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Posted on 05/16/2011 10:30:19 AM PDT by presidio9
Here was your weekend in Republican presidential politics, first Mike Huckabee and then Newt Gingrich. You want to know where the Republicans are these days? Start with the two of them.
Huckabee was like the holy-rolling, right-wing version of one of those rhetorical questions the guy with the gravelly voice asks in the television commercials:
"Can Geico help you save 15% on your car insurance? ... If a Republican candidate pulls out of the race and nobody's around to hear him, did it actually happen?"
No kidding, when I read that Huckabee, who practically had to be dragged off the stage in the last campaign, had announced he wasn't going to run in 2012 on his Fox News show, my first reaction was, Wow, Huckabee has a television show?
"All the factors say go," Huckabee said, "but my heart says no."
Which factors said "go" to this guy? The fact that he ran second to John McCain the last time around? Maybe the real reason Huckabee isn't going to run for President is that he doesn't want to stop making the first big money of his life. Once the only thing overweight about Huckabee was Huckabee. Now it's his bank account.
In that way, even as he decides not to join the field, Huckabee is ahead of the field in this one important way, showing other guys who are never going to be President how you can grow your own profile and earnings by running for President. It's probably why a has-been like Newt Gingrich, who hasn't been a relevant figure in politics for years, has decided to enter the race. This isn't a move at the White House for Gingrich. Just a financial move.
Gingrich has to know he's not going to ever be President, just off his marital history alone, one that makes Rudy Giuliani, bless his heart, look like the Rev. Billy Graham in comparison.
But there was Gingrich on "Meet the Press," talking about the mistakes he's made in the past, including the affair that led to one of his two divorces. Two divorces, of course, would be a world's record for an American President. Newt's contract with America always includes marriage certificates, you bet.
"I think that if people watch me, talk to me, get to know me, my hope is that the majority of Americans can decide if I have the ability [to bring the country together]," Gingrich said.
But it is hard to see how you can say your campaign is starting out hot when you have to get one of your daughters out in front of you, saying that it's NOT true that her father once served her mother with divorce papers while the mother was recovering from cancer surgery. Even if that's sure not the way mom remembers it.
"When he got [to the hospital]," the former Mrs. Gingrich told The Washington Post one time, "he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from the surgery."
Later, Gingrich stepped out on the second Mrs. Gingrich with the third warming up in the bullpen, which explains why he'd rather talk about his bold new ideas rather than the "mistakes" he's made in the past, ones on which he says he and God are not totally square.
For now, after the Republicans announced they were taking back the country from Obama in the 2010 midterm elections, Gingrich is the face of the movement to officially unseat Obama.
All that big talk about the sweeping and vast power of change in Washington, and for now voters are presented with this amazing group of lightweights, along with Tanning Salon Boehner:
Gingrich. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Current Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who should be a Kardashian. No one really expects Sarah Palin to run. Mitt Romney is supposed to be some kind of front-runner if he gets in, and it would be at least entertaining to see Romney in the race, trying to run against his own health care plan.
Is Obama unbeatable? He's not, no matter what kind of a wave he rides now after the death of Bin Laden. George H.W. Bush once had nearly 90% approval ratings after the first Gulf War and Bill Clinton put him out of business a year or so later because the economy tanked.
There ought to be a real debate about health care, and the economy, and war, and jobs. That's not in question. The question is who is going to have that debate about the future with Obama.
Newt Gingrich said Sunday that one of his weaknesses is that he's both a political leader and a "teacher." Well, yeah, he is a teacher. But only if you want to meet girls.
Huckster a right-winger ? On what planet ?
Newt is toast.
He opened his mouth and told us he’s a liberal at the core.............
Lupica is a prick. I saw the author; no need to read what this NeoSocialist bastard has to say.
Lupica is a liberal idiot surrounded by many other idiot NY liberals thinking they are the world. Great writer but politically all wrong.
....when he spoke on Dobson's radio show in 2007, Gingrich refused to say that he was actually repentant. The evangelical leader repeatedly pressed him on that point: "When I hear you talk about this dark side of your life...you didn't mention repentance. Do you understand that word repentance?"
-- from the thread Newt and Evangelicals: Not a Match Made in Heaven
"Mrs. Gingrich #2 was dumped after her husband had carried on an extramarital affair with a fetching, blond congressional staffer named Callista Bisek, who went on to become the present Mrs. Gingrich #3. This Family Values paradigm was complicated by the fact that whilst Mr. Gingrich was filibustering Ms. Bisek over the Speaker’s desk, he was simultaneously leading the impeachment charge against a naughty president of the United States....The much-married Newt Gingrich converts to Catholicism this weekend—and I’d pay a year’s salary to have been a bug on the wall during his religious instruction."
-- Christopher Buckley, from the thread The Audacity of Poping
I wish they would do the right thing for the country and stop running. Is that to much to ask? Of course, if you are h#$$ bent on destroying your country; I guess it’s too much to ask.
Huck,
When “all the factors” said go, they meant, “go away”.
Lupica may be a prick, but we’re still screwed. Who is our frontrunner now?
Love how they ignore all the true conservatives in the race.
Huckabee out.
Trump was never running anything more than his mouth.
Newt decided to prove to everyone he is an intellectual Elitist and cut his own tongue out before our very eyes. Buh Bye.
Gee who’s next?
Barry could not stand up to the same scrutiny and gets a pass from the press. There still has not been a full vetting of Larry, Gurnee, a Wild Limo Ride, motel and limo receipts, extradition to Delaware, unsealing of opponent’s divorce records, etc, etc.
I believe the RINO’s are running in order to intentionally draw votes away from true Conservatives. It is a political strategy between Democrat’s and Democratic Republicans (in other words, Democrats).
Bozo getting out, bozo getting in.
Why? Because politicians keep on spin.
Run, run, run, but you just can’t hide...
Newt and Romney, and anyone else the establishment throws at us will be a waste of time, door openers for Obama.
Of all the announced and semi-announced candidates, I don’t have one yet that I remotely like. Oh, sure, I like Cain. But he isn’t going anywhere. We don’t know yet what Sarah Palin is going to do—my bet is that she passes if a remotely credible candidate gets in.
Daniels is the new focus of attention. I kinda like what he did in Indiana but he has said a couple stupid things (truce on social issues, he’s not ready on foreign policy). That I could get over. But then there’s the fact that he was Lyndon Baines Bush’s budget director. That is a stain he isn’t going to be able to explain away easily.
I guess I’ll wait and see what happens.
Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana
Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota
Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico
Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts
Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas
Businessman Herman Cain of Georgia
Also Buddy Roemer, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. Huntsman will only run it Mitch doesn't.
By my count, that's four decent moderate conservative-to-conservative candidates, all better than the McCain-Romney-Huckabee trifecta that closed out the race last time around.
The guy has no class.
No brains either.
No electability either.
No charisma either.
What was it that he DID have again?
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