Posted on 03/14/2012 9:23:55 PM PDT by Red Steel
With his current delegate count less than a third of GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s, former House speaker Newt Gingrich is hearing a growing number of conservatives suggest he call it quits.
Yet, those calls have been met with nothing but steely resistance by Gingrich, who spoke in Rosemont Wednesday of his campaign as “the kind that can go all the way.”
Just hours after being bested in Tuesday’s Alabama and Mississippi primaries, the Georgia Republican was charging hard in the suburbs, kicking off a two-day trip he hopes will motivate voters to choose him over former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum as the most viable conservative alternative to Romney.
He began his visit with a sparsely attended afternoon rally at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont and closed the day before a crowd of 500 at the Northwest Suburban Republicans’ annual Lincoln Day Dinner at the Cotillion in Palatine.
In Rosemont, a crowd of about 100 sat in rows of chairs, cheering and waiving Newt 2012 signs as Gingrich called for “21st Century conservatism” to tackle problems, make advances in science and technology, and work for energy independence.
Attendee Christy Kurzeja, of Barrington, said she doesn’t believe Gingrich will win Illinois, but she noted “as long as he’s in the race, I’m behind him.”
Kurzeja called Gingrich’s 15 percent flat income tax plan, among other ideas, the best of the Republican presidential contenders.
“I’ve never had a candidate the has represented me before like he has,” she said.
It is Gingrich’s ideas that keep him in the race, he said later in the evening at the Lincoln Day Dinner.
In attendance were state party leaders and a majority of suburban members of the Illinois congressional delegation, most of whom have endorsed Romney or stayed silent on their presidential picks.
The annual $100-a-plate event saw a spike in ticket sales shortly after Gingrich’s role was announced, Schaumburg Township Republican Committeeman Ryan Higgins said.
Sitting at Gingrich’s table were influential Barrington Republican Jack Roeser, 6th Congressional District Gingrich delegate Carol Ann Parisi, House Republican Leader Tom Cross and Illinois campaign Chairman Keith Hanson, of Barrington.
“We’ve got to go back to the politics of big ideas,” Gingrich said to applause. “We are in the business of changing Washington, not being accepted by it.”
These days, he said, it is almost impossible to have a “serious political conversation” about those ideas.
“The news media can’t cover it, and my (competitors) can’t comprehend it,” he said.
Gingrich called the country’s political system “so profoundly and deliberately stupid,” citing the way the government deals with Medicaid fraud as a “willful avoidance of the modern world” when technology provides a faster way to address abuse.
He is scheduled to appear Thursday at Barrington High School and at Judson University in Elgin, as well as at the Lake in the Hills airport.
Get those delegates/if you cannot get first place-get the delegates..
Thanks for the smile...
I'm with and trust Newt Gingrich. The only candidate that loves America and American values more than himself. If necessary he will do the right thing.
You’re welcome. :-)
These days, he said, it is almost impossible to have a “serious political conversation” about those ideas.
“The news media can’t cover it, and my (competitors) can’t comprehend it,” he said. Gingrich called the country’s political system “so profoundly and deliberately stupid,” citing the way the government deals with Medicaid fraud as a “willful avoidance of the modern world” when technology provides a faster way to address abuse
Newt nails it! honestly, neither Romney nor Santorum are in his class and his words make me smile
sorry, don't have a link...
Rather than try to work within the current political system, Gingrich said, Republicans ought to work to change it.
“What crashed in 2006 is trying to govern as though we are Democrats,” he told the crowd. “We cannot be a normal party. If we run a normal campaign trying to govern within the framework of the current system, we have no future because people would rather have Democrats doing it -- they at least enjoy it. We are miserable trying to govern within their system. We are in the business of changing Washington, not being accepted by it. It’s a fundamentally different model.”
Looks like Newt isn't a "take-one-for-team" guy.
Thank you for the ping.
KEEP GOING, NEWT!!!
Love that and reflecting back on the Speaker’s record...we know he didnt take one for the team..Bush 41 will attest to that:)
We know that Gingrich would make huge and sweeping changes in Washington and it would be fast. I don’t feel that comfortable with RS or Romney.
