What good is your 95% pro-life voting record, when you are supporting candidates, who'll vote pro-abortion? They'll vote pro-abortion to such a degree that they'll support Partial Birth Abortions. They cancel your vote, Newt.
It is due to this lack of principle, and the lack of trust in the GOP that fueled the Tea Party movement. Newt shares that lack of principle in his political actions.
Here's another example.
In the summer of 2009, Congressional District 23 in upstate New York came open. The local GOP establishment picked NY Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava to be the GOP candidate. Dede, bless her heart, is an ACORN supporting, abortion backing, Big Government Obama-Republican. This nomination so outraged the Republicans in NY that they backed the Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman for Congress. This contest swept through the Right Internet World and support, money and bodies starting flooding in for Doug Hoffman. What did the Bigfooting Newt Gingrich do? He goes in and back Dede Scozzafava. How does this match up with Newt's 95% ACU voting record? How is this a sign of principle? How does this advance Newt's professed agenda of conservativism? Dede backed ACORN, she backed the ACORN Working Families Party, she backed the big unions, who are strangling the taxpayers. How does Dede fit in with Newt's small government agenda? Or is Newt's "principle", anything as long as it has an "R" behind it?
What did Scozzafava do? She lost ground to Doug Hoffman, she then quit the race, trashed the Republicans and endorsed the Democrat, probably getting him elected.
So, we have Gingrichian "realpolitik" end up with the worst of both worlds. The unprincipled nomination of Scozzafava, which couldn't be supported by Republican voters, ends up with the Democrat winning the election. An "R" at any cost policy, unsupportable by principled GOP voters leads to the "D" winning the seat. Great.
We've seen this kind of scenario play out over and over and over again. The Republican Establishment tells us that leftwinger Mike Castle is just what we need in the US Senate from Delaware. He can't win the primary, refuses to endorse the winning nominee and the GOP establishment trashes Christine O'Donnell. Where was Newt?
The GOP establishment tells us to give Arlen Specter 6 more years in the Senate from Pennsylvania. GOP voters had had enough of liberalism in the GOP. Specter trashes Republican voters, resigns the Party after decades of taking Party funds, runs for the Senate as a Democrat, where he loses in the primary. Where was Newt? (and Romney for that matter, much here applies to Romney too).
Sharron Angle in Nevada is trashed by the GOP grandees. Tea Party is a loser. Really. How'd the $120 million spent by Meg Whitman work out in California. How did the "moderate" Carly Fiorina do in California with additional millions. Nothing could be spared for O'Donnell and Angle, but those "moderate" women really kicked butt and showed us the way, right? The Tea Party sucks. Where's Newt Romney been in supporting the Tea Party, which gave the GOP it's biggest kick butt victory in 2010 in history?
I saw Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain out there at Tea Party rally after Tea Party rally. Santorum has been out there fighting the good fight. Where have our "leaders" been? Where has the RNC, Karl Rove, Newt Romney and the rest of them been? We're losing our country and I see no evidence that "our glorious leaders" get it.
As President, Newt or Romney will be the titular head of the GOP and will name the chairman of the RNC and have tremendous influence over who the Party supports. Will Newt and Romney be principled and support principled constitutional conservative candidates? Or will it be business as usual, anything if it has an "R" behind it?
What evidence do we have that Newt Romney will make the principled political decisions?
Newt has been out there trying to get candidates elected, who will counter his own vote for smaller government. There's a party for those people and it's called the Democrat Party.
Michele Bachman was very close to drawing this conclusion, when she reported how Newt's support for Partial Birth Abortion candidates muddied the waters and cost the GOP support. What's Newt Romney going to do as President in party political decisions?
GOP voters have been betrayed by establishment GOP types year after year, decade after decade from Bush One breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge, to the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justices like Souter and, remember Harriet Myers? GOP voters have worked, funded, fought for candidates, who've then turned around and stabbed them in the back, say like Bush Two and his support for amnesty. And it turns out that these people really don't like us. Bush Two called us bigots for not supporting his idiotic amnesty. Scozzafava and Spector both trashed Republican voters.
