Posted on 04/14/2012 4:35:57 PM PDT by CutePuppy
He was rubbing it in everybody's face that an old coot like him could get somebody like her. No matter how God awful she looked.
This doesn't make any sense. If Callista really looked "God awful," how would it be that "he was rubbing it in everybody's face"? And do you suggest he should not have appeared with his wife at the political events but rather should have left her behind? And for which particular reason - being "God awful" or being "too young and too beautiful"?
I think your statement is, at the very least, subjective, projective, unworthy and, by accounts of most people who know and have met Callista, simply untrue and offensive.
Newt would bring the ever Lurking Calista with him and she was the cause of divorce # 2.
Are you really so blinded by hate that you have no compunctions about repeating and even magnifying the thoroughly disproved, debunked, refuted old lies sprung by the vile liberal media and propagated by the sclerotic GOP establishment?
If you really want to educate yourself on the facts, let's separate them from hateful fiction.
First, Callista is no more "Lurking" near her husband at the events than any other candidate's wife, be it Ann Romney or Karen Santorum.
Second, Newt met Callista for the first time and started dating her in 1993, 6 years after he was legally separated in 1987 from his estranged runaway wife #2, Marianne Ginther Gingrich (who chose to keep that name after the divorce) so Callista could not possibly have been the reason or cause for their separation and eventual divorce. Gingrich has been with Callista for more than 18 years, and happily married to her since 1999, after he resigned from Congress and finalized the bitter drawn-out divorce from Marianne, which she wouldn't grant him in 1994 when he was busy executing the Second Republican Revolution / Gingrich Revolution working to take over the Congress and pushing through the Congress and the vetoes the Contract With America. Callista, not Marianne, was with him through the trials and tribulations of that exciting and turbulent time, and 18 years together with her (more than 12 years in marriage) is much longer and happier than so many marriages are today. For the sake of the family Newt later converted to life-long faith of Callista, Catholicism.
Details / Refs:
Gingrich: If it comes to a shutdown, the GOP should stick to its principles - FR post #104, 2012 February 12
Gingrich admits ABC claim was false - FR post #32 / WSJ, No-Fault Newt, by James Taranto, 2012 January 20
The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich (1995: Marianne Promised To "Undermine Everything" For Newt) - FR post #143, 2012 January 18 / PBS/VF, by Gail Sheehy, 1995 September
Romney Must Get Personal Over Bain Capital Attacks - FR, posts #21, #36, #42, #3, 2012 January 12
Gingrich, he said, came back to Georgia to find his home emptied out. Browning said the pair maintained separate residences for six years ..... < snip >
Things happen in marriage, it doesn't always work out between two people, no matter how wonderful or horrible they might otherwise be. Rush Limbaugh is on his fourth marriage, to a much younger woman from a prominent Democratic family, he has no children, yet how many would question his conservative credentials, including being pro-life, pro-family and pro-marriage? Reagan was divorced and remarried when he became President, yet he's been one of the best pro-life and pro-family Presidents.
Newt has good relationship with his first wife Jackie (who wasn't dying from cancer and wasn't served divorce papers when she was in the hospital - another debunked liberal lie, picked up by Newt's detractors) and he and Callista have great relationship with his daughters and grandchildren. Instead of being bitter about this, we should be happy for them, just like we are for Karen Santorum who made her share of mistakes in her youth, but found a good path and good marriage.
Also notice that some of the most ardent supporters of Newt on FR are women. So much for the "gender gap" that many so-called "conservatives" keep warning us about Newt becoming a nominee... How is this "gender gap" working out for Mitt Romney so far in national polling? Never overestimate the "well-meaning warnings" as usually they are just a case of "reverse psychology" in action.
He was delusional to think he could get the evangelicals with that approach.
Also completely inaccurate.
In reality, the evangelical "leaders" have been very split about Newt and Rick, and then, as usual, chose poorly, in favor of "wear it on the sleeve" but poorly prepared, underfunded and unorganized candidate who had no chance to win but possibly get just enough support to either get "promoted" himself to VP slot or (if he becomes unviable as campaign unfolds) to push Romney to choose an evangelical "family values" candidate, à la Bush-Quayle ticket. Grassroots evangelical support can sometimes provide the margin of victory (slim, near miss Electoral College victories by George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004) but, in itself, is not enough to win national elections or elect a candidate that does not meet "GOPe Seal of Approval."
