Posted on 11/11/2011 5:41:26 PM PST by teg_76
Newt Gingrich said Friday that Herman Cain should not have joked about Anita Hill potentially endorsing him for president, arguing in a radio interview that harassment is “not something to be joked about.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
“I’m beginning to think there may be a lineup of Cain groupies here that are allied and will be ready to pounce on Newt at every thread that mentions his name. Otherwise, how to explain such vitriol and seemingly lack of discernment?”
You’re certainly welcome to think what you want, but Newt has a LONG HISTORY of straying from the conservative cause. If one is going to tramp around the country with their chin higher than their eyeballs due to their superior intelligence, we will expect them to show that ‘intelligence’ at all times.
In this case, he had NO REASON to either bring up Penn State, or to lend credibility to Anita Hill.
Thus, proving that Newt is still Newt.
He can’t resist the subtle, hypocritical pander to the Liberal zeitgeist. It just comes out.
I understand (though don’t necessarily agree with) the thinking that Newt has to go negative on Cain if he wants to beat him. But that doesn’t mean chucking conservative principles overboard by acting all offended at a lack of political correctness. Newt would be the first to admit that the Left made Anita Hill, not to mention easy allegations of “sexual” harassment, into a complete and pathetic joke.
Newt just can’t shake his formative years as a pol when it was all about “reaching across the aisle,” “bipartisanship” and courting “Independents.”
Newt has been great in the debates and he obviously has a lot to offer. But he’s essentially still old-school and can’t help himself.
He didn’t come to understand the Tea Party through his natural political instincts. (See Dede in NY.) He studied it, learned it, found he agreed with it (on some level) and is trying to apply it. But now and then, the old 90’s Newt slips out.
As in when he started this campaign by calling Paul Ryan’s budget “right-wing social engineering.” Sure, there are constructive critiques to be made of the Ryan plan, but those were pandering terms and offered at a most inopportune time.
Then there was the discourse on how at some erudite level the Obamacare mandate was okay. Yeah, he had to walk that back, but it still showed that his instincts are old-school.
Then don’t get started on his numerous affairs, including the one he had with his present wife while still married to wife #2. And this while Callista was a congressional aide. Now she’s got a $500,000 account for expensive jewelry at Tiffany’s — and Newt’s campaign is over a million dollars in debt.
Anyway. I’ll vote for Newt if he’s the nominee. But I’d prefer to see him serve our country as VP. That way we’d get the Gingrich benefits without the Gingrich risks.
Excellent.
OK, we have Romneybots, Perrywinkles, and so I now proclaim Gingrich supporters: Newticles.
Interesting question. Here’s my take on it:
I think all Romney has is the idea that he’s “the most electable.”
That doesn’t mean anyone likes him. It just means there’s this idea out there that he’s “the most electable.” IOW, there are a lot of Romney “supporters” who are negative on him anyway, it’s just they want to beat Obama and they have fallen for the idea that Romney is the only one who can do that.
Since nobody like Romney anway, even most of his “supporters,” there’s not much use in going negative on him. And there’s not much use in taking the risk of going negative on him — the bigger the negativity, the bigger the risk.
The way to knock Romney down, at least at this point, is to build up your own case for being the most electable. I think that is the approach Cain has taken so far.
(Gingrich has only recently begun to matter, so whatever he’s done before now is not an indication of how he’s going to conduct himself if he gets a little up in the polls.)
All that said, at a certain point, once Cain, for example, has a good showing in the early primaries, THEN Romney’s schtick starts to stink more and then they go negative on him.
That’s the Newt problem in a nutshell.
He can’t keep his mouth shut and, just when you start to warm up to him, out comes some Liberal-panderfest that just makes you cringe.
I want the benefit of his expertise, but he needs a boss to keep him in line. Such as President Cain.
I did listen to the entire show with Newt just now and he really didn’t say much but never thought he would be defending that. It was much ado about nothing.
Yes, humor is one of the best ways to break the stranglehold of political correctness and all the other ludicrous orthodoxies the Libs try to shove down our throats.
I wonder if Newt would lecture Rush about joking about
Anita Hill or fake “sexual” harassment.
Oh, now you’ve done it. ;)
“I want the benefit of his expertise, but he needs a boss to keep him in line. Such as President Cain.”
I remember a political cartoon back in the days of Reagan’s first term. It showed one of those competition row boats, with like 10 people all rowing in unison in nice, smooth motions. At the back of the boat was one guy rowing his tail off, as hard as he could, in the other direction. The guy standing on the boat (yelling out instructions to the crew) was Reagan...and his one word was “FELDSTEIN!!!” (i.e., the guy rowing the other way) - as in Martin Feldstein, Reagan’s chief economic advisor who kept going on TV and undercutting Reagan. It was funnier than heck.
If Newt is VP to anyone, I fear that he might be the same.
That may be a point, but it’s not the bigger point. The bigger point is what this says about Newt. Not what it says about Cain.
Like I said, Newt's definition of "practicality" is old-school "reaching across the aisle," "bi-partisanship," and coddling "Independents."
This wasn't about practicality. It was full-on Liberal-pandering by reinforcing the dictates of political correctness that there are certain topics to which we must bow down and be reverent at all times, REGARDLESS of how ridiculous, vapid or vile ACTUAL SITUATIONS involving those topics factually are.
Humor is our strongest weapon against political correctness. Even Alinsky knew that.
That’s fine.
But not relevant to what this incident shows about where Gingrich is and how he’s willing to conduct himself vis-a-viz the Liberal orthodoxies.
He could have intoned all he wanted about how serious sexual harassment is without saying it’s somehow wrong to joke about Anita Hill.
We cannot bring any balance to the cretinous impact of political correctness until we can make people accountable if they want to play that game.
That means people need to realize they will receive the full panopoly of social opprobrium — including being joked about for an eternity — if they come forward with non-serious and overblown accusations.
That's why what happened today is a step in the right direction. Humor is one of the only ways we can push back against the darling status that the Left thinks is so very untouchable.
BTW, the media did not seem to notice that it was an ordinary American, not Herman Cain, who made the Anita Hill joke in the first place -- meaning, SHE'S A JOKE, people, period. So this guy makes the Anita Hill joke and Cain has a snappy comeback "is she going to endorse me?" That is all. Also BTW, one of the first jokes made on FR about the sexual harassment garbage against Cain was something like "I expect Anita Hill to be along shortly." The Left is clueless that they made this woman into a joke by exploiting her for their shameless diatribe against "an uppity black man."
And don’t forget why his campaign first crashed: calling Paul Ryan’s plan “right-wing social engineering” and coming up with some erudite explanation for why the Obamacare mandate was, you know, okay at some level.
Newt has a lot to offer, but he needs a boss to keep him in line. So he needs to be VP.
(This has the added benefit of saving the nation from what would surely be history’s most unsufferable First Lady, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” Callista. Who became the third Mrs. Gingrich by having an affair with Newt while she was a congressional aide and he was still married to the second Mrs. Gingrich. He’s asked forgiveness for these moral lapses, but that aside, it does show how deeply he bought into the typical Washington pol culture back in the 90’s.)
Making a joke about Anita Hill (which was made by a supporter, not by Cain) is not equivalent to making fun of sexual harassment.
That’s exactly what happened.
The man said something like “Hey, Herman, Anita Hill called—” and Cain replied, “Oh, is she going to endorse me?”
Wow. So terrible. /s
BTW, as I posted upthread, some of the first jokes made on FR about the allegations against Cain involved Anita Hill.
It brings back really bad memories for a lot of people and there's no way the Dems look good when people remember what they did to Justice Thomas and how they exploited Anita Hill for political gain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.