Conservative Pundit Sniffs Play Pile-on-Newt

GrasstopsUSA.com ^ | Decemberv 13, 2011 | Don Feder

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

H.L. Mencken called his colleagues of the fourth estate “a gang of peck sniffs.” Some conservative commentators have become pundit sniffs, turning up their elitist noses at whoever the frontrunner for the Republican nomination happens to be. You’d think we didn’t have other pressing business – like saving the Republic from the mega-Marxist in the White House.

Now, it’s former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s turn for an colonoscopy.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, a CINO (conservative in name only), frets that Gingrich is “a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought.” (It’s called having cojones, Peg.) She approvingly quotes former Bush ‘41 chief of staff John Sununu griping, “Listen to anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he’s inconsistent, untrustworthy, unprincipled.”

What’s consistent, trustworthy and principled – former Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter, the best Democrat a Republican president put on the bench since Earl Warren? Sununu talked Bush, Sr. into nominating his fellow Granite Stater in 1990, proving Nunu’s keen discernment.

Noonan says everything you’ve heard about Newt is true. He’s “intelligent and accomplished,” but “ethically dubious.” Known for “breathtaking success and contributed to reforms in government,” and “presided over disasters.” He’s “erratic and unreliable,” “egomaniacal,” “original and focused,” and “harebrained and impulsive.”

The same was said of Winston Churchill for most of the 1930s – brilliantly original but given to grand schemes that failed miserably (Gallipoli), untrustworthy and disloyal (he changed parties twice), penchant for sweeping generalities and unsupported charges (saying Germany was rearming in preparation for war, imagine!). Egomaniacal? Lloyd George said of Churchill that he “would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother to sound his own praises.”

Churchill somehow overcame the harsh verdicts of his contemporaries to manage Britain’s finest hour.

In her latest Newt-gnashing (“Newt Presents a Fresh New Virtual Face”) Ann Coulter – who thinks Romney is dreamy – paints the Gingrich of the Contract with America as a groupie of futurist Alvin Toffler. She also mentions the former Speaker’s scarlet past not once, but twice – “Newt, who was married at the time, also began dating again” and “Gingrich has spent the years since then having an affair, divorcing his second wife….” In Ann’s world, there is no place for repentance and forgiveness. Next she’ll tell us Newt dated leftist slime Bill Maher.

And syndicated something-or-other Ben Shapiro excitedly informs us that, “Newt has so much personal baggage, he’d be better off buying American Airlines entirely than trying to check it.” Unlike, oh, say, Barack Obama in 2008, with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Louis Farrakhan, George Soros, Frank Marshall Davis, an AOL birth certificate and an early education in an Indonesian madrassa lurking in his shadowy past.

In a political career spanning 40 years in and out of office, Gingrich made some monumental mistakes. He also had some historic achievements – including producing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and forcing Clinton to submit balanced budgets, cut taxes and reform welfare.

Looking ahead to the 2012 general election, Newt has two indispensable attributes: he’s a dazzling speaker, who says things worth quoting, and has the guts to finally throw some light on the cockroaches of the left that are swarming over our republic.

Watching Newt in the GOP debates is like seeing Rembrandt at work; the rest do paint-by-numbers. Gingrich answers questions with laser-like precision, cutting through clichés to expose the essence of issues. Even when I thought he had no chance of winning the nomination, for someone who’s spent his life working with words, it was a pleasure to behold a master in action.

What Noonan calls a “trouble magnet” and “a starter of fights that don’t need to be fought,” Harry Truman called plain-speaking.

At the Des Moines debate Saturday night, Newt repeated his observation that the Palestinians are an “invented people.” To those squawking about this bracing dose of reality (including Coulter’s crush, Mitt Romney), ask them who was the last president/king/prime minister/emperor/czar of an independent Palestinian state?

Says Newt: “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people (the Palestinians) are terrorists. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say. ‘Enough lying about the Middle East.’”

It’s time to stop the equivocating, the euphemisms, the evasion and the waffling about everything political. If Republicans don’t wake up and start slashing this misbegotten administration, they’ll equivocate Obama into a second term.

Not Speaker Gingrich. Here’s a sampling of Newt-ron bombs recently dropped:

• “It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS and with 18-year olds getting diplomas they can’t read.”