Bob Vander Plaats of Iowa, just like he did with Huckabee in 2008, endorsed Santorum, who was then polling at 2%, despite Newt providing Plaats' organization with $150K that were crucial to the successful ousting of three pro-gay-marriage Iowa Justices. And while Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and James Dobson also endorsed Santorum, it took three rounds of voting to decide the "official endorsement" between Newt and Rick, with many other evangelical leaders either absent or openly individually endorsing Newt after this "consensus vote" at the Pressler Ranch near Houston, just before SC primary. Tim and Beverly LaHaye (Chair of Concerned Women of America), Jim Garlow, Don Wildmon and others also endorsed Newt, although they didn't actively campaign for him the way Dobson, Plaats, Perkins and Bauer did for Santorum.
From Gingrich: Christian Conservatives on My Side - RC, by Janie Lorber, 2012 January 17
"We think it's unfortunate that, for whatever reason, that it got labeled an endorsement," former Rep. J.C. Watts (Okla.) said. "Those who went in supporting Newt Gingrich came out supporting him more strongly." One Gingrich supporter at the meeting called the process a "hatchet job," and several attendees described scathing personal attacks, including references to the bad optics of a potential first lady — Callista Gingrich — who had once been the ex-Speaker's mistress. Others said several Gingrich supporters mistakenly left before the final round of voting. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... When presented with a choice between two candidates in the final round of voting, 85 of the participants voted for Santorum and 29 voted for Gingrich, a victory that Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, initially described as a "strong consensus." He walked back that characterization after a group of Gingrich supporters went public with concerns that it was not a consensus at all.
Look where Dobson, Perkins, Plaats and Bauer are now - they are reduced to going hat in hand to Romney camp / GOPe who will most likely treat them like Clinton did Sister Souldja.
The unprecedented amount of money and extraordinary lies and ruined "conservative" reputations, that it took to assault Gingrich in Florida, by entire GOPe, when they / Romney were on the verge of losing to the only representative Tea Party conservative remaining there showed that GOPe wants Tea Party to occupy the same place within the GOP structure that the social / "family values" conservatives do now - a reliable vote by a "minority" that "has nowhere else to go" - basically the same exact role that the blacks, Jews, GLBT, "women" and other "minorities" represent for the establishment of the Democrat party. It was a fight for survival for GOPe, against a small(er) government, Reagan conservatives Tea Party movement.
If we don't unite behind Newt, the Tea Party will be just like evangelicals - a few minority "local" groups that are only paid a lip service by GOPe on the national level. That may be just fine with some evangelical "leaders" - just like the blacks got the "first black President" Bill Clinton and now the first African-American (literally, Kenyan-American) President, the evangelicals might get another "compassionate conservative" like Bush-43. Where does it leave the country and the rest of us?
Evangelicals have simply been used by the GOPe to split the Tea Party vote, by providing them a "true conservative" alternative in the form of Santorum. For instance, there was never an attempt to intimidate or negotiate a cut off of Foster Friess' SuperPAC funds that provided just enough of a lifeline for Santorum's campaign, unlike pulling all stops to get Sheldon Adelson stop donations to SuperPAC for Gingrich, or planting various false stories about the funds cut just before the states' primaries (thus diverting votes of supposedly "strategic" voters from Gingrich to Romney or Santorum).
(BTW, as an aside, the reason for Adelson not favoring Rick has nothing to do with his religious or social views - Vegas is a union town, casinos and restaurants there have had problems with several unions for decades, so the record of historically cozy relations of Santorum with unions is anathema to Vegas businessmen. There are large patches of prime real estate off the Strip in Vegas that have been for sale for a long time that nobody wants to buy and develop, but Adelson's Las Vegas Sands and Sands Cotai Central is opening another $5B casino in Macau, and plans to spend $35B over 9 years to build casinos and resorts in Spain, Macau and elsewhere in Asia - sales and profits are substantially higher per square foot overseas than in the unionized and overregulated U.S. / Vegas casinos).
