Newt is far and away the best debater and has the best handle on the issues.
Newt is also far and away the only candidate who has ever balanced the federal budget WITH SUPLUSES.
In those areas, no one holds a candle to him.
Also, he is a conservative: pro-Life, pro-God, pro-Gun, pro-America, pro-natural family and marriage, pro-military, pro-strong foreign policy, and pro-fiscal sanity.
His problems are some marriages that went sour, some political errors, and some weird thing as speaker that was termed unethical...something to do with a book, iirc. All conservatives at the time knew it was a liberal witchhunt.
Name recognition, appearances, using cliche and contemporary themes/arguments with their jargon, celebrity endorsement, the timing of things, the politics of sex & race... that's what matters. Newt could have the answer to life and in the end he's “just” an old fat white guy with gray hair and a geeky voice that people don't even notice.
Newt’s problems are definitely not his marriages.
Most have enough conflict in their own lives to look the other way on that.
Newt’s problem is that he is absolutely not a conservative. His embrace of utopian global governance is what will keep every thinking voter from considering him.
In the marketplace of ideas - Newt has the best selection & great products.
However, the American people are searching the aisles for the most attractive gift wrap: nice hair, tall, good-looking, perfect wife, virtuous life, no runs, no fouls, no errors.
There’s nothing we don’t know about Newt and he knows we know. That’s a good start!!!!
Newt Gingrich was 18 when he married 26 year-old Jackie Battley, his HS geometry teacher. Nine years and two kids later, they had grown apart and Battley, not Gingrich suggested divorce. The went over the papers while she was in the hospital having a benign tumor removed. Not quite as juicy as the hate Gingrich crowd would have you believe, but that's what happened. This does not excuse Gingrich's shameful lack of respect for the sacrament of marriage, but he seems to have undergone a religious epiphany with the help of his current wife, Callista. As a Christian, I am willing to take him at his word on this one. I'm looking for the candidate not named Romney who is best qualified to fix the economy, restore America's place in the word, solve the dysfunction in Congress, and expose Obama in a debate. If character was my only factor, I'd be out campaigning for Tim Tebow.
and some weird thing as speaker that was termed unethical...something to do with a book, iirc. All conservatives at the time knew it was a liberal witchhunt.
While Newt was speaker, democrats filed 84 ethics sanctions against him. Eighty three were dropped -sound familiar Palinites? The one that stuck had to do with a class he taught. The committee could not agree that a violation had occurred, but the settlement agreement required that he reimburse the committee for the cost of the investigation, $300k. Two years later, the IRS cleared him, but the damage had been done.
His problem was that he couldn't keep his pants zipped and he said so himself. Went sour? By his own doing.