I didn’t mean that we needed to forgive him. I agree with you that in the earthly realm, forgiveness is between the person who harmed, and the person harmed.
I meant a confessional forgiveness from God, something your religion I believe offers as well as mine, though through different mechanisms.
What I think matters to me as a voter is not “forgiveness” but “repentance”. And not just for sins, but similarly a secular “repentance” for supporting bad, non-conservative policies.
I don’t care much what someone did 30 years ago, because people do change. If I understand how they changed, and can believe them, and can see “the fruits” of that repentance, I don’t have a problem with it. Just as I’ve watched people repent and change their lives spiritually, I’ve seen people come to see the error of their ways philosophically. I know several strong pro-life stalwarts who used to support abortion for example.
Gingrich scares me because he seems to have gone more liberal since the 90s, rather than becoming more conservative. There is something with smart, humanities-trained old people like GIngrich that makes them tend to turn into squishy moderates or liberals. The most obvious examples were multiple fairly conservative judicial supreme court appointments that, as they got old and “wise”, turned into flaming liberals.
Worse, I find people who think they are smarter than everybody also assume that whatever they think is “smart” must be correct. They are the hardest to lobby into supporting the right thing (well, maybe true ideologues are a bit harder). They are also smart enough to know how to say the “right” things to convince people to support them.
So I have a fear, because of the three people left being sold as conservatives, Gingrich to me seems most likely to be leading us on, to not mean what he has claimed in his recent conversions, and to become a squishy moderate as President. Perry and Santorum, I think you will get what you hear, it may not be solidly conservative but we already know where the problems are, and I don’t think there are any surprises.
The other thing is that I don’t think Romney has been vetted, and I’m glad we are finally doing it, but Gingrich hasn’t been really vetted much either. We really know little about what he’s been up to the past decade, and I think there’s potential for some game-changing information to come out at the wrong time.
I couldn't agree more.
Who is the man behind the Gingrich mask?