Just A Reminder
Please Don't Forget
To Donate To FR
This Quarter
Sponsoring FReepers are contributing
$10 Each time a New Monthly Donor signs up!
Get more bang for your FR buck!
Click Here To Sign Up Now!
Posted on 11/18/2011 8:04:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Three marriages. Two divorces. Add up the numbers, and Newt Gingrich is an improbable candidate to win over the influential social-conservative bloc in the GOP.
But in this unconventional cycle, both national and early-primary-state evangelical and social-conservative leaders are signaling that Gingrich’s personal history is no insurmountable obstacle, although some would like to see him further address his past decisions.
“In general, I think people who have experienced the ultimate form of forgiveness themselves are willing to extend mercy and extend forgiveness to others,” says Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“In Newt’s case, he’s been very transparent and open about saying that he made mistakes in the past and that he’s found forgiveness and peace through faith in God,” Reed adds. “He’s got a strong marriage, and he’s close to his daughters and the rest of his family, and just based on what we’re seeing in Iowa and nationally, I think he addressed this, and I tend to think it’s a largely settled issue.”
Richard Land, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, is more skeptical, saying that Gingrich’s candidacy will be a “hard sell” for many voters. Land has been doing informal focus groups among Southern Baptists for the past two years on Gingrich’s candidacy, as he expected Gingrich to run and be a serious contender. He found that women are especially wary of Gingrich.
“He’s got a gender problem,” Land says. “His toughest audience is going to be evangelical women. Evangelical men, depending on what Newt does and says, are more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Women, on the other hand, have told Land that they would vote for Gingrich “under no circumstances.” If the general election comes down to Gingrich and Obama, they say, they may just not vote.
Land thinks Gingrich should “find a pro-family venue” and deliver a speech akin to John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech on Catholicism.
“He needs to make the speech of his life, and in his mind, his target has got to be 40- to 60-year-old evangelical women,” Land advises. “And he’s got to convince them that he’s sorry, he regrets it, he would do anything he could to undo the pain and the hurt that he’s caused, he understands the pain and the hurt that he’s caused, and he has learned his lesson. That he has thrown himself on the grace of Jesus, and that if they elect him president, he will not let them down — that there will be no moral scandal in a Gingrich White House.”
One key move Gingrich made in 2007 was doing an interview with influential social conservative James Dobson, then chairman of the board at the prominent evangelical organization Focus on the Family. Gingrich’s candid and contrite answers may have helped make significant inroads in reconciling social conservatives to him. Speaking about former misdeeds, Gingrich said, “I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I’m not only not proud of, but that I would deeply urge my children and grandchildren not to follow in my footsteps.”
“Somebody once said that when you’re young you want justice and that when you get older you want mercy,” Gingrich mused later in the interview. “I also believe that there are things in my own life that I have turned to God and have gotten on my knees and prayed about and sought God’s forgiveness.”
Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, praises Gingrich for being “very transparent” in that interview and for showing a willingness “to discuss some of the mistakes he’s made in his life.” Nance wasn’t the only one listening; many Iowans also likely tuned in, according to Bob Vander Plaats, Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Iowa campaign chairman and currently president of the social-conservative group The Family Leader, who extols Gingrich for being “very upfront, very transparent, very humble and repentful” in his conversation with Dobson.
Another advantage to Gingrich’s fessing up in 2007, Vander Plaats notes, is that it avoids the appearance of a sudden change of heart. “It wasn’t what I would call a presidential conversion. There are times when we talk about Paul having the ‘road to Damascus’ conversion. We sometimes in Iowa say some of these candidates have had a ‘road to Des Moines’ conversion,” he chuckles.
Unlike Land, Vander Plaats doesn’t think women are necessarily opposed to a Gingrich candidacy. “I really thought some of the soccer moms would really have an issue,” he muses. So when he heard that a soccer mom was supporting Gingrich, he asked her about it. “She put it in kind of a unique way,” Vander Plaats said of the woman’s answer. “She said, ‘I believe his childish ways are behind him.’”
This Saturday, Gingrich (along with the other presidential candidates, minus Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman) is slated to attend Vander Plaats’s forum, featuring Frank Luntz as moderator, which should give him another opportunity to make his case to Iowa social conservatives.
