Amid Calls to Quit, Gingrich Seems More Subdued (Second in Delegates)

New York Times ^ | March 8, 2012 | TRIP GABRIEL

[Marguerite]

“people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do”

That’s EXACTLY what president Reagan said.

Santorum is against individual freedom, the cornerstone of the American Republic.

[true believer forever]

* Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation’s History and Future, by Newt Gingrich. Integrity Publishers, October 2006. ISBN 978-1-59145-482-3

Rick Santorum doesn’t have a corner on the market in believing there is a place for faith in the public square. I am pretty sure what santorum knows wouldn’t make a half-chapter in Newt’s book. WAKE UP SANTORUM SUPPORTERS! WAKE UP!!

Santorum: “I’m such a conservative”
Romney: “I’m a severe conservative”
Newt: “Here’s what we’re gonna do”

[Gator113]

I am already there. Santorum is never going to get my vote.

I want a president, not a preacher.

GO NEWT......

[true believer forever]

The Alabama GOP is holding a forum on Monday at 5:30 pm with Santorum and Gingrich. So far, neither Willard or Paul has agreed to attend. This could be a great forum to see some serious discussion of conservative ideas. If you feel so moved, please call C-Span and CNN and urge them to cover this forum. I doubt Fox would carry it because Romney likely will not be attending.

C-SPAN Viewer Services/Archives: 877-662-7726

You can call CNN at 4048271500…option 2,2,2 and leaving a message to air the March 1st debate...also www.cnn.com under "contact us" at bottom of te screen u can email this request.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/03/alabama-gop-plans-monday-forum-116738.html

[JediJones]

He said INDICATE that they’ll be held accountable for covering their own health care costs. Sounds good to me. His discussion of the requirement for insurance was just kicking around ideas to a difficult problem. Let’s focus on the health care solutions he’s finalized and posted on Newt.org and not every little topic that came up in a long brainstorming discussion.

[true believer forever]

oops, March 12th debate - NOT March 1.

[JediJones]

It seems to me that the GOP no longer likes, or even wants conservatives.

Dee Dee Benkie, an Indiana Republican party official, said on FOX News this week that Rush and Newt were "he-man woman haters." So you're definitely right that there's a strong streak of RINOs in the party that are coming out in force and showing their true colors for Mittsky.

[JediJones]

It’s hard to see Health Care Savings Accounts as a realistic solution to people being unable to afford medical costs. Those are based on you saving up money to spend on your health care in the future, right? That’s simply not going to help most people pay serious medical bills.

Personally, I don’t see a clear-cut fundamental conservative/liberal divide on issues like health care. The mandate could easily be converted into a tax that does the same thing, in which case we might be able to debate this issue on its practical results rather than on a constitutional basis. Would it be fair to tax everybody, while offering a deduction if they buy their own insurance, and put that money into a pool that would be used to reimburse medical facilities who treat uninsured people? I think that is unquestionably a better situation than we have today where we have freeloaders gaming the system and forcing medical facilities to drive their costs up to cover their losses on those people. Those costs being driven up only affect people with insurance or who pay their bills, not the freeloaders. At least a tax would collect money from the freeloaders along the way too. And again, if you buy insurance, you should be able to deduct that cost and essentially not pay the tax.

[Marguerite]

Newt Gingrich’s “baggage”:

Education

PhD, History, Tulane University, 1971
MA, Tulane University, 1968
BA, Modern European History, Emory University, 1965

Political Experience

Representative, United States House of Representatives, 1979-1999
Speaker, United States House of Representatives, 1995-1998
Chair, Republican National Convention, 1996
Republican Whip, United States House of Representatives, 1989-1994

Professional Experience

Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, present
Founder, Center for Health Transformation, 2003-present
Honorary Chairman, NanoBusiness Alliance, 2000-present
Founder, Gingrich Group, 1999-present
Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1999-present
News and Political Analyst, FOX News Channel, 1999-2011
Guest Professor, Kennesaw State College, September 1993
Professor, History and Environmental Studies, West Georgia College, 1970-1978
Distinguished Visiting Scholar/Professor, National Defense University

Organizations

Chair, American Solutions Political Action Committee, present
General Chair, American Solutions for Winning the Future, present
Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Member, Committee on the Present Danger
Advisory Board Member, Common Good
Co-Founder, Conservative Opportunity Society
Member, Terrorism Task Force, Council on Foreign Relations
Honorary Member, East Cobb Rotary
Advisory Board Member, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Editorial Board Member, Johns Hopkins University Journal, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism
Board Member, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
Founding Member, Project Vote Smart
Founder, Young Republicans Club, Emory University
Former Chairman, GOPAC

[JediJones]

The issue is there IS already a mandate in place, a mandate that hospitals treat people who show up at emergency rooms. But it’s an unfunded mandate. So the funding for that is the missing piece in the equation that has not been addressed, and puts an unfair burden on hospitals and their paying customers.

[true believer forever]

Newt is advancing into the first leg of his Southern Strategy - MS and Alabama. He MUST win both of these states to continue on successfully. Please, this weekend, and through Monday, try to make as many calls as you can into both of those states.

