Posted on 05/17/2011 7:03:23 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Exit Mike Huckabee. Enter Newt Gingrich. Exit Donald Trump. It's been a busy week in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
A few questions remain to be answered. Enter Mitch Daniels? Exit Sarah Palin?
But already two of the best-known candidates seem bent on ruling themselves out of contention.
One is Newt Gingrich. He's being denounced for his comments on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's Medicare plan by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Charles Krauthammer on Fox News.
Ryan's Medicare plan was part of the budget resolution that all Republicans but four voted for in the House. It is for all practical purposes the platform of the Republican Party. And Gingrich seemed to trash it.
He did so in response to a tendentious question from "Meet the Press' " David Gregory, who asked whether Republicans "ought to buck the public opposition" and "really move forward to completely change Medicare"?
The smart response would have been to challenge the premises of Gregory's question. The Ryan plan is not necessarily unpopular; public sentiment depends heavily on how poll questions are worded. And the plan wouldn't completely change Medicare. The current system would remain in effect for everyone now 55 and over.
But Gingrich accepted Gregory's premises. "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich responded. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."
So a former Republican speaker of the House who wants to become a Republican president has just given Democrats a warrant to label a major Republican proposal "right-wing social engineering" and "radical change from the right."
It's not hard to see why Russell Fuhrman, an Iowa Republican who happened to run into Gingrich in Dubuque, said, "You're an embarrassment to our party. Why don't you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself?"
From his own personal experience, Gingrich should have known what is happening here. The party's congressional wing, with its majority in the House, has taken the initiative in setting party policy -- as it did when Gingrich was speaker in 1995 and 1996.
Republican presidential contenders didn't disparage Gingrich's ideas in anything like the way Gingrich disparaged Paul Ryan's. Gingrich sees himself, accurately, as a generator of ideas. But the party he seeks to lead is already committed to ideas that are apparently contrary to his.
If Gingrich has put himself out of line with Republican policy more or less purposefully, Mitt Romney had no way of knowing that he would be aligned with President Obama when he formulated his Massachusetts health care plan back in 2006.
Congressional Republicans have almost unanimously supported repeal of the Obamacare bill jammed through Congress in March 2010 with a mandate, modeled on the one in Massachusetts, requiring everyone to buy health insurance. Twenty-seven state attorneys general or governors, almost all Republicans, are bringing lawsuits arguing that the Obamacare mandate violates the Constitution.
Romney delivered a health care speech last week in Michigan defending his Massachusetts plan and insisting that a state mandate is a different kind of duck from a federal mandate. But the response of the large mass of Republicans seems something like the old New Yorker cartoon in which the little girl confronted with a green vegetable says, "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
Some Romney fans are saying he has recovered by raising $10.25 million in a single day this week. It's an impressive fundraising feat.
But what is money for in a presidential nomination race? It can help build state organizations, it can introduce an unknown candidate to voters, and it can present arguments for a candidate or against his opponents.
Some of those things, however, can be done much more cheaply these days through new media. And it doesn't seem likely that even millions of dollars of ads can make Republican primary voters and caucus-goers love the Massachusetts mandate.
Romney is running as a technocrat, someone who can analyze data and get results through good management. But Republicans this year are looking not for a technocrat but for someone to reverse the Obama Democrats' vast increase in the size and scope of government.
Romney too seems out of line with the party he seeks to lead.
Paul is a libertarian.
He is no conservative.
Not even close.
I meant to also ping you to this.
Palin must run.
Even if she does not win the GOP nomination, and I think she'll win it easily, she must run and put her small government/energy independence/strong national security message on the table.
Otherwise there will be no GOP. It will be as defunct as the Whigs.
What? And break a family tradition that goes back hundreds of years? Maybe the Mexican army could've used him.
He isn’t a Libertarian. He wants to limit the Federal Government. Not to make things legal. Gary Johnson is a Libertarian. Notice where they differ, and they do. Gary Johnson wants to Legalize Marijuana. Tax it. Regulate it. Etc. Ron Paul wants to end the Federal War on Drugs. He would leave up to the states whether it’s legal or not.
