Posted on 12/14/2011 11:48:02 AM PST by DaveMSmith
When presidential candidates—especially the current crop of Republican hopefuls—need to cite a text on spirituality, they usually thumb through carefully selected Bible passages or the Ten Commandments. But Newt Gingrich has always liked defy convention. A startling video of former House Speaker, who's enjoying a widening double-digit lead over Mitt Romney just three weeks before the Iowa Caucuses, shows the Roman Catholic convert speaking not of God or Jesus, but of a “greater authority,” as described in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Although careful to avoid official AA language like a “higher power,” Gingrich offers plenty of clues that in the two decades since he left the House of Representatives, he’s acquired a more than passing familiarity of Bill W.’s spiritual treatise.
In late November, at a televised GOP candidate forum in Iowa hosted by a Christian evangelical group—a “Thanksgiving Family Forum”—Gingrich stole the show. Asked to elaborate on his religious beliefs, he told an anecdote about “a doctor friend in Atlanta” who gave him “the two books that make up Alcoholics Anonymous”—the Big Book and the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions—and spoke movingly about how AA's principles had saved him from a professional and personal crisis two decades before.
“I wasn’t drinking, but I had precisely the symptoms of somebody who was collapsing from under its weight,” he said, skirting discussion of his divorces and infidelities. 'My life was full of accomplishments and achievements,” but “there was part of me that was truly hollow. I had to recognize how limited I was and how much I had to depend on the spiritual.”
And then he discovered AA: “Had I not had that intervention, I might have collapsed totally. That was the beginning of turning my life around,” Gingrich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefix.com ...
Is there anyone left that Neut hasn’t sucked up to?
That there is quite a confession.
I will say it again, I would like the Newt a lot more if he were someone else.
Rush is now reading a piece where Newt was praising Andy Stern.
Didn’t Newt say recently that his infidelities were due to him loving his country too much and thus all the overworking?
Well thank goodness for AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous as we know it was dumbed down from its original incarnation which was unashamed to name Jesus Christ. Few people, outside of church-sponsored religious 12 step groups, know this. Which flavor Newt got involved with, Newt has not said.
Hey I’m just glad Newt got it together. Right now the only thing I care about is getting BHO out of the White Hut as quickly as possible. Newt is just the ticket.
Friggin’ AA to deal with his sexual addictions...but CAIN had to drop out? Face palm. Please come back, Herm.
If you are talking about the Oxford Group, well that wasn’t really AA, was it?
Should I know Andy Stern? Is he famous or something?
Cain “had” to drop out? Really? Someone put a gun to his head?
Seemed to me that his kitchen just got too hot.
Here's the 'praise' from the article at HuffPo:
Conservatives cannot cheer unions overseas and then be blindly anti-union here at home. There are legitimate historic reasons for workers to organize together, and there is a strong need for a healthy, competitive, union, movement that helps improve the lives of its members and the competitiveness of our country.
Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, is the union leader who probably best understands the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive in the face of world competition. Sadly, he is a distinct minority among union leaders.
All Newt 'praised' is his understanding of the challenge of the world market and the need to make American union members productive.
Reminds me somewhat of the words of another great American reaching out to the working men and women in unions: "To my hardworking, patriotic brothers and sisters in the labor movement: you don’t have to put up with the scare tactics and the big government agenda of the union bosses. There is a different home for you: the commonsense conservative movement," Palin also said.
Sheesh! Newt.
He probably answered that way because he recently converted to Catholicism, and away from whatever religious beliefs he held two decades ago.
They are going on the info they got from Glenn Beck about Andy Stern and SEIU on his TV show years after Newt said this.
Most of us before 2009 wouldn’t know enough about either to have said much.
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