Now, Bachmann could go after Romney on his political activities or lack of them. He's had one cause he's been passionate about and that cause is Mitt Romney. He's supposed to be the "go to guy" on the economy. Where was Romney on fighting the Stimulus Bill? Where is Romney on the Federal Reserve monetizing the debt and setting the stage for inflation? Where was/is Romney on the whole TARP bail out of Banks, including Banks from Europe to Gaddhafi's Central Bank? Where's Romney's passion on this? Where has he be ringing the alarm bells, when he's had the money to do TV commercials etc to warn the American people? Why would anyone think he's going to be any different as President?
I think its quite clear now, that GOP voters have to vote anyone but Newt Romney (+ Paul). This is the time for Bachmann to step forward and claim leadership.
While you are at it, why not come up with a means to destroy the Republican control of the House and give the RATS a filibuster-proof control of the Senate!
That is one way you can "Send the GOP a strong meassage!"
Fantasy (and drivel)
Every candidate who has risen to the top of the heap has done so by attacking Obama and the liberals. This is true of MB when she was riding high after the Ames Straw Poll. True of Perry - who entered on top based on his attacks of Obama as Texas Governor. Ditto’s Cain and then Newt.
Bachmann sinks every time she unleashes her ridiculous attacks - the most notable being her attack on Perry. The partial birth abortion attack on Newt last night was despicable and an over play by 100 fold.
She will probably sink again. What is it they say about insanity and doing the same things but expecting different results?
I think they say “Michelle Bachmann.”
Her claiming he was for infanticide was over the top. She had that in her holster and made a jerk of herself. I wanted to vote for her but her continued attacks of anybody who takes the leads makes her look like another politician who will do and say anything to get votes. That is not conservatism, tell us what you would do.
Pray for America
Now that, I might pay money to see. Since the lapels and butt are on opposite sides of the body, MB must be one hack of a contortionist.
Not sure I am willing to subject my mind to such requirements of creative imagination by reading balance of article.................
This is the time for Bachmann to step forward and claim leadership.
Bachmann may claim but it takes more than her claiming leadership. The other part of that equation is the acceptance by the voters and that doesn’t appear to be happening no matter how hard she slams all the other candidates.
Michelle {I am a serious candidate, listen to me} Bachmann, is a bought and paid for mittens bitch.
Her role is to smear Newt or Perry {if Newt slips and perry gains ground} and her reward will to become part of the mittens crew... VP, SecTreas {she is a tax lawyer, and a mother of 5 and a foster mother of 23, and she is 55 years old and has been a "real person for 50 years"}.
Something strange happens to people that keep being pumped up by "handlers" that are being paid big bucks from citizen donations, and they keep telling the candidate how wonderful and wanted and needed are.
The human ego kicks in and what we have to watch ain't pretty.
The Republicans have departed from principle so far that they couldn’t catch sight of it even if they stood for a moment on the tallest hill.
Sharron Angle in Nevada is trashed by the GOP grandees. Tea Party is a loser. Really.
As a Nevada independent, the Senate race last time was a toss-up and a real hair puller. Harry Reid or Sharron Angle? Sharron's record was one that made my hair stand on end as I kept looking at her history. Harry Reid's record was bad, just in a different way. I'll tell you, "none of the above" was very, very tempting.
If a political party wants to win elections, they need to put forward candidates that are attractive to the voters. Do you know how hard it is to punch that voting machine while holding your nose? McCain and Angle were just two of the Really Bad Choices this voter faced in recent elections. (At least McCain had a life one could find out about; Obama was a complete cipher, and I don't like voting for people who I can't read.)
I don't vote the brand, I vote the man...or woman. It's more work, but I think that the person in the office is more important than the machine behind the person; I had enough of the latter when I lived in Cook County.
Since I can't vote in the primary, in either party, I sit and observe, waiting for the two parties to come to consensus at their conventions. Then I take all the rhetoric from the primary elections and caucuses and get a fix on the candidates running in the general.
I will tell you that I'm a small-government, local-government advocate. I believe in balanced budgets. I believe that Parkinson's Law (the one about a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time) requires active mitigation. I believe in sunset provisions in statutes, particularly where a particular piece of legislation is a "temporary fix". Or a "temporary tax" (what an oxymoron THAT is...or perhaps you never heard the Henny Youngman joke about nothing being as temporary as a woman's permanent, and as permanent as a temporary tax).
And I believe in the Constitution, as written and not as "interpreted" by people who stretch it all out of proportion.
November 2012 is going to be interesting. I hope you people who are voting in the primaries, or participating in the caucuses, keep in mind that you have the future of this country in your hands.