The Florida Smear Campaign [Prof. Thomas Sowell Calls It Like It Is!]

National Review | January 31, 2012

[Steelfish]

January 31, 2012

The Florida Smear Campaign Mitt Romney’s Fraudulent Attacks on Newt Gingrich. Thomas Sowell.

The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party’s nominee for president of the United States — and some are not letting the facts get in their way.

Among the claims going out through the mass media in Florida, on the eve of that state’s primary election, is that Newt Gingrich “resigned in disgrace” as speaker of the House of Representatives as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money. Mitt Romney is calling on Gingrich to release “all of the records” from the congressional investigation.

But the Wall Street Journal of January 28, 2012, reported that these records — 1,280 pages of them — are already publicly available online. Although Speaker Gingrich decided not to take on the task of fighting the charge from his political enemies in 1997, the Internal Revenue Service conducted its own investigation which, two years later, exonerated Gingrich from the charges.

His resignation was not due to those charges and occurred much later.

Do the Romney camp and the Republican establishment not know this, a dozen years later? Or are they far less concerned with whether the charges will stand up than they are about smearing Gingrich on the eve of the Florida primaries?

There are also charges made about what Congressman Gingrich said about Ronald Reagan on March 21, 1986. But this too is a matter of public record, since his remarks are available in the Congressional Record of that date, so it is remarkable that there should be any controversy about it at this late date.

On that date, Gingrich praised Reagan’s grasp of the foreign-policy issues of the day but ...

[Steelfish]

This is an excellent read where Sowell makes a point-by-point and devastating analysis of the claims made by Romney against Gingrich. It's definitely a MUST-READ.

So why aren't the other "true" conservatives speaking out? Where the hell is Rush? Hannity?

[Steelfish]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289700/florida-smear-campaign-thomas-sowell

Interesting comments to the article follow.

[Haiku Guy]

Newt will win Florida today, because the number of people who will actually go into a voting booth and pull the lever for Mitt Romney is very limited. People who figure they should vote for Romney will not bother to vote at all.

[therightliveswithus]

Sowell is one of the best conservative writers around

[Steelfish]

Sowell calls intentional smears as a kind of “voter fraud” and indirectly accuses Romney of doing just this.

[DManA]

I would like to see Newt win just so I could see Coulter's hair stand straight up and her eyes bug out.

[onyx]

“Character assassination is just another form of voter fraud.”

Romney is guilty and I will never vote for Romney.

[wardaddy]

ok...Sarah Palin and Tom Sowell and Rick Perry and Fred

and Mike Reagan and some tepid support from Levin ...but he does excoriate Mitt

good company at least

[reasonisfaith]

“Where the hell is Rush? Hannity?”

They’re with Romney.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I don’t think any of our candidates, the ones we like that is, are helped by focusing on smear campaigns, now that there are robocalls claiming Romney forced Holocaust victims to eat non-Kosher meals. It’s pretty much anything goes at this point.

[sodpoodle]

The problem may be the absentee ballots which Romney mailed to thousands of voters. The uninspired and lazy may have returned them - especially if they were postage paid. (Is that legal?)

[RoosterRedux]

Sowell calls intentional smears as a kind of “voter fraud” and indirectly accuses Romney of doing just this.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Newt makes a campaign issue out this "fraud"...it speaks directly to Romney's character (or lack thereof).

[Patton@Bastogne]

.


I really like Rush Limbaugh ... sincerely ...


But it's "incredibly" IRONIC how Rush will exort U.S. Soldiers to "fight bravely with courage" to WIN the Battle ...

... and then Rush Limbaugh does a "champagne toast" for folks like Senator Macro Rubio ... who EXHIBITED THE GUTS to run for the US Senate as a "complete underdog" ...

and yet ... besides mega-pontificating for (so many) new advertisers ...

and then the "Two-If-By-Tea" product line ...


Rush Limbaugh is a ... "freaking political coward" ...



This "is NOT" the same Rush Limbaugh who helped in Clinton's impeachment, or helped Bush-43 win in 2000 ...

