If Gingrich is the answer, Tea Party has failed

Boston Globe ^ | 120111 | Joshua Green

[Fred]

NEWT GINGRICH is the latest unlikely figure to vault to the top of Republican presidential polls, and unlike those who preceded him - Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain - he’s likely to stick around. That’s partly due to necessity. With just a month until the Iowa caucuses, conservatives don’t have time to anoint a new savior. It’s also because, despite his copious shortcomings, he seems immune to what felled the others. An able debater, he won’t flop like Perry and Cain. He’s not a full-on nut like Trump. And his legislative record eclipses Bachmann’s, which barely exists.

But his late emergence as the “true conservative’’ poised to challenge Mitt Romney is rich, and its broader significance underappreciated. For two years, the driving force in national politics has been the Tea Party, whose founding myth was that ordinary citizens were rising up in defiant objection to the hidebound, self-dealing ways of Washington. Greedy politicians, this view held, had bloated the government and lined their own pockets at taxpayers’ expense, while letting the country go to rot.

[PALIN SMITH]

"Which one, he's got a million of them."

Precisely.....you only add to my previous answer.

Newt is not an absolutist like Obama.

If he makes a mistake, he changes.

I was almost convinced about global warming at one time, but my extensive knowlege of climate history, chemistry, the weather and geology allowed me the luxury of deductive reasoning.

[McGruff]

his legislative record eclipses Bachmann’s, which barely exists.

Huh? Who wrote this some DUer?

[Servant of the Cross]

Rasmussen: Gingrich 45%, Obama 43%

However, ignoring the fact that it still wouldn't mean the "Tea Party" 'failed', let's suppose you're right about Newt; who's your answer?

[Yaelle]

It’s an anti Tea Party article. But it’s right about Newt. He is not anywhere near the kind of guy we want. I agree with them about his lobbying. Newt is all about newt. He wants what he wants.

[Blagden Alley]

Agreed. The Tea Party has been quite successful. The last elections are proof of that.

At this point, the Tea Party could not have time to get their type into the presidential running. In two and 4 years, there will be many more TP like candidates.

It takes time to organize a run for office, and the higher, the more time. The serious presidential candidates were making decisions before the tea party was really going. Having such success in the 2010 elections at the House, state and local level is in itself quite fantastic.

Right now, one has to go with Buckley, and support the most conservative guy who can get elected. Personally, I think Gingrich is ahead of Romney there. Cain is interesting, but he is hitting potholes on the campaign trail that a pro, or his people, would mostly avoid.

We are close to past the point where perfect (someone else) is just unthinkable, given the time frames. That’s life.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

Sounds like her buddy T-Paw is setting her up for a VP spot with Romney. Yeup, she sure is the epitome of “conservatism”.

[LibLieSlayer]

That is what these people are campaigning for... they tell us to STFU and vote how THEY tell us to vote. Well this ain’t a communist state... yet... but with these kind of people on the side that is supposed to save America... we are doomed.

LLS

[onedoug]

I think the Tea Party was waiting for Sarah, and she wimped-out.

¨Game on, Mr President!¨

Thanks a lot for nothing.

[Georgia Girl 2]

I was agreeing with you.

[SaraJohnson]

Unfortunately, elected “Tea Party” conservatives who do not have original ideals of reform and organized resistence to the continued financial shake down of the country, our freedom and the corruption of both parties, do us no good.

Hearing the Tea Party darling Allen West fight like a mad dog against conservatives on behalf of the Rino’s Super Committee sham demonstrates that electing people who claim to be conservative with their mouth, but who are unprepared intellectually for reform, is a fool’s errand.

Like West, Newt talks conservative. He is not a conservative reformer in thought and action.

[LibLieSlayer]

He is a manipulator of and expert in the use of the English language... that is what newt is and does.

LLS

[cripplecreek]

If he makes a mistake, he changes.

I love the way you people say that as if he changed his mind and settled there. The problem is that he changed his mind repeatedly and in one case, in a matter of 4 days.

[antceecee]

I agree. If Gingrich is the nominee, Obama will be re-elected, but then again that is the strategy. I think the GOP has decided to throw the Presidential election and concentrate only on taking both houses of Congress.