By Felicia Sonmez
PALATINE, Ill. – Newt Gingrich has seen some dark days in his campaign.
Callista Gingrich greets her husband Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich during a rally in Rosemont, Ill., Wednesday, March 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Kamil Krzaczynski)But no speech is likely to have been as dark as the one the former House speaker delivered Wednesday night in this suburb northwest of Chicago.
With the future of his presidential ambitions uncertain in the wake of losses in two big southern states on Tuesday night, Gingrich delivered a gloomy address to the Northwest Suburban Republican Lincoln Day Dinner in which he at once reaffirmed his plans to stay in the presidential race and bemoaned a country and Republican Party that he described as unreceptive to “big ideas” such as the ones on which he’s hinged his White House bid.
“We are at the edge of such extraordinary opportunities and it is so hard to get this party to understand it,” Gingrich told more than 500 Republicans assembled in a ballroom here. “We’re at the edge of extraordinary opportunities. We can provide for the American people such a dramatically better future that it’s almost unimaginable.”
“And our political system is so methodically and deliberately stupid – and I use that word deliberately, the willful avoidance of knowledge -- that it’s astonishing,” he added.
At times during his 20-minute remarks onstage here, which Gingrich delivered with his wife Callista standing by his side, the former House speaker’s voice appeared to waver with frustration.
He reiterated that he is still running for president “because the vacuum is so huge” when it comes to candidates and the ideas they have put forth.
“I want everybody to understand that I am running because I believe we have got to go back to what worked in 1980, what worked in 1984 and what worked in 1994 and 1996, and that is a politics of big ideas,” Gingrich said toward the end of his remarks.
He took aim at both the GOP field and at the news media, which he argued has made it impossible to have “a serious conversation” about the issues.
”The thing I find most disheartening about this campaign is the difficulty of talking about positive ideas on a large scale because the news media can’t cover it, and the other candidates, my opponents, can’t comprehend it,” Gingrich said.
And he repeatedly referenced Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as examples of the types of pioneering leaders that he argued the party has drifted away from.
Rather than try to work within the current political system, Gingrich said, Republicans ought to work to change it.
“What crashed in 2006 is trying to govern as though we are Democrats,” he told the crowd. “We cannot be a normal party. If we run a normal campaign trying to govern within the framework of the current system, we have no future because people would rather have Democrats doing it -- they at least enjoy it. We are miserable trying to govern within their system. We are in the business of changing Washington, not being accepted by it. It’s a fundamentally different model.”
While Gingrich was specific when it came to his stump-speech rationale for how he would be able to lower the price of gasoline as president – an argument he said “every Republican in the country could use” -- he was less detailed regarding his frustrations with what he broadly described as the current dysfunction of American politics.
“We have a real series of challenges. We have a deeper challenge, which you know in Springfield, which we know in Sacramento, we know in Albany, and that is that the systems of governance that we’ve inherited are decaying -- that we now have interest groups so powerful that democracy is simply a shadow of them floating on top of the power of the interest groups,” he said.
The crowd greeted Gingrich before and after his speech with a standing ovation, and members of the audience swarmed the former House speaker and his wife after the address.
But even as Gingrich has a full slate of events in Illinois on his schedule for the rest of the week, it appeared that his recent woes on the campaign trail were beginning to wear on him – a stark contrast from his demeanor a week ago, when he and Callista were seen by reporters dancing until the early morning at a Jackson, Miss., hotel.
He argued Wednesday night that in California, it’s “literally irrelevant” who wins elections because “they can’t change Sacramento.” In Albany, he continued, it’s “virtually irrelevant.”
In Springfield, Gingrich added, “I’d say it’s largely irrelevant.”
“And increasingly, it’s becoming so in Washington,” he said. “The level of effort it would take to change the system is beyond the imagination of most elected officials and beyond the imagination of most candidates. And that’s where we are.”
Just get it done, Newt... we are with you.
** President Newt Gingrich-”Our beloved republic deserves nothing less.”
>> Just get it done, Newt... we are with you.
bttt
That's correct......And though Newt sees the whole picture and knows how and why our nation is being destroyed from within, unless the people wake up and get behind him this entire nation is lost.