Unfortunately, the entire Santorum's / evangelicals campaign plan was based entirely on trying to get Newt's votes and Newt out of the race, even though everybody understood that he would be crushed by Romney immediately after, one on one, even as Gingrich kept nearly publicly saying (to no avail for mathematically challenged) that he sees this as a fight to deny Romney most delegates rather than just "winning" the states while ceding delegates to Romney because Santorum didn't even have the required delegates in several states:
From Santorum, Paul look past Nevada caucuses - WPVI-TV, 2012 February 04
..... Santorum's strategy has been to bloody Gingrich, outlast his one-time ally and then emerge as the eventual alternative to front-runner Romney. He also looked to have a strong showing Tuesday in Missouri, which is having a non-binding primary that lacks Gingrich's name on the ballot. Santorum said he hoped the head-to-head matchup with Romney would change the narrative of his sagging fortunes. ..... < snip > MONTROSE, Colo. (AP) - February 4, 2012 (WPVI) -- Rick Santorum said Saturday he wants to "endanger" rival Newt Gingrich while presidential rival Ron Paul claimed to have "reason to be optimistic" heading into Tuesday's contests as both Republican hopefuls peered ahead past the Nevada caucuses that handed both defeat. ..... < snip >
From Santorum refuses to bow despite another loss - WPVI-TV, 2012 February 05
He no longer has a national campaign headquarters; technically, he calls a post office box in Pennsylvania his base camp. His inner circle is seldom in the same location. His campaign manager is a New Hampshire consultant. His deputy campaign manager is Iowa-based and was only recently named to that role in an official capacity. His senior political adviser runs a firm in South Carolina and calls it home. ..... < snip >
Santorum is banking on Gingrich collapsing under Romney's withering criticism, leaving Santorum in the coveted and fluid role of the leading conservative alternative to Romney. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Santorum has little money and virtually no momentum. He's trailing badly in national polls. He's had trouble getting on ballots in Virginia and Indiana. And he has essentially no staff in upcoming states - much less anything resembling the national operations his rivals are running.
Whoever thought that this may be a winning strategy against GOPe was nuts and had not learned the lessons of Huckabee 2008 run, when there wasn't even a fraction of money and the entire GOPe machine deployed against him like there was against Gingrich this year. Evangelicals played right into Romney / GOPe hands by insisting on "endorsing" and actively working for the "more perfect" single issue conservative as opposed to the supposedly "flawed" conservative.
To the delight of GOPe, it finally gave them an alternative to Newt - the race has turned from Anybody-But-Romney into Anybody-But-Gingrich. (Alinsky's rule #12 - "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.")
"The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy" - Friedrich Nietzsche
All they had to do now was keep Santorum's campaign on "life support" and ignore Gingrich as if he didn't exist in the race, except for ratcheting up the pressure on Adelson to cut off the funds to SPAC and keeping to mock Gingrich within the media and only repeatedly asking him when he is going to drop out (Alinsky's Rule #13 - "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.") to shut down his message and antagonize the voters against him within the party, similar to what they've done to Newt ever since he became the Speaker and to Palin since she became a VP candidate.
Newt has always been pro-life, unlike Mitt Romney who has been [s]electively pro-choice or pro-life when it suited him politically, or even Rick Santorum who has been pro-choice earlier in his life, before he married and ran for Congress (apparently, some early mistakes in life but not the life circumstances of the others could be forgiven by some evangelical leaders).
Newt was also an adopted child, an Army brat, having to move from place to place often, not experiencing or knowing much about love in his youth, and marrying very young and having two children in his 19 years long first marriage, yet at that time he also accomplished getting Master and PhD degrees in history and becoming a college professor. Yet he never plays up his humble and difficult upbringing. In contrast, Rick Santorum's stump speech starts with his grandfather in the "Pennsylvania mining town" while he conveniently avoids mentioning that he was basically a child of relative privilege (his father was a chief of psychology department, mother a chief of nurses in the local Butler, PA, VA hospital) so getting him a good education (MBA and JD) was not such a burden for his family.
I am not trying to dump on Rick, who is a good family man, and whose family has seen their share of tragedy and disappointments. But many of the people who were voting for Santorum or Romney somehow allowed themselves to be taken in by lies about Newt and not question them, progressing to hating Newt with a passion. I am just trying to show that if, in their minds, Rick and his family are deserving of Christian or human forgiveness for their transgressions, then certainly, by all means, so does Newt and his family.
Nobody gave Newt anything in life, he had to work very hard for everything he achieved in life, and despite all the hardship, he has a record of conservative accomplishments that very few people can boast or even dream about, both in public life and post-public entrepreneurial life. That's why he is hated, envied and, just like Ronald Reagan, reviled by the lunatic left and the comfortable establishment right.
"If you have no enemies, you are not important enough to have made any" - Alexandre Dumas
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit" - Ronald Reagan
Hume is just another excuse for Newt in a long line of excuse's.
As far as the old and tired meme of "excuses" and "whining" by Gingrich goes, if you ask for and are given an explanation of certain facts, you can always label anything you don't like an "excuse" or "whine" to ignore and avoid dealing with the substance of an explanation. That, in itself, is a poor, childish excuse for attempting to "win" the argument the substance of which you are unable to refute but unwilling to accept.
