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 ...
I agree. It’s a shame too. I’ve seen Steele represent Conservatism rather well from time to time on FoxNews. Then he gets elected to be the RNC head, and he just turns to liberal goo.
Very disappointing...
He’s right.
However, there is nothing “centrist” about Dede Scozzafava. She’s a left winger, through and through. She is as bad or worse than the Democrat she was supposed to be running against.
When Newt Gingrich proposed the Contract With America, every Republican standing for election in 1994, House and Senate, signed onto it, but it was not so very long after January 1995 that we discovered many of those politicians had only done so for the PR benefit, they were not sincere in its goals and ideals.
Gingrich had a majority-conservatives Republican conference in the House, yet time after time, he allowed a handful of liberal Republicans to block, stall and quash good legislation, two dozen or so people got their way over all those other conservatives and the wishes of many, many of the American people who thought they were getting one thing and were constantly patted on the head with the baloney about how they couldn't get it all done immediately, we had to be patient, etc., etc., etc.
Done with the lies, had enough of this stuff. No, it doesn't have to be a "purely right-wing majority" but Gingrich and many of his fellows have demonstrated that even with a large right-wing majority, he wasn't sincere about accomplishing that which he propounded and what so many of us truly wish from our government.
Sure, Newt, we need a lot of liberals in the party. That will help unify us, right?
Newt was good 20 years ago when he was taking Brother Jim Wright to task for his shenanigans. However, he’s turned into a prime example of what happens when one stays in Washington too long.
Newt, I accept “can’t always get what you want”. I don’t accept not even trying.
Has he been on Nancy's couch again?
The Left ran a Saul Alinsky radical in ‘08, and they managed to win. Oh....that’s right. He won because he was tan.
I've made excuses for the guy for the last time. I've had it with him.
Though the reasons I have for wishing Newt would go away are legion, he does have a few still-glowing embers in his once conservative soul. Here, he shows the beginnings of a valid point, which he then screws up with the exact wrong prescription.
There’s no question that, within any group to be big enough to win elections, there will be disagreements. Conservatives on FR are at each other’s throats often enough that we should know, and accept, that there are legitimate areas of difference.
BUT THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION—limited government, economic and personal freedoms, etc. One does not “accommodate” assaults on those basics without betraying the very essence of who we are.
But do we find ways to work together wherever we can? Of course. Every day, Americans make a thousand little adjustments in what they say and do in order to foster cooperation, harmony, and productivity in the workplace and with family and friends. They get it. But Newt’s prescription for accommodation goes beyond that. It’s a one-sided hospitality. It does not distinguish between those who want a place at the table and those who want to dictate the whole frickin dinner menu.
At the same time, we do ourselves no favors when we go out of our way to play gotcha with a hundred little litmus tests on minutiae. We all fall short of someone’s purity standards. Give me a flawed but honest patriot at the table any day. If I thought that’s what Newt was getting at, I’d say bravo. Unfortunately, his actions and alliances over the years indicate less an invitation to our table than a dis-invitation to the ones already there.
Has Newt picked up a newspaper in the past couple of years?
And as a historian who actually lived through this, has personal experience with it, isn't just reading about it later, Gingrich knows better. It is intellectually dishonest for him to portray fact as fiction, fiction as fact.
Conservative leadership impels others to follow. Some of the most stalwart conservatives then have 'relaxed' their principles now. Orrin Hatch and McCain being two examples. And it's not a coincidence that after Jan. '89 there was a lapse of conservative leadership in the GOP. Then eight years of Clinton cemented in many Republican minds the idea that maybe conservatism isn't really the answer after all.
No, Newtie, it is not realistic to expect every congressional candidate to be a mirror image of Jesse Helms. But what signal are you sending when you support a grossly liberal candidate like Scozzafava over a 'Reagan conservative' such as Hoffman?
Gingrich needs to cease with the intellectual affectation and start acting like a brass-balled conservative.
How can you say that Reagan could get elected but Palin cannot? She is not some far right wacko, out there on the extreme edge at all, whatever other criticisms people have about her.
Newt, Ronald Reagan created a center-right majority by LEADING FROM THE RIGHT.
To believe otherwise is stupid.
Oh, please. John Kerry very nearly pulled it off in 2004, and Obama's success speaks for itself. They were two of the most far-left members of the Senate.
You can have thinking people who ask questions and can articulate why they reject bonehead legislation (cap & trade, obamacare etc.)
At the same time, we do ourselves no favors when we go out of our way to play gotcha with a hundred little litmus tests on minutiae. We all fall short of someone’s purity standards. Give me a flawed but honest patriot at the table any day. If I thought that’s what Newt was getting at, I’d say bravo. Unfortunately, his actions and alliances over the years indicate less an invitation to our table than a dis-invitation to the ones already there.
I as well do not insist on a *purity* level, either it's my way or the highway for any politician, but there has to be some minimum level of standards for sending someone to Congress, to endow with the Public Trust, this woman in NY is not meeting them, at least not insofar as her public policy stances indicate. The GOP backed the wrong horse on this one, for whatever reason, they seem not to understand the mood of the American people now, and it is only going to grow as these months pass on into next summer, fall, Election Day.
I put it this way on another thread, I will no longer play Charlie Brown, allow that football to be pulled out yet one more time.
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