I've been examining where the IMF is heading...which apparently has more power than the world bank and directly associated with the Federal here. ..but I have to look further on that...at any rate there's so much power pushing toward weakening this nation it's astounding.....and Obama has the globalist working with him to do so, though he's really just co-operating with the power brokers and their agenda. It's awful and Newt is the only one that can nip this in the bud...if that frankly. Romney and his church is a part of it...and SAntorum is completely in the dark.
It must be very frustrating, and I think Gingrich has done an excellent job of trying to call people's attention to this. The interest groups - such as the fabulously wealthy Planned Parenthood, with its population control program - have definitely taken over, and they are being facilitated by the creation of a government that is strong enough and intrusive enough to enforce their every whim.
The thing that really bothers me is that most people don't seem to care. Another Freeper posted that all of America, GOP as well, seems to have moved to the center left, and I'm afraid that's true.
The interest groups standing behind our government see it as a means for enforcing the international agenda they have developed. And this is because people actually WANT big government, they want "health care," they want to see (other people) being forced to pay huge taxes that they believe will support the welfare programs they all want, and they like having the government tell them what to do and what to think about everything. I fear the mass of Americans have become Euro-socialists in their thinking.
Neither Romney nor Santorum has any fundamental argument with the way things are going and neither one of them wants to make any real changes. In everything except Santorum's currently more conservative social positions, they're identical to each other and their views are simply the prevailing GOP Establishment views, which is a center-left country just with different people in charge. And the sad thing is that maybe that's what the voters want.
DOES ANYBODY HERE REALLY THINK:
It’s enough to change the resident of the White House, for the country to prosper?
Without changing the Department of Energy, Education, Environment, the Justice abuses, the foreign policy, the national security, the country could do better?
Without changing the way the Congress does business “as usual” in Washington, the country could do better?
Look at Romney and Santorum’s plans and see how both are ready to manage the system.
And then, look at Newt Gingrich’s 21st Century Contract with America, and see how he intends to change the system.
“I’m with and trust Newt Gingrich. The only candidate that loves America and American values more than himself. If necessary he will do the right thing. “
You are really going to be disillusioned when Newt takes his delegates, and pledges them to Romney to put Romney over the top.
I have no doubt that every candidate on the GOP side loves America and American values.
I don’t think that Newt loves anything more than himself though.
“I’m with and trust Newt Gingrich. The only candidate that loves America and American values more than himself. If necessary he will do the right thing.”
“In many ways Newt is Lincoln in 1860 who went to his convention third. Newt will arrive, he will arrive in Tampa on equal footing with the other candidates. That is, he will arrive with less than the required number of delegates to win the nomination.
If that happens, my prediction is that Mitt Romney will lose the first ballot and if he loses the first ballot he will be abandoned. And then Newt, I believe, would have better than a 50-50 chance of winning the nomination among the remaining three candidates.
In brokered conventions, which we haven’t had in my lifetime, in my recollection all bets are off. Once the first ballot fails, all the delegates are released. And Newt will have a case to make. And I believe he will have a strong case to make.” - Rick Tyler
“Neither Romney nor Santorum has any fundamental argument with the way things are going and neither one of them wants to make any real changes. In everything except Santorum’s currently more conservative social positions, they’re identical to each other and their views are simply the prevailing GOP Establishment views, which is a center-left country just with different people in charge.”
http://www.coloradanswithnewt.com/2012/02/crux-of-matter.html
“Newt Gingrich is the only one who has it right. What we need to do is not prop up the old unsustainable Wall Street - Washington D.C. axis. Nor do we need massive government social programs to prop up workers. Neither is free market. Neither will work. What we need to do to fix the economy is to support new businesses and help small businesses expand.
....
So why do the other candidates lack the foresight, and vision to implement such bold plans? Because they are tied down to the old special interests. Santorum sold out to K Street a long time ago, and would be controlled by big labor. Romney would of course represent the wealthy Wall Street corporations that have contributed so much to his campaign already. Only Newt would represent we the people rather than the special interests and do what is best for the nation as a whole. This election will be won or lost on the economy, which is why Newt is the only candidate with the rock solid economic chops to beat Obama come November.”
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