Ann Trimble-Ray, a Republican Central Committee county chairwoman in Iowa who considers herself socially conservative, thinks that Gingrich’s “past issues with marital infidelity” may have “kept folks from jumping on a Gingrich bandwagon.” But as Hawkeye voters have whipped through other candidates, a narrowing field has forced them to reconsider. Furthermore, while social conservatives want a candidate who has promised “to vote right” on the issues they care about, Trimble-Ray says, they also want someone who is “best positioned to go up against Barack Obama in the general election.”
In evangelical stronghold South Carolina, there is similar openness to Gingrich’s being the nominee. Oran P. Smith, president and CEO of the Palmetto Family Council, notes that most evangelicals have at some moment in their lives “turned away from their bad ways and moved forward toward a Christian worldview” and may thus be sympathetic to Gingrich’s journey.
“The way Newt Gingrich has handled his past, he has been very direct about the fact that he thought that his former ways were sinful ways, and I think generally, because of the experience of the average evangelical, evangelical Christians tend to be pretty quick to forgive,” Smith observes.
Nor does he see any need for Gingrich to deliberately address the matter again in a prominent way. Instead, he thinks that a low-key approach and a willingness to take questions on the topic will best serve Gingrich. “He doesn’t need to be doing any mea culpa press conferences, I don’t think. But when he is talking to private groups and informally, I think he needs to address it,” he says.
A boon for Gingrich is his daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman’s decision to pen a column in May addressing the oft-repeated lie that Gingrich served her mother Jackie Battley Gingrich with divorce papers as she was dying of cancer. That, Cushman emphasized in her column, was not what happened. While Gingrich did take Cushman and her sister to the hospital to visit their mother, his first wife, after she had had a benign tumor removed in surgery, the divorce process had been initiated prior to the visit by Jackie Battley Gingrich (who is still alive).
Beyond his marital history, another potential sticking point for Gingrich when courting evangelical voters is his conversion to Catholicism two years ago. (Gingrich was previously Southern Baptist.) Land estimates that at most “a tiny sliver” of evangelicals, primarily older people, will reject Gingrich on that ground, noting that conversion hasn’t much dented evangelical support for former Florida governor Jeb Bush or current Kansas governor Sam Brownback, both Catholic converts from Protestant backgrounds. Smith agrees. “We have a heritage in South Carolina that’s mostly Protestant, clearly,” he says, “but I don’t really think most evangelicals when they are choosing who to vote for are thinking in those terms, to parse the differences between the professing Christian denominations.”
Ultimately, for Gingrich, the key to winning over dubious social conservatives is consistently showing both that he understands why his past troubles them and that he is no longer the man he used to be.
“Character counts and it should count, and we want to see leaders who have the right moral compass,” Concerned Women for America’s Nance reflects, but she notes that there is also “room for redemption.”
“It’s important for people to own their mistakes,” she adds, “and the more that Newt Gingrich does that, the better it will be for him.”
— Katrina Trinko is an NRO reporter.
I was pointing out that your position is a childish absurdity.
Is you arrogance the result of having written a book or two, or is it just a defense mechanism?
Neither. It is the result of having learned a thing or two about Yeshua's teachings not commonly understood in His church together with the sense of responsibility to impart it despite the absolute assurance of a churlish reply.
Your arrogance outdoes your reading comprehension. You are trying to make an absolute case. I am saying that both options are viable. Therefore, your burden of proof is much higher. You have not met it.
You also have some sort of sick idea that your Presidential vote is something that you and the candidates will hash out on a one to one basis - and you will punish those who don’t meet your standards.
I got news for you. Your vote doesn’t matter, and all of these folks will be likely richer and more powerful and more protected from consequences if the nation re-elects Obama than you will ever be.
But go ahead, and enjoy your high horse and think that you are doing them a favor. You are not. You need them much more than they need you. (And that’s true of all of us). Those Republicans we “punished” in 06? They’re fine. But WE”RE screwed thanks to Reid and Pelosi. Same with Obama in 08.
And whom was it you said you were supporting with your posts? ... You make the DNC’s task so easy.
And may I ask which candidate you believe you are supporting with your insults and condescending posts?
Just saying that virtually every Evangelical I know has been divorced at least once...and this includes the pastors. And as for talkmeisters popular with Evangelicals, heck, how many times has Rush been divorced?
