Posted on 01/03/2012 10:42:50 AM PST by nickcarraway
Incensed by the negative ads that have spoiled his campaign, Newt Gingrich recently complained he’d been “Romneyboated,” an allusion to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads helped derail Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.
John O’Neill, the swift-boat captain who led the anti-Kerry movement, is none too pleased with the comparison. “To me, it reflects Gingrich’s very cynical hypocrisy, which he shares with Kerry,” O’Neill tells National Review Online. That hypocrisy “is the reason why he can appear with [Nancy] Pelosi in climate-change ads and why he can take money from Freddie Mac: If you’re part of the political class, [you believe] you’re free from any public scrutiny of what you’ve done.”
O’Neill has been disappointed with Gingrich “ever since the debacle in the late 1990s, when he came close to squandering a Republican majority in the House and engaged personally in conduct that really hurt the Republican party.” The ex-speaker’s recent behavior hasn’t been much better. “I was shocked by his labeling [Paul] Ryan’s plan ‘right-wing social engineering,’” O’Neill says. “It’s deeply cynical conduct and hypocrisy. He has much more in common with Kerry than with any of the other Republican candidates — maybe not in ideology, but in other things that count.”
Indeed, O’Neill sees many similarities between the old pols. “Kerry is an extremely cynical guy whose policies change like a kaleidoscope, and Newt Gingrich is just the same. He’s a constantly changing kaleidoscope with one policy idea after another.” To Republicans, O’Neill advises, “You select a president based on the entire person, because the truth is, the policy issues are very likely to be different in a year than they seem to be right now.”
O’Neill concludes, “I would be really proud to win or lose with any of the other Republican candidates. But I would be ashamed if Gingrich were the candidate.”
John O'Neil still has plenty of time to write a new book!
Ping!
Rightly so. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth reported accurately and corrected the record about Kerrys service.
Gingrich fell into a media trap by using this metaphor to suggest unfair treatment, just as Kerry did.
Just wait until the rabid Newt supporters start bashing O’Neill....
So you agree with Gingrich, Kerry, and the media, that the Swiftboat verterans smeared Kerry in 2004?
The “slam” is in using the Dimocrat perjoritive that “Swiftboating” and that the Swift Boat vets were telling lies about Kerry. When, in fact, the Swift Boat Vets were telling the truth about how Kerry was telling lies about his service on the Swift Boats. This is another case of the public being taken in by a deliberate mis-use of a term.
Similar to how the MSM decided to show dimocrat heaevy states as blue (implying freedom) and Republican heavy states as red (implying communism).
It wasn’t a trap. Only someone who sees the world through the media’s lens wold say something like that. Someone should ask Gingrich on the record if he voted for Kerry.
Yeah, but, we are told over and over again that Newt’s the man, he will make minced meat out of the MSM, he’s so smart no body can win it but Newt yeahhhhhhhhh !
O’Neill = Rombot
I don’t think there’s any trap or misstep on Newt’s part, there’s just a bunch of dipsticks looking to get Mitt Romney nominated.
I am constantly amazed at how easily people get indignant over something someone supposedly said, I thought it was mostly Liberals who did this, guess not.
Gingrich didn’t “slam” veterans. He was referring to a tactic used to discredit someone, when they sometimes use falsehoods to descredit you. I certainly am no Kerry supporter, but the man served in Vietnam and it only takes one bullet on the first day to get killed. Did he embellish his record? Of course, but he was there. Can’t say the same for the majority of today’s politicians of the same age. And that also includes Gingrich, who I support for president. I feel in no way shape or form was Newt Gingrich putting down veterans. Sounds to me like O’Neil has never been a Newt supporter. Wonder what he think about the others that avoided service in Vietnam.
Gingrich = Rombot
I always took the swiftboat term to mean an effective negative ad campaign. It doesn’t imply whether the ads were true or not, just that they were negative and worked.
The idea that O’Neill bashes Newt for supposedly flip-flopping but would be okay with Romney as a nominee means he has no credibility. He either hasn’t looked at Romney’s record or is being disingenuous and has some other reason to not back Gingrich.
Newt has been extremely consistent on his views and policies over a long period of time. The only thing I’m aware that he changed his mind on was the individual mandate. He worked with Pelosi and Sharpton to promote his views, not because he agreed with theirs. Trying to work with the opposition is a necessary and admirable tactic to get things done. Some people on FR seem to think the opposition is satanic. No, they’re simply wrong, but we can work with them on the portions of their views that are correct. That’s how Newt got things done in Congress.
“You select a president based on the entire person, because the truth is, the policy issues are very likely to be different in a year than they seem to be right now.”
O’Neil has stated that he voted for Al Gore in 2000, and Ross Perot in 1996 and also in 1992. While I appreciate what he did regarding Kerry, he is hardly someone I would listen to regarding his political views or his opinion of what Newt meant by what he said.
If the press asked Gingrich a loaded question about being "Borked", would his commenting about it mean he was against Judge Bork?
Get real. This was a deliberate trap Newt fell into. Unfortunately, his enemies are now distorting it to beat him up!
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