Coburn Blasts Gingrich, Found His Leadership ‘Lacking’ as House Speaker

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.

Can someone, anyone, explain to me how Newt was elected Speaker of the House in 1995, by his fellow Republicans, if he was a loner and had no leadership ability?

Can anyone name a Speaker or Majority Leader since then who is more conservative or accomplished more to balance the budget and scale back government?

And we know this because? Hasn’t he lost about a dozen races for public office so far? Dog Catcher had to have been one of them. He didn’t get close to any others. I think 30% or so is his best showing. There must be a reason...just a guess, but I don’t think ALL of his races were lost because they were Dem districts.

Because like this race this election the GOP nominee is decided in backrooms in NYC and DC long before the primaries. The last person to break through the Country Club GOP barrier and win wads Reagan. Besides that none in my lifetime and I was born in the 1950's. The only media outlet that gave Keyes honest coverage was N.E.T. a TV network Paul Weyrich once had. Keyes was making Conservative sense while NEWT, Lott, Dole, etc were selling us out. Thank you Sir may I have another says the blind sheep too Newt.

We will not see a conservative POTUS until the GOP is no more. The GOP is home of Liberal Lite and Conservatives for the most part are simply not welcome no more. Look at the comments against Coburn as an example.

Solution is simple one of two answers. Liberal GOP change parties and GO BACK to being Dems as many were before 1994 or forming a Third Party with Conservative values and platform on all issues leaving liberal republicans to return too their former party -D.

As it stands today we have one ruling parting in the United States and that is The Liberal Party which is taken from the DEM and GOP then united in agenda. Had enough yet? I have. I dare say we may even need for some states to leave the union. Ones on the upper Atlantic seaboard, two on the Great Lakes, and split Cali into two states from northern San Francisco south too Mexico. For that matter give southern Cali to Mexico. The same mentality who voted for The Arnoid twice would likely vote Mitt or Newt as well.

Can someone, anyone, explain to me how Newt was elected Speaker of the House in 1995, by his fellow Republicans, if he was a loner and had no leadership ability?

Newt was the visionary center of the GOP takeover. He's the one that came up with the Contract with America and drove the policy and ideological positions. However the one who really made it happen from a managerial (including fundraising) perspective was Haley Barbour.

I have a close friend who was the campaign manager to a member of the Congressional Class of 1995. During their first Caucus retreat Newt got a good, respectable applause. Barbour got a cheering, standing ovation that lasted for a couple minutes.

Can anyone name a Speaker or Majority Leader since then who is more conservative or accomplished more to balance the budget and scale back government?

The balanced budget was a combination of really good economic growth (driven by the dot.com boom), and the actions of Congressional GOP deficit-hawk leaders like Dick Armey and John Kasich. Newt was Speaker, so he gets credit as well, but he wasn't a one-man show and he certainly wasn't the one who was rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty tinkering with the innards of the budget and approps bills.

I hear you, but it always puts me off when anyone uses absurd media headlines as a reason not to support an otherwise good candidate.

It is not the fact that the media is generating such headlines that is the problem, it is the fact that Newt does so many things that makes their job easy. I used to like and admire him, but he has queered the whole deal. "Loose Cannon" is an apt description.

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