People aren’t looking for someone that knows what to say, they are looking for someone that says what they mean.
People here are all impressed because Newt says it right. When looking at his record, in and out of Congress, the words are words. Newts heyday was when he helped take Congress back. It ended right there until he resigned. After that he espoused liberal ideas and also promoted them.
Newt is on video talking about how awestruck he was of Bill Clinton. That tells me all I need to know.
From Rick Santorum, saying at this link, so you can confirm the context:
"One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world....There is no such societey, that I am aware of, where we've had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”
dforest, doesn't that tell you all you need to know, too?
"What was my vision? I came to the uncomfortable realization that conservatives were not only reluctant to spend government dollars on the poor, they hadn’t even thought much about what might work better. I often describe my conservative colleagues during this time as simply ‘cheap liberals.’ My own economically modest personal background and my faith had taught me to care for those who are less fortunate, but I too had not yet given much thought to the proper role of government in this mission." [-----–Rick Santorum, p. IX It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good (2005) (Hat tip to UC above)-------]
Santorum clearly believes government has major directive role in individual morality, including charity, a cornerstones ofindividual morality; Meanwhile, government is THE SINGLE MOST ADDRESSABLE CAUSE of our moral malaise in America. One simple example: return control of schools back to their communities, allow parents to choose their schools, and allow parents, not judges, to decide whether or not Christian t-shirts and prayer, etc., is moral, let alone "legal." A large part of the reason our youths are immoral is because their schools have "raised" them to be meticulously secular and "non-judgmental," so they're discouraged to exercise, and lack the confidence in, their own moral compasses. It is a straightforward case of how government creates immorality that would disappear if its overseeing governmenet was cut to a minimum.
Christian charity works when it can be exercised freely. Government has tapped much of that resource for its own food stamps, welfare, and preferential treatment for "underserved" classes of people. Government charity has created sloth, envy, gluttony, lust -- because all of those behaviors are rewarded, whereas a Christian charity would have as its goal to discourage such behavior to a minimum. We are forced to create a nest for immoral living. That's what happens when government presumes to direct morality.
Newt is damned risky, far from perfect. There's a lot I don't like about Newt. But as strong as he stands against abortion and the homosexual agenda, he stands AS STRONG for cutting Federal government, a move that would restore fiscal and moral responsibility more directly to the people.
Americans aren't immoral -- their government, via Federal laws and activist judges, tells them it's immoral to pray in school, immoral to discourage or reject open homosexuality in every corner of their lives, from military to grade schools. Government tells them it's immoral to pray in public schools or to teach that America is great, that the Christian bible was expressly part of the founding principles. Teaching our kids that is deemed immoral by the government.
Godspeed Newt Gingrich.