• “I have two grandchildren – Maggie is 11, Robert is 9, I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

• At a June debate, speaking of a Pakistani who immigrated to the United States, became a citizen and tried to set off a car-bomb in Times Square: “We did this with the Nazis. We did this with the communists. And it was controversial both times and both times we discovered after a while, you know, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country. And we have to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘No.’”

• “Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’…unless it’s illegal.”

• “I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, faithful and all of those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.”

• “We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.”

• “The left-wing Democrats will represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people in the name of letting hooligans loose.”

• “The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We loan power to the government to do specific things. We are citizens, not subjects, and when the government grows too big and too powerful we need to fight back to defend our God-given rights.”

• “Judicial Supremacy is a lie. … It is historically wrong and dangerous to grant the judicial branch sole authority over the meaning of the Constitution. It is time for the elected branches to reassert their right to uphold and defend the Constitution when the judiciary is wrong.”

• "The fact is what makes American Exceptionalism different is that we are the only people I know of in history who say, 'Power comes directly from God to you.'" Thus, "You are personally sovereign," and "so you are always a citizen, you are never a subject” - which is why Obama regularly misquotes the Declaration of Independence by deliberately leaving out the words “endowed by their Creator.”

If not Newt, who?

In the latest sampling of Iowa polls, reported by Real Clear Politics, Gingrich is running away from the pack with 28.3%. Romney dropped to third with 16.2 % and Ron Paul was 2nd. with 16.7%. As for the rest – Perry and Bachmann, who once led in Iowa, tied at 8.8%, Rick Santorum had 5% and Jon why-does-he-even-bother Huntsman got 2.2%.

In New Hampshire, Romney leads with 36%, Gingrich is second with 24.3% and Paul third with 15.7%. Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum and Perry are stuck in the single digits.

Once the frontrunner, Perry is consistent – turning in one dismal performance after another. Last week, he told the Des Moines Register that there are eight Supreme Court justices (did he wonder how they break tie votes?) and called Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, “Montemayor” – well, something Hispanic. There are three Supreme Court justices Perry would like to replace when they retire. He can only remember the names of two.

Ron Paul’s followers are generally described as “committed.” Many think the candidate himself should be – some place where he can get the help he needs. Does anyone who didn't name one of his kids after Ayn Rand really believe the Republicans will nominate a candidate for president who: voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment (Paul says “let the states decide,” which is the same as saying “let the judges decide”), is blasé about nuclear missiles in the hands of Iranian ayatollahs, supports civilian trials for terrorist suspects, and is more anti-Israel than Obama, if that’s possible?

That leaves Gingrich and Mitt Romney

As the nominee, Romney would be a replay of Dole in 1996 and McCain in 2008 – the establishment forcing a well-credentialed RINO on a cringing party base. After 5 years of running for president, the former Mass. governor elicits moderate yawns and 75% of the party saying anyone-but-Mitt, please! For Obama to be defeated next year, the GOP’s conservative grassroots will have to be on fire. Romney couldn’t do it with a flamethrower and napalm.

The difference between Newt and Mitt? Newt has a core conservative philosophy which he sometimes misapplies. Mitt has no core philosophy to misapply. Romney, who helped usher in the first-in-the-nation gay marriage law and trailblazed for Obama Care, has no principles – and those are negotiable. Jeff Katz, a popular Boston-area talk-show host, says: “Romney has a lot of experience. He’s been on every side of every issue. The only thing he’s consistent on is the belief that Mitt Romney should be president.”

Newt has frequently disappointed or mystified conservatives (although his one-time infatuation with global warming is hard to square with his Drill-Here/Drill-Now campaign) - so have all the rest, except for Michele can't-give-her-book-away.

Perry has in-state-tuition for illegals (if you oppose it, you don’t have a heart) and Gardasil among his carry-on luggage. In 2004, Santorum supported Arlen Specter for the Republican Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, and, in so doing, gave the Democrats two Senate seats (his own when alienated conservatives turned on him, and Specter’s, when he joined the party where he always belonged). Jon Huntsman has designated himself the RINO-in-waiting, if Mitt falters, and runs to the left of his record as Utah governor. In 1988, Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate. The Libertarian platform calls for abolishing age-of consent laws and legalizing hard drugs.

In its editorial endorsing Newt, The Manchester Union Leader, possibly the most conservative paper in the country, observed: “Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich.”

