Posted on 12/30/2011 10:13:36 PM PST by VinL
Urbandale, Iowa – In the corner of a nondescript office park hard by Interstate 80 here, campaign workers are mounting a furious effort to get out the vote for Newt Gingrich at Tuesday’s Republican caucuses and prove the recent polls wrong.
As the former House speaker drew attention for getting choked up on the campaign trail Friday, scores of volunteers from across the nation cycled through his Iowa campaign headquarters in suburban Des Moines.
Some waved Gingrich campaign signs at rush hour traffic. Others cheered the former Georgia congressman on at a campaign stop at a coffee shop in Des Moines. Many manned a phone bank, urging likely caucus-goers to support Gingrich. Among them were Gordon and Meredith Austin, who traveled from Carrollton, Ga., to work for Gingrich here. Gordon Austin said he made more than a 100 calls to voters Friday.
“I have the bruise on my ear to prove it,” said the retired surgeon, one of Gingrich’s longtime friends.
Gingrich, who recently led the pack in Iowa, has fallen dramatically in recent surveys. A new NBC News-Marist poll put him fifth with the support of 13 percent of likely caucus-goers, trailing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 23 percent; U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, 21 percent; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, 15 percent; and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 14 percent.
Gingrich, who has said he will stay in the race even if he places fourth in Iowa, drew new attention on the campaign trail Friday when he got choked up talking about his late mother. Later Friday, his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from Steve Deace, a conservative radio talk show host in Iowa.
Deace wrote on his website that Gingrich has “offered one of the most articulate defenses of marriage and the family I have ever read from a candidate. He has agreed to never sign a budget into law that includes a plug nickel for an abortion provider. He has agreed to seek personhood legislation and a stronger defense of marriage act that would limit the judicial oligarchs’ ability to legislate from the bench.”
Fueled with hamburgers and chicken sandwiches, Gingrich’s volunteers sat in makeshift booths divided by giant “Newt” signs in his Urbandale campaign office, reading from scripts as they called voters Friday. Others jokingly ad-libbed.
“If you will support Newt, I will mow your yard,” Bill Curtis, a geologist from Austin, Texas, told one voter. “Then we could go fishing.”
oh please.. you know what’s going to happen if we all don’t get behind one candidate now who can defeat Mitt Romney...... right?.. but whatever i’m tired of you go in your own corner and vote whom you want and don’t come on here again and bitch about Mitt Romney.. your record has been taken down for all to see for decades. so has mine
thankyou Mean Maryjean.. I’ll be voting Newt in 3 weeks here in SC hoping to stop Romney
AMEN BROTHER!
Who died and made you FR censor?
your record has been taken down for all to see for decades. so has mine
I challenge you to post every positive thing I've ever said here about Mitt Romney.
I'll help you out with these excerpts from my posts on this thread from just last night:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2826633/posts
The man hasn’t a shred of integrity that I can see. I look at him, and I don’t see the malice I see in many pols I hate, I see this smiling shark who... can’t understand why anyone thinks he’s doing anything wrong!
It’s like watching an alien being wearing the skin of a human. I feel uncomfortable saying such negative things about someone, but I’ve tried so hard not to pile on Romney around here because there’s no point to it, but this one story seems to be the straw that broke this camel’s back.
I would so very much like to deny he’s a flip-flopper, because Obama is the king of the flip-floppers and he does it without blinking or the MSNBC crowd pausing in their worship of him.
I don’t hate Romney the way some folks do, but I just don’t see why I should deny what my own eyes have seen. The guy seems to have none of the qualities I like in politicians...
Maybe I’m just too much of a hardcore pro-lifer to see him as anything but the guy who was trying to position himself as just as pro-abortion as Teddy Kennedy here in Massachusetts.
I just don’t think I’m ever going to be able to see this guy as anything but the lesser of two evils. Which makes him...well, evil.
Yup, you got me pegged--I'm a Romneybot all right!
Romney thanks you for your support
Oh, now I get it—you can’t read. (When someone calls someone “evil,” that’s not ‘support,’ FYI.)
SO sorry for your problem.
I do. Now you wanna’ take a crack at me too?
I think you should stop apologizing for your crying Newt comment. I’m Newt’s age, both my mother and my father dies after lingering illnesses (my father racked with pain for six agonizing months). And, as much as I loved them (and i did, to the depths of my heart), I don’t break down in tears when discussing them or their deaths.
In short, IMHO, Newt’s breakdown showed signs that he is over-stressed (which, to a degree is understandable considering the duress he’s been under).
PS: I like Newt — I consider him America’s Churchill — and I hope to vote for him for President.
I cried after reading a lot of the comments in this thread.
I know the feeling. But, I still consider FR the best political site on the web. Thank God and JR for it!
That’s a good point about the stress. Whatever I think of any candidate, they are all under enormous pressure, just as a president is/would be.
When my father died I had this quick crying ‘minute’ and then that was it. My family depended on me to be strong, and it wasn’t an effort—I’m just not that kind of person. And I didn’t fight tears, they weren’t there as I was there for my mom and family, and to read the eulogy I wrote, and welcome friends and family and so on.
I don’t apologize for not being a weepy guy. I’m just not that kind of person, and I admit, I sometimes find it odd when men cry. My not tearing up doesn’t mean I don’t care.
I can align entirely with what you are saying. I wept at my parents’ funerals (as well as at his empty bed at the medical center when I went to pick up his clothes after his death). And the truth is, I cried like a baby when I had to put down my beloved Doberman, Baron.
But, again, IMHO, breaking down years later when talking about the deaths could well be a sign that other issues are making the person overwrought. We all have those moments when something just puts us over the top.
Doesn’t make Newt a bad person, nor does it disqualify him to lead. It is simply disturbing.
That’s amazing you posted that, because the hardest I ever cried was when my last two dogs died, while I was an adult.
I think it has something to do with the way in my case, at least, I just LIKED having those dogs, and we had a lot of fun. (Ex-girlfriends knew both dogs, and in one case, an ex would play with the second dog AFTER we broke up.) But there are none of the defenses or expectations of relations with humans. In my case, on a certain level, I was very open because I was thinking ‘Hey, it’s a DOG, an animal, not a human being.’ When the dog I had from age 17 to my thirties died, I completely lost it, was crying like a baby.
It just slips in and gets you, I think. People are so much more complicated, and you have many opportunities to think about your relationship with them, to work through it. A dog is just there, and is what it is, and you enjoy it, and then when it’s gone, you’re startled because all that positive stuff has no negative to it.
Sorry to ramble, you just got me thinking.
You didn’t ramble at all; your points were cogent and poignant.
I think that in my case, there was the added factor that my parents were both very old (Dad was 82; Mom was 87) and were devout Christians (which meant that I know even now that the separation is only temporary).
For eleven wonderful years, Baron was my constant companion. Friends and fiancees came and went. Jobs changed. And the vicissitudes of life continued apace. But, Baron was always there, providing unconditional love, laughs, and many a lesson on how to ignore life’s pain and embrace its beauty.
Then, one day, totally unexpectedly, he was gone. And the void persists.
This “Iowa First” PR thing has disintegrated into a mess with Iowa coming out looking like a house of freaks at the carnival. Maybe when the gd paulnuts have finally vanished from our collective memory, Iowa can return to appearing like the sane stable place we assumed it was.
It’s amazing how much ink is being devoted to the Iowa caucuses, and more amazing how Iowa will mean absolutely nothing 2 weeks later.
You know there’s a lotta $$$ in wasting ink, 813. -:)
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