Herman Cain Still on Top Among Republicans for the GOP Primary Win but Newt Gingrich Surges

PRNewswire ^ | 11/21/2011

[BenKenobi]

What would you prefer?

“I concur wholeheartedly”

Or

“Preach it bro!”

[BenKenobi]

I’m going to add to your answer!

I am not an anti-intellectual.

I believe that the intellect is a product of the will, and unless properly directed, completely worthless. The important part is faith, to guide us in the proper application of intellect so that we might better ourselves and better others.

I am sick and tired, of people telling me that faith constrains the intellect, and that we should instead pursue unbrindled studies into whatever fascinates us in the momement, to fixate on the mere trivialities that happen to have letters behind their names.

So what am I in opposition? I am in opposition to jargon, which hampers the conjugation of thought; censorship, which hampers the distribution of thought; political correctness, which hampers the expression of thought; credentialism, which seeks to dictate who can deliver thoughts; sentimentalism, which seeks to reduce thought to mere emotions; nihilism, which argues that there is no such thing as meaning; relativism, which argues that all thoughts mean the same thing.

I am against all the defenders of said regimes, declaring me to be an anti-intellectual, when in fact, I am precisely the opposite, in defending thought against those who would deconstruct it of all it’s fervor and strength. Yet walled up in their ivory sinecures, they pronounce their murmurs as the purest thought and none other may comment that the emperor has no clothes whatsoever.

[over3Owithabrain]

What office did Buckley run for and win?

Oh he ran for mayor once as a lark and got 13 percent of the vote.

Cain is smart and a leader. For you to say otherwise only makes you look uneducated not him.

Guessing you want the "intellectual" Newt who is so smart he keeps moving left and right depending on who is paying him or what the political setting is.

[PhilDragoo]

What is an intellectual. Is Obama an intellectual.

Obama has concealed his life, but we got his number in 2007.

Obama is a Degenerate Islamo Commie Kenyan.

He hates America and Christianity and market capitalism and property and liberty and human life.

He extols the Seventh Century cult, European socialism, African mobs killing Christians, and Americans being deprived of jobs, homes, freedom and dignity.

Herman Cain is a living example of American Exceptionalism, the power of faith, discipline and perseverance.

Buckley wrote the Sharon Statement in 1960 the year Nixon lost to Kennedy. I joined YAF and worked for Goldwater, but it was not until 1980 that the conservative triumphed.

Now we face plenty of self-styled intellectuals: Rove, Krauthammer, David Brooks, Bill Kristol.

We need a leader.

We don't need shrieking fairies and carping harpies playing gotcha with Trivial Pursuits.

We're fifteen trillion in debt. Nobody has jobs and businessmen are standing on the windowledge.

Ain't no time to need to know the Grand Poobah of Smackistan.

Call down to the CIA and ask them--they can't foresee the fall of the Soviet Union, the attack on 911, the whereabouts of the WMDs--they ought to be able to look up information in the public domain.

And as for what some bankrupt, unemployable neighbor of Axelrod and tool of Allred says made her uncomfortable--fuggedaboudit.

[over3Owithabrain]

Cain is hardly afraid to make appearances. He almost daily enters the lions den, such as going toe to toe on the liberal jackwagon Letterman. He has been all over the place

[jpsb]

Yes! Let’s turn the country over to the uneducated stupid people! Great thinking.

[over3Owithabrain]

Cain is stupid and uneducated? Nice try. No actually pathetic try. Can we see your resume please, must be really awesome to make Cain’s look stupid and uneducated. Put up or shut up

[Da Mav]

A month ago I was proud & excited to support Herman Cain for President

I still am! Cain 2012

[07Jack]

“His fear of being videotaped at a meeting in NH, or arguing over whether it should be 45 minutes or 60 minutes, and being proud about not being a reader? No thanks.”

Well it seems Cain will indeed be interviewed in NH to be aired on CSPAN and the “leader not a reader” quote was in reference to Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter. So welcome aboard the Cain Train my FRiend!

[jmaroneps37]

Nice post to start off my day.

[org.whodat]

Willard has a home there, he will win that one, no one has doubted that from the start.

[org.whodat]

What a few of the nuts cannot grasp is these degrees were before the affirmative action BS. And they think McCain with his dead last in his class was brilliant.

[Darkwolf377]

No, it wasn’t a reference to a Teleprompter but to a question about knowing details. Sorry.