I was on the ground in SC, on the phones, and door to door. There were almost 10,000 calls made in SC the last 2 weeks... and the last 2 or 3 days, you could feel the momentum changing on the phones... Earlier, it was maybe 2 Newts out of 10, and by the day before the vote, it was 8 out of 10 for Newt. You could feel the change, and it happened very quickly in the final 72 hours. Newt went out of his way to salute the phone call and grassroots efforts in SC... please... please... there is still time to call for Newt, and get involved for Newt...

From Newt 2012: friday

Field and Phone Leaders, CALLING ALL HANDS ON DECK!!
Our national phone team has successfully called through the original 18,000 volunteer sign-ups. This has resulted in a refined list of volunteer prospects for all 50 states. In 3 weeks our national call team has increased by 300%, or 50 new people per week.

Our increased call capacity will help us now begin to make calls into “Super Tuesday” states or those close by that can assist and or deploy to active states.
... YOU CAN NOW CHOOSE THE STATE THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO CALL
http://newtsnetwork.com/ (click Make the CAll in upper right hand corner)

NOTE: The list filters itself by time zones. It will not show you California at 10am Eastern Time because that is 7am Pacific Time and too early to call there. Once a state’s call list opens up the state name will be added to the dropdown list for you to call. (And in the reverse, Eastern Time Zones will be removed from the list as the night wears on.)

This new reality will enable us to be highly flexible in how we operate and target prospects for GOTV and or volunteer recruitment.

Please disseminate this information to your call teams and volunteer lists.
Thank you

[SandyInSeattle]

Interesting. I hadn’t been paying attention to the delegate count. To hear the media (and Santorum), you’d think he was nipping on Mitt’s heels. If someone had to get out today, based on delegate count it’s Santorum.

Plus he’s beginning to really annoy me.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[JohnBovenmyer]

I agree that the mandate for free treatment in ERs needs to go, or at least be significantly limited. Charity should be encouraged, but to be charity it must be voluntary! The current situation discourages personal responsibility and shifts care to the most expensive setting. It also encourages unhealthy behaviors. Mandated care can't discriminate against such, care out of pocket or by discretionary charities can if it so chooses. Ron Paul, who's not my candidate, is correct when he recalls how medicine worked prior to medicare and medicaid. The poor did receive medical care and care for the non-poor was less expensive. I've not been practicing that long, but as a fourth generation physician I've heard the tales. I even recall, as a little tyke, my elders discussing the fight over medicare, before the AMA was bought off as an organization.

Health Care Savings Accounts is a binary solution. You save some, tax free, in your account and draw from the account for routine care. In an average or good year the account accrues and gains interest. In a mediocre year it loses, but suffices. In a bad year the high deductible catastrophic insurance half of the solution you've been paying into pays back. Fundamentally, on the average across the population everyone pays for their healthcare, just some more directly than others. The goal is to make the best trade offs between costs and results. As Milton Friedman famously showed that is best achieved when you are spending your own money for your own stuff. The nature of health care is that there is a lot collectively spent on numerous, fairly routine, little things and also a lot spent a few, uncommon, random bad luck things. Health Care Savings Accounts has individuals spending their own money on their own routine medical costs as much as possible. This holds down those costs using priorities set by individual patients. Having individual patients pay the premiums for their catastrophic insurance policies also holds down costs. People will try not to use them unnecessarily to old down their premiums, just like they avoid filing some claims on their auto insurance. The purpose of the catastrophic insurance is to average ones medical costs over your life and avoid cash flow crunches, and to average the costs of bad medical luck related expenses over the population. There may need to be subsidies for the truly disabled or other unfortunates, but even some of that could be provided via charities. On the average across society everyone is still paying for their own health care costs, but for most of those costs they are individually exercising personal cost control. Serious medical bills would be paid, but their cash flow would be averaged over time and over the whole population. No more being blind sided by huge unexpected bills.

The insurance companies could offer different rates based on smoking, weight, etc. - whatever the market would allow. They should offer, and prudent folks should take, some kind of guaranteed insurability rider, for both yourself and any hypothetical future children. Then kids, even those born sick, could be covered and the risks of exotic, terribly expensive, conditions would be averaged across the population.

There is a fundamental conservative/liberal divide here in that maintaining as much control as possible at the individual level, as HSA do, is the conservative position. Letting third parties, be they insurance companies, charities, or government at any level, exercise that control is the liberal policy and is inevitably the more expensive one when all costs are totaled over time and over the population. Individual freedom, conservatism, is more effective AND more cost effective.

HSAs aren't the best solution - no tax breaks for health care and paying for all of it either out of pocket or with out of pocket paid insurance is the economically best policy. Milton Friedman pointed that out more than 40 years ago, IIRC, but he also pointed out then that it wasn't currently politically possible. HSAs are the best option politically possible at this time.

[raybbr]

What next, Brussels sprouts?

Man, I love Brussels sprouts. My sons can't stand to even look at them but I love 'em.