Resolved: America can’t take a second Obama administration. It will not survive four more years of: Obama Care, class warfare, the free-market/individualism sucks, America is not a Christian nation, purging references to Islam from terrorism training manuals for intelligence agents, gays in the military, refusing to defend DOMA, an endless tsunami of red ink, radical appointments (Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sabelius, Hillary Clinton, etc., etc.), judicial nominations from living-Constitution Hell, putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt, bashing Israel until it’s bloody and reeling, the Occupy Wall Street Movement (the Obama Jugend), nationalizing industry, and using our troops as uniformed social workers (humanitarian interventions) - all resting on a solid Marxist, hate-America base.

If you’re waiting for the perfect candidate who could actually win to come along, we could all be in shackles and leg-irons sitting in an Obama reeducation camp by the time he or she arrives

[nickcarraway]

Resolved: America can’t take a second Obama administration

American can't take 2 left leaning parties and no balance, which is what we'd have if the Gingrich/Romney gang gets in charge.

[Jim Robinson]

Damn the peck sniffs, full steam ahead!!

Rebellion is brewing!!

[skeeter]

I could not agree more.

[hinckley buzzard]

Corrupt unindicted loser Sununu doesn't like Newt. Dick Cheney does. I think I'll throw in with Cheney.

Sorry, pecksniffs.

[dawn53]

This issue has puzzled me. I’m determined to vote my conscience in the primary (havnen’t yet determined who that will be) and vote for whomever is nominated in the general.

But the tearing down of each candidate puzzles me. No one is going to fit the whole bill. Lately, even on FR, I know most would hate to see Romney, but then the piling on of Gingrich occurs. So you don’t like this about this candidate, and you don’t like that about that candidate...but reality has to set in at some point and face the fact we are going to have an imperfect candidate. The negative talk seems conterproductive to me.

Instead of stating why we won’t vote for someone, maybe we should start observing why we will vote for a particular candidate. I’m getting tired of all the negatives, and I think it’s playing into the democrats hands...the pundits are the worst.

[xzins]

Can you not see the onslaught against Gingrich by the GOP establishment. They despise the man.

He is getting now what Palin got 4 years ago.

[C. Edmund Wright]

since a lot of folks like to pull Newt quotes out of his past to show he’s not conservative, I think a couple from this article are worth reviewing:

““It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS and with 18-year olds getting diplomas they can’t read.”

“I have two grandchildren – Maggie is 11, Robert is 9, I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

just sayin...

[show]

NEWT / PALIN 2012

Get ready for the bumper stickers

Joe Biden needs to exit stage left and remove his residue from our future VP’s residence, otherwise known as Sarah Palin’s future residence

[Parley Baer]

“Can you not see the onslaught against Gingrich by the GOP establishment. They despise the man.

He is getting now what Palin got 4 years ago.”

That is exactly what is happening. Newt is his own man and will not suck up to the establishment.

[LibLieSlayer]

You just might be a progressive if you:

1) Sit on a couch with nancy pelosi and go on and on about how man made globull warming is real and how Conservatives needed to come around to the settled science of anthropogenic globull warming.

2) You state over and over... even stating that it ALWAYS GETS YOU IN HOT WATER WITH THE RIGHT... that the GREATEST President of the last Century was... not Ronald Reagan... oh no sireee... it was joe stalin’s BFF fdr. He said it on so many occasions that it surpasses reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

3) You support the individual mandate... the cornerstone of the foundation of obamacare.

Now for some real truth on this newt fellow. This is from FREE REPUBLIC from 2010. It is a long read but well worth the time. Here is the URL and a tiny excerpt from a mile long laundry list of progressive activism by newt.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2661574/posts

Yet it seems Gingrich is still up to his old tricks. In front of a Tea Party crowd, he expounds the virtues of limited government, but elsewhere he is still the futurist conservative devoted to internationalism. His blog biography brags about his work as Speaker of the House and then boasts of such unconstitutional credentials as serving on the CFR’s Terrorism task force, co-chairing the UN task force to “reform” (i.e., strengthen) the United Nations, and receiving credit for the DHS being his brainchild. “Newt Gingrich is a leading advocate of increased federal funding for basic science research,” reads the bio. Gingrich's ASWF endorses federal involvement in areas such as energy, education, labor and the environment. He also founded the Center for Health Transformation, which advocates its own version of socialized medicine.