More on Newt’s conservative accomplishments...Mitt is not even in Newt’s class. Welfare reform
A central pledge of President Bill Clinton’s campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton Administration appeared to be more concerned with universal health care and no details or a plan had emerged on welfare reform. Gingrich accused Clinton of stalling on welfare, and proclaimed that Congress could pass a welfare reform bill in as little as 90 days. Gingrich insisted that the Republican Party would continue to apply political pressure to the President to approve welfare legislation.[46]
In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that Clinton vetoed,[47] Gingrich and his supporters pushed for passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was intended to reconstruct the welfare system. The act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government’s responsibilities. It instituted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamp eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and recipient work requirements.[48]
Gingrich negotiated with Clinton by offering accurate information about his party’s vote counts and by persuading conservative Republicans to vote for it.[47] The bill was signed into law on August 22, 1996.
In his 1998 book Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Gingrich encouraged volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership by low-income families. Gingrich praised Habitat for Humanity for sparking the movement to improve people’s lives by helping them build their own homes.[49]
wiki
Go back to Nov. 1, 2011. The only real surprise of the campaign so far was the moderate, but not enough, “surge” of Santorum. Everything else was entirely predictable from the start, including the lingering Newt-Paul people hanging on.
Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Com is for Romney; the National Right to life endorsed Romney and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian legal group, and a supporter of Mr. Romney, said the “stark contrast” between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama in their visions of America would energize evangelicals as well as attract independent voters.
There are others!
She was on mark levin's show, I think, 2 days ago, and was congratulating him for staying in the fray and endorsing Romney, when "we" didn't get our First Choice.
If you didn't hear, Levin came on the day after Santorum dropped out, and said "we conservatives have to work together and pull out a victory for Romney."
It was an amazing thing to hear, to say the least.
Sarah seems to have gotten quite good with her little teases for Newt, support Newt rage against the machine, If I were voting in SC I would vote for Newt, and voting for him in Alaska without campaigning for him or helping him out.
She needs to get on the battlefield instead of sitting on the sidelines with her little winks and tweets. I am totally disappointed in her, she is behaving like a political hack and not a patriot, in my estimation.
Only her fans are so hardcore, they would never demand anything of her, and anything she does is okay with them.
Please don't give up on Newt...
Please try to help in any way you can...
www.newt.org
www.newt.org/donate
www.grassroots.newt.org Newt's brand new grassroots site for volunteers and supporters. It rocks!
www.newtsnetwork.com National phone banks where you can make calls for Newt, they provide a script and everything.
Whomever is running against nobama will win in 2012. That is precisely why the GOPe was so determined to keep out anyone who might upset their apple (access and control of the money)cart and knew Mitt, being one of them, would protect that interest above all others.
Right on
GO NEWT!!!!
I WILL STAND WITH NEWT ‘TILL THE END.
I understand and sympathize with your sentiments about the UN, but until that obscene and corrupt organization is flushed down the toilet completely - - or at least marginalized to irrelevance - - it IS "influential", and to pretend it isn't is naive.
I don’t believe it was me on this thread calling people names. I just gave my opinion even though I was called moron and other names.
This is an election, not a church service. I propbaly know quite a lot about forgiveness due to struggles in my own life. I did learn that forgiveness doesn’t really come with a promise of elevation to be leader of the country. While a person can be forgiven for personal faux pas, that doesn’t mean there are no consequences to our actions that we end up paying for like it or not.
Perhaps you could repeat your post to some of your Newt supporters as far as treating others who disagree with respect. It does go both ways.
There is no law that says I have to respect Newt’s political history. While he is a good debater at times, he also has some past that is not very conservative. I really do not like his personality either. Sorry, I just don’t.
No doubt. My statement was, do not include THIS evangelical in that lineup, nor those in my circle. I was astonished to find out how many were as determined against Romney as I am.
This is a time of sifting. Those who are endorsing Willard have gone over to the tophet on the right, because it is supposed to be a kinder, gentler tophet than the one one the left. Left or right, each is a tophet, and they will have their reward for going there.
I noticed that you and your friends aren’t in that group. I am just stunned that some of the evangelical leaders are..I don’t trust Mitt because of his huge flip flops on being pro choice. Honestly, I don’t trust him on anything
Good question.
Spoken like somebody who was in a drug-induced coma between 1994 and 1998.
“PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THE GOP E AND THE EVANGELICALS CAN FORGIVE MITT ROMNEY FOR BEING PRO-CHOICE SUPPORTING BABY KILLERS BUT CAN’T FORGIVE NEWT HIS DIVORCES?”
They have NOTHING else on Newt’s impeccable conservative record to carp about, so they pile on that. That’s despicable.
