I can abide by all except Newt. I don't trust him.
You don't have to trust him any more than I trust WFB today. Just look at the breakthrough he gave to the GOP and conservatism in 1994 and, despite some of his personal failings, the GOP has held the House ever since.
I'm not endorsing him in '08 or anything of the sort, merely acknowledging what he accomplished in the 1980s and 1990s. Remember Bob Michels, the GOP minority leader before Newt? He was as gutless as Trent Lott. Newt got the job and immediately worked to change the way the party behaved in the House and that led to the 1994 sea change we still enjoy today.
Yes, he's been a disappointment ever since impeachment failed. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a principal conservative in the revolution.
One thing is true of all five of these men. The MSM hated and villified all of them (except Buckley whom they most sneered at and ignored). It takes an awfully principled man to stand up to the blistering relentless attacks from the left. All, in their own way, took the arrows for the rest of us because they stood firm, at least for a significant time.