He's become a "gentrified" "sexified" ... golf-tournament "Celebrity" ...



Sorry, Rush ... "facts are facts" ...




.

[Yosemitest]

I take it that you didn't LISTEN to Rush, today.

The Republican Establishment Only Wants Conservatives on Election Day
January 31, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Thomas Sowell is out with a piece today, a column, in National Review Online.
He takes note of the Romney criticism of Gingrich and is not happy with it at all.
He describes it as "wild distortions" and lies about, for example,
why Newt is incorrectly being said to have been run out of the House in disgrace and so forth when he was completely exonerated by the IRS.
You know, all this ethics stuff.
Romney charging that he was so bad, so embarrassing, so devoid of ethics that his colleagues got rid of him and that sort of stuff.
Sowell makes the point...
And I remember, ladies and gentlemen, going back as recently at 2008, maybe 2010, trying to warn everybody what's really going on in the Republican Party.

I've tried to highlight it over and over again repeatedly as necessary, as needed.
In addition to the effort we all are engaged in to defeat Obama, the Republican Party is hell-bent on making sure
that the Tea Party (i.e., conservatives) do not conquer this party and end up controlling it or running it.
Now, Sowell is of the belief that the real purpose of Romney's assault on Gingrich
is to just take out the conservative wing of this party and defeat it and send it packing.
That it is the establishment, the RINOs, the Teddy Roosevelt wing, the Rockefeller wing, whatever -- the moderate Republicans --
who don't have a taste, don't have any ability to get down and dirty muddy and actually do what it takes to win.

It's too easy to just play the game and get close to winning now and then;
win sometimes but stay close to power however you have to do it.
Conservatism upsets that applecart, wants to deemphasize the role of government in people's lives.
The RINO Republicans don't want that.
Sowell says that what's happening here is
the establishment is waging war against the Tea Party and conservatives,
and Gingrich happens to be the Last Man Standing in that regard
so he's the target of it.
That's Thomas Sowell's opinion. A lot of people hold that view.
I know for a fact that the Republican establishment --
and you know how to define 'em.
What would you say, Snerdley, if somebody asked you...? Just in a sentence.
Let's get complex understandable here.

What is, who is (and don't give me a name) the Republican establishment?
What is it about them that makes them the establishment? (interruption)
They run Republican thought in...? No.
It's far more specific than that.
The Republican establishment wants spending.
They want active government;
they want to be in charge of it.
They'll tinker with it on the margins,
but they want to be inside the entire power structure.
They don't want to be at odds with the power structure in New York, in Washington, in the whole Northeastern Corridor.
They want to be part of it,
and they're happy being a minority part of it as long as they're close to power.
As long as they have the respect of the people who run the overall large government.

They want to be part of the Ruling Class.
They don't want to be fighting the Ruling Class.
They want to be part of it.
On the social side, they might not care
that they don't get invited to the big Fourth of July parties in the Hamptons,
but they want to be in the Hamptons when they're happening.
They don't want to be laughed out of the Hamptons.It's high school. Nobody ever really graduates high school.
It's that kind of stuff.
In this case, it's money oriented. And they are not conservative.
They don't like conservatives.
So that battle is being waged and has been going on.
It's been going on since the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt.
Sowell goes through all of this. You've heard it all on this program.
That's what this is about, and that's where the fault lines lie.

So people who understand and believe, if I came out today and said, "I'm voting Romney," I wouldn’t change minds.
To these people, that is a vote for the Republican establishment and against conservatives.
That is a vote for the Republican Party as a minority party forever.
That's how they see it. They just do.
And while all this is going on, the big target is, as we speak, getting away scot-free.
And that's another thing that troubles me.
On the other hand I like this battle going on
'cause I think the longer it goes the more conservatism ends up being discussed and explained,
because that's what's gonna win in the end --
and I mean at the end of the presidential race.
If whoever the nominee is doesn't go conservative, it's over.
It's just that simple.

