Pardon me, I did not invest the time to read your entire post. Brevity is the soul of wit.
To cofidy: No, in 2012, running on a platform highlighting the gay agenda is not a winner, especially from a candidate who drips self righteousness and yet refuses to attack anyone except those on his side.
As Newt said, those interested in promoting the gay agenda should vote Obama.
Next issue please.
Okay, next issue.
From reading many of your posts, I think we fundamentally disagree on whether focusing on moral issues, not just homosexuality but other questions, is a winning strategy. That's leading us to support different candidates, and that's fine — that's what elections are for.
There's a good chance your side is going to win this primary, and if it does, we're moving toward a European style conservative party in which personal morality isn't very important. I will be very unhappy if the result is that many more Republicans start acting in their private life the way Gingrich admits to having acted on the grounds they can get away with it.
However, that's better than a President Romney and a **WHOLE** lot better than our current President Obama. I'm not very happy with any of the choices this year, and Newt Gingrich may end up being the best we can get.
I think I showed in my last point that at least in my Congressional district in conservative rural Missouri, opposition to gay marriage was a key part of a winning strategy that took down a Democrat who in most years would have been untouchable, and replaced him with a Republican whose resume apart from Christian conservative concerns was thin at best. If the Republican Party neglects the social issues part of its base, it's going to have big problems down the road, and maybe in the short-term as well.
57 posted on Monday, January 23, 2012 8:11:46 AM by C. Edmund Wright: “Pardon me, I did not invest the time to read your entire post. Brevity is the soul of wit.”
I understand your point. Sound bites work.
I've also spent too many years listening to liberals accuse conservatives of being incapable of thinking and incapable of sustained rational argument. I'm certainly not accusing you of that, but I won't permit myself to be accused of that, especially knowing that anything I write on Free Republic could come back to bite me years later if I don't explain myself in sufficient detail to be defensible in context.
I suspect on this issue I may agree more with your candidate's approach to political discourse than you do ;-) I do appreciate Newt Gingrich's willingness to present his politics in long-form debates, not just sound bites, though sound bites are definitely important in summarizing complex arguments.