Global Government Gingrich

It would seem the CFR has done a good job schooling Gingrich in foreign affairs over the past 10 years as well. No longer the novice, Gingrich supports continuing the “war” in Afghanistan despite the fact that Congress never actually declared war as required by the Constitution. The Baltimore Sun noted on October 22 that Gingrich supports expanding the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. He claimed, “Afghanistan is a skirmish in a long war.... We need a much larger grand strategy that deals with the whole war.” He even had the audacity to invoke George Washington as a model for Obama in making “morally correct” decisions in Afghanistan. Careful, Gingrich, you're quoting one of those nasty noninterventionists! Washington had this to say about foreign policy in his Farewell Address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Yet National Review quoted Gingrich in opposition to the Father of Our Country. “You can pull out of Afghanistan, and then what?... We pulled out of Somalia, and now we have pirates,” he said, ignoring what U.S. support of the UN puppet regime in that unfortunate country has done to promote terrorism, and parallel scenarios in Afghanistan and across the Middle East. His statements leave little doubt as to how Gingrich would conduct himself as Commander in Chief.

[GOPJ]

“Judicial Supremacy is a lie. … It is historically wrong and dangerous to grant the judicial branch sole authority over the meaning of the Constitution. It is time for the elected branches to reassert their right to uphold and defend the Constitution when the judiciary is wrong.”

Newt's right on this ...

[worriedinoregon]

I agree—there are so many things wrong with Newt, yet I am drawn to him—for his past actions as Speaker, for his oratory, for the promise of being an American Churchill. Besides the others are so obviously intellectually inferior. We do not have Marc Rubio running after all.....what are we to do?? If Newt can rise above some of the pettiness he has displayed over the course of 2 decades, he might just be one of the greats.

[show]

None of these has-beens have ever run for public office. Very few people even know who Ann Coulter, Peggy Newloser or Charles Krathmeister are. People don’t know them. They have never run for public office.

And they have the audacity to bash Newt Gingrich who has served and been effective for conservative causes in the public office?

These so called lackeys should be shamed for their arrogance. Have they ever run for public office? They are jealous because Newt has the intellect to debate anyone anywhere....including Krautwaste, Miss Piggy and Loosey Ann in any serious debate.

They all need to shut it. They have no standing in regards to running for public office in the way Newt Gingrich has. They are DISGUSTING to the core.

[hosepipe]

[ Some conservative commentators have become pundit sniffs, turning up their elitist noses at whoever the frontrunner for the Republican nomination happens to be. ]

Its called vetting, even goading.. more likely “testing”..

So far republican Presidents even candidates in the last 20 years.. are pretty much eunuchs..

Zero can say whatever he wants to and actually do the complete opposite..
And the voters even most republicans can’t remember what he said he would do..
and if they do remember will do absolutely nothing about it..

NOT ONLY THAT.,. but they don’t get MAD.. and for sure don’t get “EVEN”..

I will NOT be satisfied UNLESS the leanest, meanest son of a bitch gets selected.. even if hes been driven a little crazy like Ron Paul.. I have had it with republican mealy mouthed parsers... YEeeS.. NOOt too.. the bastard..

If G. Gordon Liddy ran for President I’d vote for his ass..
I pray for Mark Levin to run.. no chance tho..

[show]

The FACT is Newt will be the Republican nominee in 2012.

FACT - they have a limited time to bash him as it will be a full court press to see zero removed from office

[Dogbert41]

“American can’t take 2 left leaning parties and no balance, which is what we’d have if the Gingrich/Romney gang gets in charge.”

Something tells me you didn’t read the article?

[EDINVA]

Noonan’s prose has become a little too ‘fainting couch’ for me. She’s so busy swooning over her each and every word, I need a barf bucket.

[tenthirteen]

I am ambivalent about Newt Gingrich; the left side of the brain likes and admires him while the right side of the brain emit constants warnings about getting too close to him because he is toxic. He is to me, like the prize fighter that you just cannot personally stand, but by God he is your prize fighter and if you can just get him into the ring he will absolutely demolish any fool who gets in there with him.

The resolution for me will come in a time and place that is for now just not yet determined. Time marches on.

[goodnesswins]

Newt is like a great marketing director for a large company....he scares lots of employees, but he sure can get the product out the door! (Arrogant SOB’s are sometimes the best sales/marketing people.) The question is does he have the skill set necessary to build a great team, and LISTEN to them...his identifying John Bolton was a step in the right direction, but I’m waiting to see...