Newt vs. Newt

But listening can be tough sometimes when you’re an analyst and a commentator, and people around the country – listeners, readers, media, candidates, causes, businesses, etc. – come to you to find out why things are happening and what may happen next. Analysis and commentary is one of the few things in life I’m really good at. My car expertise begins and ends with changing a tire. Any toy that comes with the phrase “some assembly required” my kids immediately take to my wife. And when that much-anticipated Zombie apocalypse finally happens I’m going to have to heavily rely upon my gun-toting “doomsday prepper” friends to survive.

But analysis and commentary I can do. It’s how I provide for my family, and since it puts food on my kids’ table regularly somebody must think I’m pretty decent at it. Yet this time I swung and missed.

I am 39-years old so a little young for the Reagan era. I wasn’t legally able to obtain a driver’s license yet when Reagan left office. Like many my age, my conservatism was actually honed by listening to Rush Limbaugh and cheering on Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution of 1994. In my era, Gingrich is a transformative figure. He’s still the only man alive to win a national election on conservative principles. He played a part in establishing much of the conservative infrastructure we take for granted nowadays. There are only two authors I ever sought autographed books from: Bo Schembechler and Gingrich.

Yet despite my fan boy crush, I am well aware of his peccadilloes. He’s on his third marriage. He lost the Speaker’s gavel because of a caucus revolt against his leadership. He inexcusably backed Dede Scozzafava. He rightly stood up against the TARP, and then reversed course and backed what I believe may be the most criminal legislation in American history. These are just some of the reasons why several people close to me told me I was making a mistake when I endorsed him for president during the 2012 primary.

Yet I pointed to the fact he is one of the few national figures in the GOP that has the wit and knowledge to effectively communicate what we believe in today’s short-attention-span-society, which I believe is very important to our movement going forward. He was the only candidate last year that was really speaking to what I believe is the biggest threat to liberty and morality in America—judicial supremacy (which is really the judicial oligarchy Jefferson warned us about). And I was also impressed with the way Gingrich was willing to speak openly about his past moral transgressions, including one very blunt joint appearance on my radio show with Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. As a Christian I’m a sucker for a good redemption story.

However, there’s a reason I have often compared Gingrich to King David in the Bible, beyond the marriage infidelity both have in common. Both were also extraordinarily God-gifted leaders whose legacies were tarnished by their slack of self-discipline. Both were often at their best when pursuing power and at their worse once they obtained it.

While on vacation I was reminded of that comparison when I saw Gingrich say that Republicans should accept the destruction of marriage as “inevitable.” As a historian Gingrich should know better. He should know that marriage and free market economics are the essential societal bedrock components of western civilization, without which liberty isn’t possible. I know firsthand he should know that, because he has communicated right to my face that he does.

So which is it, Newt? Do you want to defend marriage or not? Those words do not read like someone who thought destroying marriage was “inevitable?” Did you mean them?

For the past week Gingrich has been rightly urging conservatives to fight the fiscal cliff tax increase. Maybe Gingrich should be urging us to surrender instead, being that our slide towards bankrupt statism seems “inevitable” after all. As a father with three small children at home, I’m looking for leaders who will fight to stop our “inevitable” destruction as a free republic, not come to grips with it. Especially on an issue like marriage, that is 31-4 (89%) at the ballot box.

Gingrich was arguably the most gifted political figure of his era. He could’ve been an American Churchill. Check that, he should have been. Despite all that he has accomplished (which I’m thankful for) his legacy still includes a waste of potential. He could’ve led us out of the wilderness. Instead we’re still circling the mountain (or the drain).

Several of you warned me about this, which is why despite his obvious gifts Gingrich failed not once but twice to coalesce conservatives when he was the presidential frontrunner. Some of you were once bitten and twice shy. Now I get it.

I still have a soft spot for Newt, and he’s still one of the few politicians I’ve met whose intellect I actually respect. But that’s not enough to believe he should hold the highest office of this land. If someone won’t defend marriage, the oldest institution in God’s created order, then what can you count on them to defend when it’s hard?

Those of you that warned me were right. I was wrong. This time I should’ve listened to your analysis.

He is wrong about the debt limit. Increasing the debt limit has almost nothing to do with the bills we have incurred. It has to do with the bills we will incur in the future. Which is the whole point.

If you get into serious financial trouble, and try to work out your debt problems, you can’t fix it by running to the credit card companies and getting them to give you a higher credit limit. Instead, you put together a spending plan that shows how you will pay off your debt.

The media now sells a fiction that the downgrade of our credit rating was because the republicans “played games” with the debt limit. But the fact is, we were downgraded because in the end, the new debt limit bill did NOT show that we were able to control our spending, and therefore indicated that we would ignore our debt limit in the future, meaning our debts would be less likely to be repaid.

The simple fact is, any current creditor wants to know you will not simply keep borrowing more money, because that indicates you will never get around to paying things back.

Newt falls into the trap of agreeing with Obama about “paying the debts we incurred already”. Thus buying into the notion that a spending bill, once passed, is just like having already spent all the money that bill authorized.

The 14th amendment guarantees that the president WILL pay all creditors as their debt becomes due, and will pay all interest payments on-time. (It does NOT say that we will increase our debt limit, it says that the debt we ALREADY incurred will be faithfully dispositioned).

So if we refuse to increase the debt ceiling, ALL current debt will be unaffected; what will be changed is that we will have to limit spending to what we take in taxes.

BTW, the debt limit will NOT SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT. It will limit government spending to the amount of revenue collected. So it would be a “half-government-shutdown” at most, since our current tax revenue is between 1/2 and 2/3rds of the total spending.

And since we are about to hit April 15th, the actual tax revenue in the short term will be much higher than average — there may even be a month where we collect more in revenue than we spend.

So, contrary to Newt Gingrich’s ridiculous assertion, the debt limit is EXACTLY the vehicle to use. If I were the republicans, I might even pass a bill that increases the debt limit by a certain amount each month, equal to the projected deficit from their proposed spending cut plan; that way, Obama can decide whether to simply NOT sign that bill, forcing a bigger crisis, or sign that bill and have more money to spend.

Note that by doing so, there’d be no logical reason for the senate not to pass the bill, since it wouldn’t preclude a different bill later, and would do nothing but improve the situation for government. Of course, the media would say otherwise.

My thoughts on shutdown will be in the other thread.....

IMHO, Newt probably agrees with much of what you say regarding the debt limit. He is strategically thinking on how best to win the debate in the rigged messaging game that exists in our media environment. If we argue the debt limit, the Dems and their MSM mouthpiece will scream that the full faith and credit of the USA is in jeopardy. And 0bama will say that the Social Security checks of our retirees will be stopped. It doesn't matter that it's not true. The State Run Media will say it's true and therefore it is. It sucks but it is what it is.

Therefore, Newt is searching for messaging that DOESN'T get caught in that losing trap. Newt is playing chess while you insist on checkers.

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