I have no one to vote for, just someone to vote against. How depressing.

[sphinx]

When did the party of Buckley become so proudly anti-intellectual? Anti-pointy-headed-university-bots, sure, but if we don’t champion reading and intellectual pursuits, we’re doomed.

I presume you mean the same Buckley who said he'd rather be governed by the first 1000 people taken from the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty?

Liberalism ran out of ideas 30 years ago and has collapsed into a resentment driven movement intent on economic leveling, excepting always the nomenklatura, with special interest pandering couched always in terms of "social justice." For the past several decades, every breath of fresh air has come from the right; the left can't even bear to acknowledge the structural problems, because it has no will to address them.

What you are confusing with anti-intellectualism is a grassroots revolt against an entrenched political elite that plays kick-the-can down the road politics while the country rots away. This opens the door for outsider/insurgent candidates whose inexperience can be, and in several instances has been, painfully exposed. What is needed is a highly experienced, fully vetted, veteran pol with genuine reformist credentials. You know, someone like Reagan: the former union president, middlebrow public intellectual, and successful two term governor of California whom the liberals liked to dismiss as a mere actor.

There are such people on our side, but Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, etc. declined to run. Ron Paul has plenty of experience but is lost in libertarian fantasy land. A lot of people thought Rick Perry had the chips, but it quickly became clear that he jumped into the race as an opportunistic improvisation and hadn't bothered to do his homework. Bachman has potential but her inexperience shows; Cain has leadership ability, charisma, and smarts, but is also out of his depth due to lack of experience; Huntsman has just redefected from the dark side and is not taken seriously. So: Mitch or Newt?

Romney is a highly competent, clean, managerial moderate who is unlikely to self-destruct but will not excite anyone. Gingrich can electrify the base but is a high risk proposition; do we really want to spend the next year under a 24/7 media barrage focused on Newt's baggage? Not an easy choice.

Personally, I'll be happy with any of our guys if we hold the House and elect a working conservative majority in the Senate. The dems will filibuster any serious reform, so it will come down to a willingness to use reconciliation to drive the agenda. Since the decision has invariably been made long before I get to vote, I've learned to be philosophical about it.

[Darkwolf377]

I presume you mean the same Buckley who said he'd rather be governed by the first 1000 people taken from the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty?

Yes. That was called 'a joke'.

Other than that, excellent post!

[mo]

Newt is just another RinoCrat....with a slightly more gifted silver tongue....than his fellow elite in Dc.

[mongrel]

“Some people want to say, well, as president you are supposed to know everything. No you don’t. I believe in having all the information. As much of it as I possibly can. Rather than making a decision or making a statement about whether I totally agree or didn’t agree when I wasn’t privy to the entire situation.”....”Who knows every detail of every country of every situation on the planet? Nobody!”

If you want to represent the intellectual wing of the party, you might try to improve your reading comprehension of the above quote. You said this means “he doesn’t need to be bothered with the pesky little details.” That’s in direct contradiction to where he says, “I believe in having all the information. As much of it as I possibly can.” His statement is quite clear in what he is saying, you seem to be willfully misreading it.

I think Cain is quite correct in this instance. Asking specific questions about specific countries is a crap shoot because only those with full security clearance actually have the full background to know how to respond. Candidates who shoot from the hip about what they would do to this or that country are idiots who are making half-baked decisions. It is much better for a candidate to talk about foreign policy principles than it is to say what they would have done with Libya.

[sphinx]

It was a joke with a very serious point. Buckley was expressing a preference for the common sense, moral and religious grounding, and simple patriotism of ordinary Americans vs. the arrogance, elitism, and transnationalist affectations of the intellectual elites. IOW, for the same mix of sentiments to which the tea party appeals today.

Were WFB still here, I imagine he would be highly sympathetic to the tea party, and concerned in a constructive way to move energetic newcomers up the learning curve.

[normy]

Not only that but I don't know about him except what he has shown us. To vote for Cain you are required to invest what you hope he will be onto him.

I know every candidate and how they will govern except Cain because everyone has a track record except Cain and he has backtracked on almost every controversial thing he has said when he was confronted, even on that smoking ad.

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

“Yes, most liberals long for the return of William F. Buckley.”

There’s the rub. Cain is beating Romney in the polls in spite of the GOP establishment pounding on him - including National Review, FOX News, and the Weakly Standard.

Be careful, we may be onto the fact that you’re a Romney-bot.