservatives want as a first act is to “reach out to Democrats.”
Does this sound like a man who is clued in to the mood of conservatives in this country on an instinctual level?
I could go on.
See, I think you see a person’s gut reaction in what they do when there’s “nobody looking,” so to speak.
Most conservatives weren’t paying the least bit of attention to what Newt Gingrich was up to these last decades, save for enjoying his rants on Hannity from time to time.
Left to his own devices (i.e., free to follow his political gut instincts), Gingrich built an entire for-profit organization dedicated to advocating the individual mandate to purchase health insurance — the diametric opposition of what the conservative movement was working for!
He can say anything he wants on his website. I look at what he did. And not only that, he continued to work against the tide of the conservative movement until, early on in his candidacy, he got slapped down, rejected and abandoned by conservatives after he went on a Sunday show and they finally found out that he was STILL for the individual mandate.
Of course, he walked that back. Sorta convenient, eh?
Which actiion revealed his gut understanding of conservatism — his decade-long support for the individual mandate or his walking it back after conservatives punished him for it by dropping his presidential bid like poo-covered rock?
“Please, your dramatics are killing me!”
Pretty dramatic.
“I could go on.”
I’m sure you could. You are more full of yourself than anyone I have run across here in several years and thousands of posts.
Your sophomoric rants are welcome. Please continue.
That would all be well and good if it were ancient history as far as Newt is concerned.
But he actually entered THIS PRESIDENTIAL RACE — THIS year — with the idea that he would continue to back a form of individual mandate.
What conservative in their right mind would not know that conservatives as a whole would tear his eyeballs out for that? And they did.
That’s my point. How did Newt not know that? Why did he seem shocked and incredulous that he got spanked for that and that it, for a long while, completely ruined his candidacy?
What conservative in their right mind would not know that in 2009, conservatives as a whole are going to absolutely be sick at the thought of you going on tour with Al Sharpton to support Obama’s policies. How clueless do you have to be?
How insulated from the everyday conservative movement do you have to be to keep from stepping in that crappola?
But Newt was just full-speed ahead. The only reason he walked back his support for the individual mandate was that he got punished severely AS A CANDIDATE for it. It wasn’t because, in his gut, he changed his mind about the mandate. It wasn’t even because, in his gut, he understood and stood with rank-and-file conservatives who want nothing to do with a mandate.
You made the statement that our only choice was Newt or Obama. I said that was not our only choice.
That exchange is not in any way disallowing you from prognosticating on what our choices are in the primaries/general election. It's simply a way to disagree with your conclusion.
You seem to be saying if we don't nominate Gingrich, then we get Obama. I disagree. That is all. In fact, I think it may be true that if we DO nominate Gingrich, we get Obama. I explained that here: # 31.
We will not elect any of the others because they are not proving themselves to be electable and do not have enough experience.
I agree with you for the most part (on the electability issue). However, in my view, until we see how the polls roll out here over the next few weeks as Gingrich gets scrutinized and Cain has the chance to get back to letting Herman be Herman, I don't rule Cain out.
And why should I or any other conservative voluntarily cut our bench right now?
Cain can do the job and, believe me, there's no telling if Gingrich is going to "stick" or not in the top tier. He has a very complicated history with both Dems and Republicans. There are going to be many who warm up to him and then start thinking about various ways he's disappointed them over the years.
Also he's very old-school and all his business ties are going to smell like the type that lead to crony capitalism.
Bottom line is nobody knows if Newt is going to be durable, so, imo, it's just irresponsible to go ahead and "fire" the guy who's now sitting on the bench.
Let's give it some time and see how this shakes out. Then if Newt stumbles and, in the meantime, Cain has regained the momemtum he had, we reassess.
It's really not an emergency at this point, nor do dramatics help. Your points are well worth discussing, but let's do so calmly!
“It’s really not an emergency at this point, nor do dramatics help. Your points are well worth discussing, but let’s do so calmly!”
OK. Tell me more...I’m riveted.
“Cain has the chance to get back to letting Herman be Herman, I don’t rule Cain out.”
Wait a minute...I thought you were going to be serious. Is that you, Fatleg?
Let’s see. Three posts in a row and not one substantive point.
Sorry.
Let’s see. Three posts in a row and not one substantive point. Sorry.”
Don’t be sorry. Keep trying. You’ll get out something that makes sense. Start by boosting someone who knows the location of the continents and who we are at war with. Then get back to me. Fourth time is the charm.
Why oh why “am I not allowed to prognosticate on that?” WHY, I ask you, WHY?
(#97).
Yep, just kill off the whole team and then see what happens if “your” starter goes down injured.
I have no intention of falling into that trap.
In the meantime, if you ever want to engage the points I set out about Newt’s record, I’m all ears.
Thanks!
“In the meantime, if you ever want to engage the points I set out about Newt’s record, I’m all ears.”
You know, as tempting as that is, there’s a dead horse out in the back yard and I thought I’d spend some time looking up his ass to see what killed him.
How vulgar.
Suit yourself.
How vulgar.
You wouldn’t think so if it was YOUR horse.
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