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.
I will not vote for Romney if he is the nominee. However, I will definitely vote for and support Newt if, albeit unlikely at this point, he is the nominee.
On the side, it would have been nice to have had a thread several weeks back titled “To Rick Santorum haters”. Would have been more appropriate.
I’m left trying to figure out why Sarah doesn’t realise that Milt Rominy was the author of the hate Palin campaign. I eamn, if she were to realise that and throw her support and maybe her veep hat in Newt’s ring, we might see a different outcome from what the GOP=e is planning for us!
OK Einstein, who ya gonna vote for in November? And please, don't use that lame statement "anybody but....."
So lets hear it dude!
“I am not so desperate that I will pretend that someone who everyone despised a couple years ago around here is now a staunch Constitutional conservative.”
Couple years ago? 1 year ago he was a rino to many of his current supporters. Truth be told, I hated Santorum for his Toomey back-stab but, like the Newt supporters, got behind the only option left to Romney.
Yes, we are the entire Puppy family...
I am currently tending to the YoungestPuppy and one of the OlderPuppy family members. Some of the friendly neighboring kittens come to visit from time to time and their helping paws are much appreciated.
This is really "don't waste your breath" time. The Santorum dead-enders are beyond redemption, only striking out in hatred with spinal cord-level knee jerk reflexes.
A year from now they will still be foaming at the mouth about his years-ago PSA with Nancy Pelosi.
Unfortunately, very true. Judging by some posts, they either didn't bother to read the post (let alone links / references) or it went right over their heads...
... Or, what's even worse, they are just so comfortable with "what they 'know' they know" that they are unwilling to open their eyes or their minds to anything that might prove uncomfortably different - it might turn out that they were wrong in their opinions or conclusions based on having the wrong information... and they would rather not have to deal with that.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know that just ain't so" - Mark Twain
"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance" - George Bernard Shaw
That is about where I am at. I was never nuts for Santorum, but he at least is a good person and trustworthy.
I was a Bachmann fan first. She is a real conservative.
Oh well.
So are you voting for Mitt?
This and the "Who are working for?" and "How much are you getting paid by XYZ to post this? " type of questions are designed to obfuscate, ignore and avoid the substance and/or change the subject / reference from the substance or opinion on the issue to the poster, i.e., it goes into the same category of irrelevant arguments as:
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.
I didn't hear a "no".
You could learn a little about not judging people, forgiveness, and talking to others with respect.
Newt Gingrich’s political life is tragic, because he is very smart and he has a deep understanding of history and of how our government is supposed to function. He should have been an excellent candidate.
Unfortunately, cast in the best light, as a person who was a repeated victim of wicked ex-wives, Newt and his supporters shows him to be unsuitable.
Being sorry and truly repentant for whatever one has done in the past does not fix the flaws that made those past acts possible in the first place.
It is absolutely our place to look at someone’s record as an indicator of future performance. We’re supposed to use history to guide us, just as Newt himself has argued. History is a useful tool.
If nothing was ever his fault because he was too easily swayed by these evil, terrible women, then he lacks the necessary discernment to be president.
Newt’s supporters, saying everything in his history is “not his fault”, and painting him as an innocent, naive victim make the best argument for not voting for him.
Jesus H christ. If that doesn't say it all. No wonder we have a "conservative" website with jackboot political officers watching every word we write.
Jesus H christ. If that doesn't say it all. No wonder we have a "conservative" website with jackboot political officers watching every word we write.
Newt Gingrich has the best conservative record of any candidate running. “In the 1994 campaign season, in an effort to offer an alternative to Democratic policies and to unite distant wings of the Republican Party, Gingrich and several other Republicans came up with a Contract with America, which laid out ten policies that Republicans promised to bring to a vote on the House floor during the first hundred days of the new Congress, if they won the election.[41] The contract was signed by Gingrich and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The contract ranged from issues such as welfare reform, term limits, tougher crime laws, and a balanced budget law, to more specialized legislation such as restrictions on American military participation in United Nations missions.
In the November 1994 elections, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954. Long-time House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois had not run for re-election, giving Gingrich, the highest-ranking Republican returning to Congress, the inside track at becoming speaker. The midterm election that turned congressional power over to Republicans “changed the center of gravity” in the nation’s capital.[42] Time magazine named Gingrich its 1995 “Man of the Year” for his role in the election.[4]
Speaker of the House
Gingrich’s official portrait as Speaker
Main article: Contract with America
The House fulfilled Gingrich’s Contract promise to bring all ten of the Contract’s issues to a vote within the first 100 days of the session, even though most legislation was initially held up in the Senate. Over the objection of liberal/progressive interest groups[43] and President Clinton, who called it the “Contract on America”.[44]
Legislation proposed by the 104th United States Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget amendment, as well as independent auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe-shine concessions. Following Gingrich’s first two years as House Speaker, the Republican majority was re-elected in the 1996 election, the first time Republicans had done so in 68 years, and the first time simultaneously with a Democratic president winning re-election
How do you know she doesn't? Maybe, unlike many demented freepers lately, she knows how to let it go and move on.
“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?”
Don’t include this evangelical in that query. Nor the ones I know.
yes....your choice would be....?
In November we will be given a choice, Obama or Romney....I'm not excited about either but our choices are pretty much etched in stone.....I think I'll go with Romney
Much goes right over the heads of a number of the folks who chimed in on this one....so so so much.
It needed to be said. Thank you.
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