Posted on 01/27/2012 3:18:48 PM PST by Timber Rattler
We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan, and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.) To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stanlin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.
But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 that didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.
I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama. Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate. The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.
As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?
- Sarah Palin
You are right...the damage was done before the debate. Notice Blitzer didnt give Newt a chance to defend himself on that very issue. Rush claimed to be in a state of confusion yesterday. How do we beat the media on their “timed” smears?
Rush has been supporting Mitt since he ran last time, and the debate last night was all important to the Mitt supporters, that is what gave us “Bloody Thursday”, a day that will live in infamy.
Nonsense. I say that as a daily listener who did listen on Thursday. I will grant you that he did not condemn the claims utterly and out of hand, but he certainly was skeptical to the point of being dubious that the "quotations" attributed to Newt were not taken out of context. He cited Nancy's quote about Reagan having passed the torch to Newt, for example.I can understand that you would like Rush to go "all in" for Newt, and do it yesterday. But Rush and Palin are similar, IMHO, in respecting Newt's limitations without having much in the way of illusions about Romney. Rush cheered Santorum, for example, for raining all over Romney's suggestion that ObamaCare was nothing to be angry about.The idea that Rush has been pushing Romney is no better founded than the conceit that Newt was anti-Reagan back in the 80s. Both hogwash, one no more or less so than the other.
I listen to Rush’s entire show every single day and you are full of it. He has evenly dished out both kudos and criticism of all candidates. If he has been uneven in his criticism of any of them, it’s Ron Paul. You sound like one of those loons who hears a Rush comment out of context and third-hand and goes flying off the handle.
I expect to see Rush's Gulf Stream 550 on eBay tomorrow, if you are leaving his audience.
Who other than Rush who's occasionally walks among the powerful insiders, tells you how the Party Elite despise us?
Oh darn! It doesn’t work, but thank you very much anyway!!!
I know. It’ll be the damn yankees that moved South to Florida and brought their NorthEastern politics with them.
The establishment and their activists have decided to go scorched earth, slash and burn against the conservative base. They have partnered up with the liberal media to remove anyone who is remotely conservative and threatening to win the nomination.
Mark Levin bucks conservative media trend, comes to Gingrich’s defense
LOL, yeah, that's it, he is neutral (which if true, makes him a Romney supporter), except for Ron Paul.
Rush sure wasn't neutral on Bloody Thursday.
Isn’t it amazing how leftists destroy one state, and move to another state to help implement the same policies?
Off Topic: tatt, I swear, in both your posts and your tagline ... you are a FReeper after my own heart! :^)
Completely disagree...this is pure genius. How long does an endorsement really last? This way she can keep giving the endorsement...and if Newt goes off the deep end she can easily pivot to Santorum.
I hope that you were with us in the 2008 cycle as we hard core anti-Romney posters were fighting a losing battle, about the fact that Rush was supporting Romney.
‘’I think the one candidate of the three still out there on our side that matter... in saying who more closely embodies all three legs of this conservative stool, you’d have to say that it’s Mitt Romney. There’s actually no choice in the matter.’’ (Monday, Feb 4, 2008)
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020408/content/01125109.guest.html.guest.html
“...national radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who endorsed Romney on Tuesday [February 5, 2008]”
Newsmax - Feb 6, 2008
(archived page — original link expired)
Cannibal assumes RINOs and conservatives are the same species. This is false. The RINO is shares the same genus as the democrat.
As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?
This week was “Newtbashingpoluzia” week.
I have to admit that thought has crossed my mind once or twice. Because this whole sack of crap is going to explode at some point. But I had never considered the GOP might be consciously trying to throw an election. It sure seems that way though.
YES! I watched the rush from the Easterners to Southern California. Those people brought their liberal politics with them and their bad driving.
Perhaps this little guy could help.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2838980/posts
Toddler Chews Head Off Snake
Sarah’s statement is brilliant. Mandatory reading.
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