I don’t think this is a problem. I would assume that Evangelicals want somebody who supports Christianity, supports small government, is opposed to Agenda 21, and has actually been effective in getting conservative programs passed.
Romney has never been divorced (does he even have a wife?), but he is none of these things.
Got projection?
You are trying to make an absolute case.
Jesus was fond of those. I'm reporting accordingly. Too bad you just don't like those nasty Mosaic Laws. Few do, but you see, He was a stickler. Indeed, if you actually understood the Lord's prayer (particularly the version in Luke), you'd know that He was raising the bar for being forgiven to the point where we had reconciled with ALL who had offended us before even asking Him, just as He did in equating the thought with the crime and just as He did when He told us not to even approach the altar without having done so. ALL of that is in accordance with the purification of the priests, as He would have us be. ALL of that is just as He taught us when He told us even to love our enemies. He wanted us to strive to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is who gave us that Law. Most people try to morph their way out of obedience. It doesn't work simply because the consequences are immutable, whether or not He lifts a finger.
I am saying that both options are viable. Therefore, your burden of proof is much higher. You have not met it.
Funny, I thought I was merely making a point of disagreement (to which you apparently think me not entitled), and not even attempting a proof for which I obviously don't have the time or space here.
You also have some sort of sick idea that your Presidential vote is something that you and the candidates will hash out on a one to one basis -
No, I have the "sick" idea that I am entitled to my opinion for my bases of making choices for candidates and arguing in favor of them, to which you apparently think me not entitled.
What a pompous ass you are.
- and you will punish those who don’t meet your standards.
With what, withdrawing my support? Oh, so you think I'm obligated to support Newt in the primary without regard to his personal behavior? Unbelievable. I seriously doubt you were asserting such when the mediots were saying the same about Clinton.
I got news for you. Your vote doesn’t matter,
Oh but you have shown that it clearly does; else you would not waste so many electrons arguing against my intolerable position.
and all of these folks will be likely richer and more powerful and more protected from consequences if the nation re-elects Obama than you will ever be.
Oh goody, we're down to the "a vote for (fill in the blank) is a vote for Obama!" With an argument that lame you're bucking for full RINO-dumb. It was that kind of "logic" that gave us Schwarzenegger.
But go ahead, and enjoy your high horse and think that you are doing them a favor. You are not. You need them much more than they need you. (And that’s true of all of us). Those Republicans we “punished” in 06? They’re fine. But WE”RE screwed thanks to Reid and Pelosi. Same with Obama in 08.
Care to enlighten us as to the twisted fantasy of which you're accusing me now? If my vote was "unimportant" how then could I suddenly be guilty of delivering Slave Party majorities despite having voted uniformly Republican in the elections? This is a primary you know. I'm free and responsible to argue my preferences for a candidate to represent those preferences.
No it’s Big Government Newt that makes the DNC’s case:
In a May 15, 2011 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press with host David Gregory, Gingrich admitted he has long sought an individual mandate by government:
Gregory: Now, I know you’ve got big differences with what you call Obamacare. But back in 1993 on this program this is what you said about the individual mandate. Watch.
Video of Gingrich in 1993: I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.
Gregory: What you advocate there is precisely what President Obama did with his healthcare legislation, is it not?
Gingrich: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care.... I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.
I think inane is a more accurate word than extreme. As in, you are an inane troll who used an inane analogy.
“not to even approach without having done so.”
I am convinced that there are days when frustration is so heavy it offers a clear preview of Hell. If you seek mercy you must also grant it.
Looks to me like the Torah teaches that one has to SEEK mercy.
That indicates repentance. I haven't seen it.
And THAT is why you utterly missed the point.
We need to defeat Obama at all costs.
Who else if not Newt? Cain is tanking. Do we really want Mitt?
Newt can speak and debate and has experience with the legislative process in Washington.
So what if he advised Freddy and Fanny. So did top Obama aids.
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
“I haven’t seen itg.”
Love is blind. LOL
Understood. I tend to take the Old Testament and New Testament and put them together for the literal rule of the Messiah. It’s a work in progress.
It is indeed a work in progress, and it’s hard sometimes to take the whole counsel of scripture and properly apply it to a given situation. We live under New Testament grace and freedom - but cannot ignore the Old Testament teachings and history.
I try and remain very circumspect when applying these lessons. I am far less circumspect about other discussions here on FR and elsewhere.
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.