In a country where 50% of marriages end by a divorce, the fake indignation is ridiculous. His first wife forgave him, he has excellent relations with his daughters and grand-children, as for his second wife, Marianne, she left him in 1987 emptying the house of furniture and taking away the family car ... While they were separated he met Callista and fell in love with her in 1993 and married her in 2000. It is obvious that he loves her dearly and that they are happy together. The private life should remain just that - private.
Karen Santorum also made mistakes in her youth, but that’s not and should not be an issue. The GOP gossipers should STFU already about Gingrich’s private life as well.
A central pledge of President Bill Clinton’s campaign was to reform the welfare system, adding changes such as work requirements for recipients. However, by 1994, the Clinton Administration appeared to be more concerned with universal health care and no details or a plan had emerged on welfare reform. Gingrich accused Clinton of stalling on welfare, and proclaimed that Congress could pass a welfare reform bill in as little as 90 days. Gingrich insisted that the Republican Party would continue to apply political pressure to the President to approve welfare legislation.[46]
In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that Clinton vetoed,[47] Gingrich and his supporters pushed for passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was intended to reconstruct the welfare system. The act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government’s responsibilities. It instituted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamp eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and recipient work requirements.[48]
Gingrich negotiated with Clinton by offering accurate information about his party’s vote counts and by persuading conservative Republicans to vote for it.[47] The bill was signed into law on August 22, 1996.
In his 1998 book Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Gingrich encouraged volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership by low-income families. Gingrich praised Habitat for Humanity for sparking the movement to improve people’s lives by helping them build their own homes.[49] wiki
Wow - this entire post is great and new info to me - atleast in such concentrated form.
RE "In his 1998 book Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Gingrich encouraged volunteerism and spiritual renewal, placing more importance on families, creating tax incentives and reducing regulations for businesses in poor neighborhoods, and increasing property ownership by low-income families. Gingrich praised Habitat for Humanity for sparking the movement to improve people’s lives by helping them build their own homes."
this is an absolute diamond find - I have been trying to get some resources together to appeal to Santorum supporters after they get a little mourning time, and I am going to check that book out... he has written so many, it is difficult to be familiar with the content of all of them...
Are you familiar with any other Newt stuff that reflects the similarities between him and Santorum re this particular issue, the spiritual realm, because his support is so evangelical and very hard to convince..
THANKS BUNCHES!!
Nothing stuns me at this point. Sicken and appall, yes. But not stun.
Decent people are scared, bullied and driven into irrationality. They have lost all sight of first things, and are willing to do anything to prevent the sky from falling. Several times I have seen posts where people actually say they would vote for Satan if it got rid Obama, as (omitting caps and exclamation points): “nothing could be worse than Obama”. Think about that! A nadir of confusion, hatred and despair. Who is the author of such things? Are there really so few people that see they are being driven by that author? They bend the knee to their doubt and despair. Big mistake. The biggest they could ever make.
God help us. Again, God help us all.
I believe you were in a coma. If you notice, most of the primary voters must agree with me.
Got it? I am done taking the insults. So what? I don’t
agree.
I have never taken drugs and I have taken very few pills most of my life. So I don’t appreciate what you said.
I wish I could agree but can't.Any one of the Republicans who've been running *SHOULD* be able to beat Osama but remember...Bill Ayers's most famous student is gonna have a BILLION dollars to carpetbomb a half dozen swing states with ads that would make a two bit hooker blush but just might work nevertheless.Osama Obama has brought this country to its knees and has done so deliberately.Imagine what damage he could do when he knew that he didn't have to worry about a single voter ever again...or raising a single campaign dollar ever again.
Although it shouldn't be that way I'm convinced that Romney is the only one still in the race who can survive that billion dollar s**tstorm that's in the wind as I type.
The haters are not very bright. One word they latch on and run with an entire rewrite about what Newt Gingrich said (like his speech at the NRA). I think they are Romney supporters. I blame Santos for this mess more than anyone though I don't get up each day hating him like some here at FR do of Newt. Can you image their own lives to have this much hate. They are judging Newt and by doing so will end up with a man who allowed babies to die and same sexes to have special rights.
There is a long list of the Santorum Romney supporters here who have stated that Mitt's policies are exactly what they did not want. They did this to the little babies that are asking for help. I don't think Mitt will be pro life when the libs get through with him. Gay marriage side would have won-their guy from MA carried the agenda first into law. Mitt Romney/Mr. Gay Marriage-You tell me how Christians get out there and applaud this guy at rallies. This entire scheme is hard to watch. Keep up the good work of getting the truth out.
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