Posted on 10/26/2009 9:21:18 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Gingrich: 'You can't have a purely right-wing majority' Posted: October 26th, 2009 12:03 PM ET
From CNN Radio's Bob Constantini
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has taken considerable heat from conservative activists for endorsing Republican Dede Scozzafava over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in next month's special congressional election in New York.
But Gingrich is defending his approach to re-building the Republican Party. It begins, he said, by accommodating those who might disagree with you.
"Both parties have to recognize, you can create a center-right majority in America, which we did with Reagan in '80 and we did it again with the 'Contract with America' in '94," Gingrich said in an interview with CNN Radio. "You can't have a purely right-wing majority; you can't have a purely left-wing majority."
The former speaker claimed that Democrats are doing their part to help the GOP by promoting a liberal ideology. "Today, the Democrats are moving toward a secular-socialist model that is guaranteed minority in America," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Stick it, Newt. You know you screwed up in supporting this flaming liberal (who, BTW, is far too liberal to be elected as a *Democrat* in my state), but now, instead of admitting your mistake, you make excuses for it.
Newt, just shut up and go away.
Newt is not nearly as smart as I thought.
First, Hoffman is not right wing. He is a conservative. Calling a conservative right wing just shows Newt has gone totally off the reservation.
Second, as to his reference to Reagan; it is totally incorrect that Reagan changed any of his principles to draw lefties into his party. What Ronald Reagan did was explain his political philosophy so clearly that independents and conservative democrats could see that he was RIGHT. They did not change their party to join up with him, but they voted for him and supported him because he was RIGHT.
That is what we need now. Let the dims be dims. Let the independents be independent. We need a candidate who can so clearly explain the issues and the right approach to solving those issues that those who are reasonable will vote for him and with him on the issues, regardless of their party.
It is clear that selling books and speaking on TV has become more important to Newt than promoting a conservative candidate.
Goodbye Newt.
It is obvious finally that you were never really a conservative but a person who knew how to make the most of coat tails.
I had an employee like that once. He would finish my sentences in almost exactly the same words I would use. I thought he was exactly what I wanted in an employee.
When I gave him complete freedom to run his area, he demonstrated that he did not have any of the ethical values that I thought he had.
I realized then that what I had was not an employee with my values, but an employee that had learned how to anticipate what I would say in regard to an ethical problem and knew how to make the most of that.
It is apparent to me that was Newt’s talent during the Reagan years.
Newt might have a point if he were talking about a GOP candidate running in an urban sh!t-hole where a Democratic incumbent is running and the Democrats have a 9:1 advantage in registered voters. But this race is in an upstate New York district that has been a GOP district for a long time.
How does Newt think the left does it, taking more districts all the time? It's my take that they do it by selling their ideas. Why can't we do the same Newt?
Conservatism's tenets are solid. Ronald Reagan took many districts that had formerly been Democrat. He did it by selling people his vision, not by adopting theirs.
We WILL NEVER increase our numbers by failing to explain what Conservatism is to people who didn't know.
Newt's and the Republican leadership vision is the complete destruction of Conservatism over time, as one district to the next has Conservatism's light turned off, to win.
Well, this Conservative isn't buying what they are selling.
#2. Newt is delusional....
That is probably so, but he is right on this. You cannot, repeat cannot, win a national election with a far right or far left candidate. Obama fooled the moderate indy electorate into thinking he was a centrist, so he got the leftist vote and the moderate vote just as Clinton did. Reagan and the Bushes got the conservative vote and the centrist vote. That is the formula for winning elections. A Palin, DeMint or similar candidate faces an almost impossible handicap to win the Presidency.
Does anyone know how we can directly contact Newtie?
You are exactly right. It also kills me when I see communism depicted as the opposite of fascism. In fact, as Rand pointed out, the only true scale has liberty at one end and statism at the other - no matter what form that statism takes.
Go away Newt. Please, just go away.
I will agree you have to win the middle, but becoming the opposition, for power only is worthless, you may win but we all lose in the end.
Unfortunately, Newt is probably right, but he and others fail to understand WHY conservatism is losing ground. The problem is the education system that has been cranking out hundreds of thousands of indoctrinated liberals each year. Couple that with an entertainment media that puts out hard lib messages in vitually every TV show, song and movie. Our kids are growing up in a sea of leftist messages, and they are the ones who are now voting and teaching future generations.
Wrong.
To be right on this we’d have to accept the Clintonian attack phrase of “right wing” which places Hoffman’s positions as well as our own as extreme. This is not the case.
Bush 41 got the conservative vote by riding Reagan’s coattails. You left out the part where he lost because he betrayed conservatives. Bush 43 learned from daddy’s mistakes. He emphasized conservative values and kept departures from that philosophy low key. He won a second term. THEN he betrayed us openly. You saw the fall out in the ‘06 and ‘08 elections. Reagan is the ONLY one who ran as a conservative, won as a conservative, tried to govern as a conservative although he made his mistakes. And the only one who produced coattails for the next GOP candidate because of it. He was labeled extreme, too old and senile by even members of his own party.
To end, it was Newt himself that ecame one of the Republicans that has wanted to bury Reagan in the past. Instead he spends his days with Sharpton, Pelosi, AL Gore and Hillary. The man’s day as an authority on conservatism and it’s politics is done.
Sometimes, I think he is Newtered.
Wow...very poignant quotes...;-)
To loosely quote Don Corleone, “I think his brain is going soft with all that comedy he’s playing with that young girl.”
and yet he is running for president in 2012
I have a feeling Newt is going to work hard to reelect all the RINOs in 2010, at the expense of any conservatives who shows up on the ballot.
If the left can have their own facts, I can have a right-wing majority.
We have your number and every time you open your pie hole, you let the flies out. (In other words; SHUT THE HELL UP!)
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