We're not gonna go Moderate Lite and win.
We're not gonna go moderate and win.
We're not gonna go middle-of-the road and win.
We're not gonna win with going after the independents as our primary objective.
It's not gonna happen.
And I don't mean that doing so will cause people in the base to sit home.
I'm talking about getting a majority of the votes of the United States citizenry.
The vast majority of the people in this country.
This is what's so maddening about the Republican establishment
is how blind they are -- willfully blind --
to how overwhelmingly conservative this country is.
Just take a look at the people that identify themselves ideologically:
40% say they're conservative,
20% liberal,
30-some-odd independent.

Party identification is not quite as big a margin,
but when it comes to down to ideology, there are twice as many people who will tell pollsters they are conservative.
Think of that.
It's probably, therefore, greater than 40% because you know how people are intimidated.
They don't want to tell a pollster something 'cause they don't want the pollster to think
that they're a bigot or a racist or whatever the heck else.
That's pretty powerful, and I think since the majority of people in this country are conservative,
you give them a conservative agenda and you tell them you're gonna implement it, "and this is how,"
and you're gonna have the equivalent of those standing ovations Gingrich got in South Carolina all over this country on Election Day in November.

What's maddening about this is the Republican establishment knows it, and they are afraid of it.
They don't want any part of it until Election Day of any presidential year.
They'll take it that day to win
and then after that, distance themselves, insult them, impugn the conservatives, do whatever they have to do to relegate them to the dustbin.
Except on Election Day.

END TRANSCRIPT

Related Links


• NRO: Florida Smear Campaign. Mitt Romney’s Fraudulent Attacks on Newt Gingrich - Thomas Sowell
  
  

Oh, one more question for a thread I'm running.

QUESTION: Will Reports INTENTIONALLY Call Florida BEFORE Polls Close In Pan-Handle (7 pm CENTRAL TIME)?

[CharlesWayneCT]

That sounds too much like a defense of Romney. That’s not what I meant. I think smearing with false charges is wrong.

I want to support Gingrich, because he’s the leader, but he keeps saying these outrageous things. Is it too much to ask that a candidate not blatantly lie, even in a “good cause”? It makes it hard to support him. Like when he said gave ABC names of friends who would refute his ex-wife, and later his campaign admitted that there were no friends.

That’s what keeps pulling me back to the “unelectable” Santorum, he doesn’t appear to be blatantly lying about anything, just the normal degree of shading the truth.

[PGalt]

There is no law against it, so it is up to the voters, not only in Florida but in other states, to punish it at the ballot box — the only place where punishment is likely to stop the practice.

How do you stop media from amplifying a lie over and over and over again? They become willing or (best case scenario) unwitting co-conspirators in the propagation of a lie. The damage is done, the seed is implanted in an unsuspecting viewer.

[Shery]

The other thing about Santorum is that he is not running trash ads against his opponents, and when he says anything, it is to their face in the debate, at which time they all had a chance to respond. I’m liking Santorum more and more. Yes, like Michele Malkin said, he did veer off into the big government stuff a little, but look at the rest of them. In comparison, it is nothing much. Besides I do believe Santorum understands that the safety net stuff is all fine and dandy when you can afford them, and not to bankrupt the country trying to widen the net. Michele’s article was very good. I like the way he campaigned in Iowa. That is what I like...to see, talk to...the person, not just get robo calls, etc. I hope that people begin to see that he is the most conservative of the candidates we have left. ..and then vote for him. THAT would truly smack the establishment in the face. They don’t think he can pull it out, but if Newt and Mitt keep this up, he may be the candidate left standing.

[Travis McGee]

I think Mitt is Nixon with a nicer smile.

[Travis McGee]

I've never been less excited about a field of candidate, since Bachmann and Caine dropped out.

I wouldn’t vote for Willard Milhous Romney, but I couldn't get up much excitement for Newt either.

I didn't decide until I was walking into the polling place, and I marked my card for Santorum.

[Irish Eyes]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289700/florida-smear-campaign-thomas-sowell

Interesting comments to the article follow.

++++++++++

Interesting reading, comments included. This really is a war isn’t it? Our own homegrown war.