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Posted on 11/18/2011 1:32:48 AM PST by federal__reserve
And there is Gingrich the liberal. “The liberal revulsion toward him obscured how unorthodox — occasionally, how liberal — his conservatism was. The books then and now are full of heresy. He showed a willingness to criticize other Republicans, even Reagan at the height of his popularity. He advocated a health tax on alcohol to discourage drinking — social engineering, it’s called — and imagined government-issued credit cards that would allow citizens to order goods and services directly from the feds. He thought the government should run nutritional programs at grocery stores and give away some foodstuffs free. He was pushing cuts in the defense budget in 1984 and a prototype of President Obama’s cash-for-clunkers program in 1995.”What is noteworthy is not only how liberal are his prescriptions, but how mundanely statist they are.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Santorum FTW!
What if he’d stopped on idea #1 and said that it doesn’t work?
Conservative futurists are not arrogant enough to say what “will” be...unless of course you consider Isaiah to be a conservative futurist. :>)
Bullseye! Awesome post CincyRR.
From another Cincy area conservative.
What if we just stop trying to "incentivize" anything, ESPECIALLY with government?
Any time you appeal to the collective to "fix" problems that are properly the domain of individual responsibility, you are going down the path of the "progressives" who created the mess we are in today.
That ain't conservative.
In a world where each man is responsible for his own house, and government existed to protect the citizens rather than to harvest their substance as if they were livestock (no matter how "enlightened" and "noble" the purpose supposedly served), you wouldn't have any trouble with, say, demographic collapse -- or with material scarcity.
Fat chance of it happening, though. That's the America that the Founding Fathers gave us, but it's long gone.
But it supports life, marriage, and education: all of them conservative values.
Besides, you just shot down that idea without offering a replacement or an adaptation that would make it more “conservative.”
It is called the vetting process, also sometimes called the primaries. We have a habit of doing that in GOP unlike the Kenyan socialist who received almost none of that.
I hope you are right and the conservative side of Newt will take over the other side if he moves into the WH.
Your comment is way to much generality. Some specifics are always a good cement to build a solid brick house.
You would prefer our potential nominee to be vetted and receive the proverbial anal exam after he/she is nominated?
I much prefer this is done before the knight receives the nomination.
Easily the best one-liner I've read at Free Republic.
You have a future in political poetry.
Wait!
Poetry is left wing by nature, too!
No, you are not missing anything. We had a previous disagreement on the subject of Rubio’s eligibility.
I have noticed that the tendency on these threads is not to extoll the virtues of the candidate of the poster's choice, but to throw mud at every other candidate.
Throwing mud is easy. It takes little thought. All one has to do is to pull some quote out of context and then call the candidate a RINO and you get praise from all quarters here on Free Republic.
The problem as I see it is that the problem with the Federal Government is systemic and quite frankly it is going to take someone with an intimate knowledge of the system to begin the process of fixing it. Gingrich knows the system. On Free Republic that makes him THE problem. But in reality of all the candidates he is the most likely to be able to FIX the problem.
It didn't happen overnight and it's not going to get fixed in my lifetime. But sending someone in to fix the system who has no clue how the system works is not smart in my opinion.
This is one of the principle reasons I am currently leaning in the direction of Newt.
My Mother taught me a long time ago, “If you cannot say something good about some one don’t say anything::”” Always seemed to work for me.
Conservatism in America is people minding their own affairs, and government limited to a select few functions. But we have been brought up in a world where every problem gets the same sort of response: a general dash toward the control panel of the collective machine and an argument over this control or that should be set. Nobody questions whether the machine should even be used.
The original progressives supported all those values which you call conservative, the thing that made them dangerous was their determination to empower government to support those aims. Once that power is vested in government, it is lost to the people, and we don't get it back.
You want me to respond with an alternative suggestion of what the collective should do, but I refuse to play on that field; the other side has marked it so that only their goals count.
A good point.
However, there are legitimate concerns with Newt. He threw Paul Ryan "under the bus". Paul Ryan is one of the premier forward thinking legislators we have. He is the "go to guy" when we look for solutions to our fiscal problems. Newt also sided with the Pub party candidate, who then switched parties after she lost, over the inexperienced Tea Party supported candidate. Newt was supportive of a health insurance mandate as recently as May of this year. IOW, Newt has at best a mixed record on the issues and has shown a willingness to harm conservatives in the past.
All that being said, the thing that works to Newt's benefit is actually the conservatives who he has hurt in the past. The Tea Party conservatives are much less inclined to submit to blind following of a leader if it runs against their principals. So if Newt is elected he won't have the free reign POTUS have had in the past.
He's not my first choice, but if it comes down to Newt v. Romney. I go for Newt.
BTW, I look at Newts history and like Perry even more. Newt is surging because he has been so good in the debates, but his history is less than stellar. I'll take Perry's history.
I think we are starting to see a shift as we are getting closer to actually voting. Newt has shot up in the polls because he is articulate and is as sharp as a razor when dealing with the lib media. He has a lot of flaws and is hardly a small govt conservative but he is better than Romney because he is good on the social issues and the base knows it. Also, the candidate that can respond well to the negatives will probably end up being our nominee.
I think as the field of candidates narrows and all the negatives are well known the candidates electability in the general election improves. My hope is that Perry bounces back in SC & FL. He is the small govt conservative in the race.
The healthcare mandate is just one example. By mandating that I buy insurance, he means that I'm too dumb to chose an alternate method of reducing my medical cost risk. By mandating a choice of policies, he's mandating that I pool my risks with others so that nobody (other than the government) needs to show compassion. That's a huge moral problem. You train everybody to not worry about the next guy, as the government mandate has them covered. But the mandate will eventually cover only those risks the government deems worthy.
He also suggested once that banks should not be required to show interest they earn from loans as income. I cannot ascribe any form of error to this idea, it is simply intellectually corrupt, and a sell out to the bankers.
He jumped into the climate debate without understanding anything about the science. This was stupid, and the only reason to do so was some supposed political advantage.
In summary, he's a very bright, but rudderless politician.
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