[LibLieSlayer]

Reality slaps them like a pair of bricks to the nards.

LLS

[Pietro]

1) The MSM has no credibility re the Tea Party, anything they have to say about it is BS

2) The Tea Party is too new to field a national candidate. The current national figures that would be ideal TP candidates are not yet ripe, ie B Jindal, M Rubio, S Walker, P Ryan and C Christie.

3) Holding the GOP responsible to a conservative budget is a daily demonstration of TP strength and relevance.

4) A victory for the TP in 2012 would be; Obama gone and majorities in the House and Senate. Period. And that is very doable.

5) The MSM is licking their chops over a Newt run, but they ain't who they used to be. We're getting stronger and they are getting weaker.

[LibLieSlayer]

newt is like an adultering husband that will tell his wife anything to keep her from finding out who he really is.

LLS

[LibLieSlayer]

No, they do not even want to run either the senate or the house... they like being the dims bitches.

LLS

[nathanbedford]

At the end of the day the Tea Party will embrace Newt Gingrich. To assume that the Tea Party was about a checklist of conservative principles is to misunderstand the energizing impulse that created and sustains the tea party. The tea party is aroused because they feel, quite reasonably, that their country is slipping away and the danger is not remote but imminent and catastrophic.

They did not gather in their millions across the village green of America because the Congress did not put the decimal point in the right place, the Tea Party exists out of the conviction that they must save the Republic.

So they seek policies toward that end and those policies inevitably are conservative policies because conservatism is patriotic and prudent. But they are not conservatives who seek conservative policies, they are patriots who seek national salvation.

When they judge a presidential candidate they will not measure him against a conservative matrix, they are going to ask themselves whether he can save the country. In other words, above all they want a man of vision, a man who can articulate that vision, a man who can carry the country.

Gov. Perry simply disqualified himself from that description. Newt Gingrich among all the candidates alone possesses the potential to be great. He could also be a great disappointment. But we must take the chance because a business as usual president simply is not the man for the times. There is a sense that this is a time of destiny for Gingrich.

To offer the following observation is knowingly to court the cheap and easy rebuke but it nevertheless must be said: the American people are awakening to the danger which is buffeting them from abroad and from within. They fear for their country and for their children. They are turning to a man whom they would not otherwise consider normal times. The historical parallel is Winston Churchill in 1939-1940.

This is not to say that Gingrich is in the same class with Churchill but the resemblance is remarkable. Both are possessed of the highest intellect, both are successful authors, both have vast parliamentary experience, both are seemingly controversial, both are accused of being fountains of bad as well as great ideas, both are masters of oratory, both have been cast into the wilderness and come back, both have been accused of ideological impurity, Churchill having crossed the aisle twice, both have farsighted vision.

England would never have turned to Winston Churchill if it were not the hour of her greatest peril. Newt Gingrich is not Winston Churchill but he might just be Margaret Thatcher. The rest of the field cannot even compete in the same league. If we entrust Gingrich with the office and he missteps at least we will have taken our best shot. It is not ideological purity that we need to save the country but leadership, even charisma. We have no choice but to take the risk of nominating Gingrich just as England had no choice but to turn to the one man that could save her.

This is why The Tea Party is able to embrace Gingrich and this is why the base of the Republican Party is even now embracing Gingrich, and this is why he will prevail in the election. It is not just a matter of eliminating the other candidates, that is not why England turned to Churchill, there were, after all, other men of substance but there was no one else who held the promise that Churchill held to save the world-and no one carried such a risk as Churchill.

They had to assume the risk to get Churchill.

[Harley]

Wise up. There are NO perfect candidates. Gingrich is far from my ideal candidate, however, if he is the nominee running against Obama I would run thru a brick wall to vote for him.

This is one of the best comments made on this thread. I think many people don't realize it now but if it comes down to Obama v. Newt...there's going to be a lot of people running through walls and crawling through broken glass to make sure Obama does not come back.

[presently no screen name]

she wimped-out....¨Game on, Mr President!¨

What did she say before that? Are we not all in this together - We the People? Don't you feel the same - Game on, Mr President? Or only Sarah felt that way? She was speaking only for herself?

Sarah always came from a "We The People" mindset - seems you think differently. You're more the wimp out - than she'll ever be capable of being.