If this guy can keep his recent fire ignited...
Posted on 05/13/2011 7:02:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich threw his hat into the presidential ring on Wednesday. Republicans should toss it back onto Gingrich’s head and ask him to kindly go away. He is the wrong man to lead the GOP to victory in November 2012.
Gingrich’s intellect, tenacity, and perseverance helped the Republicans secure the House of Representatives in 1994, ending the Democrats’ 40-year majority. That achievement notwithstanding, Gingrich’s flaws glowed beneath the glare of national leadership. And there they remain.
Gingrich is no happy warrior. He snarls more than he smiles. Rather than speak, he hectors. Gingrich lectures rather than inspires audiences, as if he were Daddy, and they had misbehaved. His abrasive tone will chafe voters long before he ever gets an opportunity to snap at them from the Oval Office.
Also grating, Gingrich cannot say “America.” It’s pronounced A-MEHR-i-ca, not A-MORE-i-ca, as Gingrich puts it.
While “frankly” is a fine word, it’s a verbal tic for Gingrich. As a drinking game, sip a mimosa every time Gingrich says “frankly” on this Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC. You will be bombed before the first commercial break.
Gingrich’s non-stylistic failings are far graver. After admirably holding promised House votes on the Contract with America’s ten planks, Gingrich had no Act II. He waffled on fighting big government. Among other things, he rescued the notorious sugar program and let Republicans launch their disastrous expansion of earmarks. Just last January, Gingrich defended ethanol subsidies and complained that a pattern of attacks on ethanol by “folks in big cities” “hurts the farmer. It hurts rural America, and it’s fundamentally unfair to America’s future.” Rather than advocate ending ethanol mandates, Gingrich wants a new one: a federal requirement enabling all cars to consume ethanol or methane.
Gingrich’s man-crush on Bill Clinton made him falter in legislative negotiations with the president. “I melt when I’m around him,” Gingrich purred in January 1996. “After I get out, I need two hours to detoxify. My people are nervous about me going in there because of the way I deal with this.”
Gingrich also ensnared himself in needless controversies such as an ill-conceived multi-million-dollar book deal and a hissy-fit regarding the utter humiliation of deplaning from Air Force One via a rear door. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “It’s time for him to finish growing up.”
Gingrich’s biggest vulnerability, however, is his technicolorful personal life.
Like him or not, Barack Obama has been married for 19 years to Michelle — his first and only wife. By every indication, he has been faithful to her.
In jarring contrast, Gingrich — inexplicably a hero to many social conservatives — has lived like a guest at the Playboy Mansion. After he and Jackie Battley split up, Gingrich found another wife, Marianne Ginther. He then strayed from Ginther with House staffer Callista Bisek, now his third wife.
Gingrich cavorted with his subordinate during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings for lying under oath about cavorting with his subordinate Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich’s failure to zip his zipper under such volatile circumstances confirmed his breathtaking immaturity. Had this dalliance surfaced before the November 1998 midterm elections, the staggering hypocrisy would have triggered America’s gag reflex. Voters would have catapulted the Republicans from the Capitol dome and given the Democrats the House and the Senate. Gingrich’s lack of self-control jeopardized the entire conservative agenda. Luckily for the Right and its ideas, Gingrich did not get caught with his pants down.
Gingrich now calls patriotism his aphrodisiac. As he told the Christian Broadcasting Network: “There’s no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”
If Republicans nominate Gingrich, Democrats will carpet-bomb him relentlessly with a simple message: “Ladies, can you trust a man who treats women like this?” Although Gingrich’s daughter has recently said the account was false, look-alike actors may still recreate the scene of Gingrich’s request for a divorce from Wife No. 1 as she was hospitalized after breast-cancer surgery. Democrats might organize breast-cancer sufferers to haunt Gingrich with picket signs that read “Newt: Mean to breast-cancer patients; mean to America.”
Given all of this, if Republicans endorse Newt Gingrich for president, they will earn the ensuing electoral shellacking.
— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
I couldn’t have put this better if I tried.
Can they get a real candidate?
The same could be said of the Democratic candidate.
the dems will do everything they can to insure he gets the nomination
they will do the same to any and all they see as easily defeated in the election.
they will attack, ridicule, and vilify those they fear and feel they cannot defeat.
can you think of more then one person they fear?
Mike
Can we just get these idiot past-failures out of the way quickly? Gingrich, Rommney, Huckabee, Paul, etc need to get out of the way quickly and put their full effort behind a conservative candidate who can win; they cannot.
What will likely happen is that they will each go off to their corner and sulk because they are not the candidate instead of really serving their country and the Constitution by putting full effort into reversing the National Socialist Democrat Party drive to socialist tyranny.
FUBO & FAD (with a shout out to the worthless RINO bitches mentioned above).
See tagline.
We ain’t gonna need Newt.
I would vote for him if he won the nomination in desperation to get 0bama out... but he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance so the whole argument is moot. Hopefully he helps shape some debate on some key issues and plays no more of a role than that.
Much as I admire this man's sense of American History and our destiny, I think, for many reasons, that he should step back and not ruin the 2012 election.
We have to get the garbage out of our White House, and we can't do that with someone who has tons and tons of ammunition that the left will surely use. Right now, the left is firmly in Romney's corner and will do what they can to skew the primaries to vote for him.
We gotta' come up with someone who's not a retread or a closet democrat like Romney. And, Newt? Please step aside.
If this guy can keep his recent fire ignited...
And repeating that process to increase the majority and helping to capture the senate would be the greatest contribution he could make.
I agree that Newt isn’t the guy, but I am glad he is in the race. For example, I new very little about Cain, now he is my favorite.... competition is good.
I agree that Newt isn’t the guy, but I am glad he is in the race. For example, I knew very little about Cain, now he is my favorite.... competition is good.
More and more I see Cain as a possible winning ticket; if the all-about-me RINOs and the GOP “leadership” will get out of the way and provide support. They don’t seem to give a damn about saving the Constitution and the Republic so I don’t have much confidence that they would do the right thing for America.
FUBO & FAD
Between what Newt says and what he does, I’ll believe the latter thank you.
What did Newt do very recently? When the NY-23 Congressional Seat was open for elections, he endorsed the Pro-choice, pro-uner spending liberal RINO Dede Scozzafava over the real conservative — Doug Hoffman.
The Club for Growth, Concerned Women of America, evangelical leader Gary Bauer, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and a host of other GOP supporters and lawmakers sided with Hoffman.
When Hoffmann won the GOP nomination, guess what Newt’s endorsee, Dede, did? She showed her true colors by ENDORSING THE DEMOCRAT over Hoffman.
Just shows Newt’s ability to choose the “right” people.
Clinton played him like a fiddle for four years, then he quit immediately after winning reelection because his fellow republicans couldn't stand him and he was in danger of losing the gavel. Newt talks about cutting spending but will never work to fundamentally limit the power of the federal government.
Apparently no serious candidate is willing to enter the three ring circus. Newt, Trump, Paul, Mitt . . . This is the real Insane Clown Possie.
What about the Contract for America?? And didn’t we have a budget surplus during the time Newt was Speaker?
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