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To: petercooper
Rick Santorum is a 53 year old child in a sweater vest. He had no chance of beating Obama, and now has left us with Romney as our nominee. Thanks Rick, and all your clueless supporters.
That's true to a point and I do have a certain amount of disappointment in the Huckabee Voters who I think this time around jumped on the Santorum bandwagon.

But you are leaving something out, something very important:

A week before the Florida primary Newt was in the lead and in the driver's seat and really was in position to transform his recent surge into a political version of Sherman's March to the Sea.

But then Romney, in the first pre-Florida debate, very cooly, and with great calculation, branded Newt as an "influence peddler". It was a public act of political assassination conducted with great skill and extreme heartlessness.

And Newt was absolutely unable to defend himself. As if he had no idea that any of that stuff was going to come up. The Great Debater (who at that point really only had his debating skill as his main qualification before the R voters) spluttered and stared into the camera like a deer caught in headlights.

On that night it was over for Newt.

Romney did it to him, that's for sure. And the Huckabee Voters fell for it, that's for sure.

But the fact remains, the Great Debater Newt Gingrich stumbled that night, and in the next debate too, and it was Game Over for Newt Gingrich.

I'm NOT saying "rightfully so". I continued to be -- and continue to be -- a Newt Gingrich supporter.

But the fact is, Newt blew it. He knew he was the target and he knew Romney's skill at political assassination. And yet, he failed. The Great Debater failed. And the Huckabee Voter stepped in and raised up Rick Santorum.

That's what happened.

12 posted on 04/14/2012 5:45:17 AM PDT by samtheman
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To: samtheman

I agree, that was the cardinal moment, when Romney smeared Gingrich. The phrase “resigned in disgrace” was repeated several times, to Newt’s face, and he hardly even addressed the point never mind refuted it. Nolo contendere does not sit well with the average person. Newt’s candidacy was demolished by his omission of a forceful defense.
As for Santorum, I’m holding my fire until such time as he endorses Mitt Romney.


21 posted on 04/14/2012 7:01:47 AM PDT by Lady Lucky (Retro Sark...because you just never know when you'll have needed a sark tag.)
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To: samtheman
Riiiiiiight. It all hinged on that debate rather than the tens of millions of dollars in carpet bombed attack ads from Romney and his Super PAC against which Newt lacked the immediate resources to counter.

Romney should thank Newt for making him hire a new debate coach.

The mocking reception Newt's space speech--filled with mainstream thinking of those who still care about space--will be a mile marker in America's fall from greatness and its apathetic acceptance of coming irrelevancy to humanity's advancement.

Culturally American exceptionalism is dead; our influence continues to diminish; the American era is all but over. We are in a transitory period with China most likely to dominate through the second half of the century.

36 posted on 04/14/2012 8:47:11 AM PDT by newzjunkey (Newt says, "A nominee that depresses turnout won't beat Barack Obama.")
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To: samtheman

You’re are TOTALLY wrong..

That debate wasn’t even remembered in the carpet bombing that went on in Florida - and I know, I was there.

Romney ran 17 million dollars of negative advertising against Newt. Jeb Bush and all of his florida toadies and minions were behind the scenes working for him. Marco Rubio came out and almost endorsed Romney, there were filthy lies all over the place.

Did you even hear of bloody thursday?

There were romney surrogates showing at every newt stop and holding cause with the press and blasting Newt and lying about him... Mitt romney, by some estimates, ran about 200,000 robocalls the last week, his mailings were about a 4-inch stack the last week of the campaign.

the state GOP was bussing in people to Mitt events, and Mitt’s ads were horrific, not just the usual slime, they were horrific and filled with lies. The washington post said one 30 sec ad had 4 lies in it... that’s one lie every 6 seconds in one spot... there were 120,000.

The last 3 days before the vote, if you watched tv anywhere in florida there were approximately 5 anti-newt ads per hour - that is how deep his ad buys were.

Romney hired telemarketers to make live voice calls for him, and the entire GOP conservative echelon was spewing on about Newt... from the a b and c teams. And there were a few counties borderline North that usually report fairly early, that reported very very late and showed with Romney with a razor thin, and you know what that means.

Let me tell you something, Newt could have have hit 3 grand slams in the debate, undisputed, unquestioned and he would have still lost florida. Because Romney would have just amped up his attack accordingly to meet newt’s threshold.

There was a conference call with Mitt and his staff before his campaigning began in earnest and the goal was to destroy Newt... destroy him.

And mitt signed off on it.

Santorum never received that kind of treatment up until the day he quite because he was never the threat Newt was...

Instead of badmouthing Newt re Florida understand this:

He won all of the counties in teh north...

He still made a decent showing and had Santorum done right by his country he could have came out and helped Newt before he ran home and asked his supporters to vote for Newt...

AND FINALLY, Newt survived. He wasn’t meant to survive. Romney intended for Newt to be carried off the battlefield after florida, forever dispensed with, and his path clear to the nomination.

NEWT IS STILL HERE. Battered, bloodied, healing and fighting on.

To be clear, I don’t disagree Newt lost that debate. All I am saying things would have turned out the same had he won it...

Newt is still fighting, if you truly do support him please help..

www.newt.org

www.newt.org/donate


45 posted on 04/14/2012 2:23:16 PM PDT by true believer forever (GO NEWT! On to Tampa - hang tight - we can do this!!)
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