This Tom Coburn?
Posted on 12/04/2011 8:43:32 AM PST by BarnacleCenturion
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Sunday that he cannot support GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich because the former House speaker lacks leadership skills.
“I am not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich’s having served under him for four years and experienced his leadership. Because I found it lacking often times,” Coburn said on Fox News Sunday. The Oklahoma senator served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
“There’s all kind of leaders, leaders that instill confidence and leaders that are somewhat abrupt, leaders that have one standard for the people that they are leading and a different standard for themselves,” he said. “I will have difficulty supporting him for president of the United States.”
Coburn in March said that he was looking for a president that would unite the country and raised questions about Gingrich’s confrontational style.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Wow, Newt must have really pi$$ long and hard on his Wheaties!
Coburn feels the same way about Newt as I (and many other conservatives) feel about Romney.
....”Gingrich is going to need to convince people he has changed. Conservatives must be ready to forgive him his sins. And as conservatives come to terms with Gingrich’s sins, they are going to be confronted by a man named Tom Coburn who wrote a book called Breach of Trust and a man named Robert Novak who wrote the foreword to that book. One excerpt will be particularly troubling to conservative activists currently enamored with Newt’s debating skills.
Gingrich either felt that he could not use his office to control spending or was not willing to lose his office to control spending. This goes to the heart of the matter: If your decisions are based on not losing a position, you cannot effectively serve the best long-term interests of the country.
Sen. Tom A. Coburn M.D.; John Hart. Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (Kindle Locations 1283-1285). Kindle Edition.
If Newt can withstand the rehashing of Tom Coburn’s book — a book that portrays Gingrich as talking the talk, but betraying the talk once in office — we may have our anti-Romney. If not, I think Rick Perry may yet have a second coming if he is ready. I say that having asked many callers to my radio show who are Cain supporters where they would go. Most say Newt. The others Perry. And if Newt implodes? They almost always say they’d go to Perry — Romney is rarely their choice.
Some excerpts from Breach of Trust below the fold.
Coburn made his presence felt immediately. It became clear to him that Speaker Gingrich, House Majority Leader Armey and the rest of the Republican leadership were not what they pretended to be. They were revolutionaries in name only, content to take possession from the Democrats of the machinery of government and then run it virtually unchanged. That froze in place the system of pork barrel spending that young Woodrow Wilson described in Congressional Government more than 130 years ago.”
Sen. Tom A. Coburn M.D.;John Hart. Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (Kindle Locations 55-58). Kindle Edition.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2813969/posts
How the hell did we get into a situation with two flip flopping creeps as front runners?
"IF" Newt implodes? That's like saying IF the Sun rises tomorrow morning.
Coburn is sour grapes.
Newt undoubtedly told the firebrand nuc em all congressman coburn to simmer down. The fact that newt didn’t conform to coburn’s precise bomb delivery plan is now said to be a lack of leadership.
Because when Santorum endorsed Specter in 2004 at the behest of his president and party, he committed an egregious unforgiveable error and needed to be entirely removed from consideration from the outset of the campaign.
When Newt endorsed Scozzafava in 2009, sat on the couch with Nancy, and cheated on his wives, he just committed small lapses in judgment for which he's apologized and we should just "move on."
I know well another person who served as a Conservative in the House with Newt. He says the same things about Newt; that he can become a loose canon and that he is considered unorganized and unpredictable; a solo player. I have heard the same things from insider Senate staff who also work with conservatives.
I think we will be hearing a LOT more of this anti-Newt talk from the R’s...
As the scrutiny goes deeper than his obvious well-spoken and knowledgeable persona, I think his stock will fall.
Coburn endorsed Alan Keyes in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.
‘Nuff said.
I know well another person who served as a Conservative in the House with Newt. He says the same things about Newt; that he can become a loose canon and that he is considered unorganized and unpredictable; a solo player. I have heard the same things from insider Senate staff who also work with conservatives.
I think we will be hearing a LOT more of this anti-Newt talk from the R’s...
As the scrutiny goes deeper than his obvious well-spoken and knowledgeable persona, I think his stock will fall.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), was scored by the Washington Post on the percentage of votes on which a lawmaker agrees with the position taken by a majority of his or her party members. The scores do not include missed votes. Their summary:
Voted with Republican Party 82.8% of 290 votes.
Coburn is a helluva lot more conservative than Newt.
The real crux is we have a field of flawed candidates and folks take turns further beating them down. At this rate we won’t have anyone left standing who is deemed pure enough for the position. It looks like I need to go back to considering my toaster for the position....
PRESS ADVISORY
January 28, 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Connie Hair
Phone: 818-512-3432
Coburn Endorses Keyes for President
MANCHESTER, N.H. - U.S. Rep. Tom A. Coburn (R-OK) today endorsed Ambassador Alan Keyes for the Republican nomination for President, calling him “the one candidate for President who actually understands what is wrong with our country and who has the vision, the courage, and the clarity of principle to put it right.”
Coburn is a practicing physician who has earned a reputation as a leading budget hawk during his three terms in Congress.
Coburn declared that “Keyes has shown repeatedly that he has a better grasp on the issues...than any other candidate.” But Coburn decided to announce his support for Keyes not on the basis of any specific issue, but because of Keyes’s “recognition that national leadership in our day is not about policies and not about political solutions to political problems. It is a matter of moral leadership to address a moral crisis.”
Comparing Keyes to Abraham Lincoln, the Oklahoma Congressman declared that “Alan Keyes has the capacity to ignite among us another rebirth of freedom.”
“Some people tell me Alan Keyes has little chance to be elected President,” acknowledged Coburn. “But my heart and my conscience tell me that Alan Keyes is the man who should be President. And to my way of thinking, doing right means doing what your heart and your conscience tell you.”
Coburn is the first Member of Congress to endorse Keyes for President. Dr. Coburn’s prepared statement is reprinted below:
“It is clear to me that Alan Keyes is the one candidate for president who actually understands what is wrong with our country and who has the vision, the courage, and the clarity of principle to put it right.
Ambassador Keyes has shown repeatedly that he has a better grasp on the issues – the foreign policy, the fiscal policy, the social policy and all the rest of it – than any other candidate. But choosing a president is not a scholarship contest. The mere fact that he knows more about the issues than any other candidate is not what qualifies Mr. Keyes to be our President.
The real difference Alan Keyes brings to this campaign is his recognition that national leadership in our day is not about policies and not about political solutions to political problems. It is a matter of moral leadership to address a moral crisis.
Alan Keyes is the one man who has come forward to pose the proper question: what are we doing with the liberty that has been bequeathed to us by God through the sacrifices of our forebears, and what should we be doing with it?
Like Abraham Lincoln, Alan Keyes has the capacity to ignite among us another rebirth of freedom. He will bring us together as a nation by reminding us of what it is that makes us one nation. Alan Keyes will be a great President because the Presidency is not merely a matter of issues and policies but of moral leadership.
Some people tell me Alan Keyes has little chance to be elected. My heart and my conscience tell me Alan Keyes is the man who should be President. And to my way of thinking, doing right means doing what your heart and your conscience tell you, not what someone else tells you.
That is why I am proud to announce my endorsement of Alan Keyes for President of the United States.”
Paid for and authorized by Keyes 2000.
Coburn is a helluva lot more conservative than Newt.
See post #16
In May 2011, the Senate Ethics Committee identified Coburn in their report on the ethics violations of Senator John Ensign. The report stated that Coburn knew about Ensign’s extramarital affair and was involved in trying to negotiate a financial settlement to cover it up.
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