Libertarians often seem to want to force things to be legal.
Ron Paul thinks that the Federal War on Drugs is something that’s not expressly permitted by the Constitution and therefore we shouldn’t be doing it.
Ron Paul, seriously, wants a much much smaller Federal Goverment, and calling him a Libertarian really doesn’t do justice to the kind of radical cuts he wants to make.
If “almost no Federal Government” is Libertarian or Conservative, I don’t know. But Ron Paul wants almost no Federal Government. What ever group doesn’t like Big Federal Government, that’s what Ron Paul is.
Oh yeah
Well never mind
Daniels will not win. Because Republicans never elect someone who can’t argue that they’re the “top” Republican running. And Daniels can’t. No one knows who he is.
So, hype him. Market him to RINOs and hype him.
Do you want RINOs voting for someone who can win? Or someone who can’t?
Romney Can win
Gingrich Can win
Daniels Can’t win
We want to hurt Romney and Gingrich, and help RINOs who won’t be able to beat the Conservative.
I predict that if she does declare, the campaign will be made up of volunteers like myself, so there will be little need for office space and all the conventional trappings of a campaign like a Bob Dole, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would have. I have a computer and a phone, that’s all I need to raise that $2 million dollars. Just imagine if 10-20 million 2ndDivisionVets spring up, as if by magic. It’ll make the Obama or Ron Paul zealots look like Astroturf!!
“So, hype him. Market him to RINOs and hype him.”
I don’t think we’ll have to. Daniels is being promoted by some of the RINO gang that backed Dubya and they’ll be doing the hyping themselves. We can just sit back and watch the show.
Gingrich’s organization called me with a push poll about whether Newt should run. They also wanted me to give the maximum contribution for the primary. I refused to give anything.
Ditto. I thought we were going to restore the Constitutional Republic. Besides as Ron White would say “You cain’t fix stupid”.
Well said!
Right. I agree that is happening. I was talking more about the general idea that if we don’t want a RINO to win, we only have to take down Romney and Gingrich, as they’re the only 2 RINOs with a chance to win. Now, if they’re destroyed early in the process - this year, before the primaries start, another RINO who could win could pop up and take their place. But none of the RINOs that are being talked about right now can win except for Romney and Gingrich.
So, if anyone goes “woah is me, we need more candidates, it looks like the RINOs are going to win because there are so many unknown RINOs that we have to beat them all” don’t worry about them, they aren’t going to win. Would you rather have Michelle Bachmann, let’s say, up against Gingrich, or Daniels?
Between Bachmann and Daniels, Bachmann is the “top” Republican. Between Bachmann and Gingrich, Gingrich is likely the “top” Republican, but Bachmann does have a resume of prime national exposure already.
Palin I’d say is the top Republican overall, and it really isn’t very close. She should win easier than McCain did. And I prefer Ron Paul.
Huckabee was Romney’s only path to getting the nomination. Without another conservative running who is capable of being elected, Romney stands no chance. The more RINOs who get in the race, the less chance any of them have.
When the Palin Express leaves the station, Bachmann and Cain lose their reason to exist. Any minor conservative that hangs on will be seen as self-serving and their support will fall away. Even some liberal Republicans seem to be split between Mitt and Palin. So far Gov. Palin has played this very professionally and has allowed each candidate to implode on their own initiative. As soon as she gets behind the wheel of the Express, it’s going to take off down the track and there won’t be any stopping it.
Newt blew it on Sunday. He jumped the shark by talking his general election strategy before the primaries even start. His ego wouldn’t let him wait.
One thing I’ve noticed here on Free Republic is that there haven’t been many threads on Newt since “Meet The Press”.
Tells me he was done at the start, thankfully.
I can see Newtie-boy sitting in the back of the room in Boston or Philadelphia complaining that Jefferson, Washington and Adams are “social engineering” from “the radical right” by wanting to declare independence from Britain.
And since Sunday he’s been parsing words like Clinton. LOSER!
NO NEWT!
Does it matter that he did that by tapping into a Democrat source -- the Las Vegas mob?
Does it matter that he did that by tapping into a Democrat source -- the Las Vegas mob?
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