Posted on 12/13/2011 7:22:53 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
H.L. Mencken called his colleagues of the fourth estate “a gang of peck sniffs.” Some conservative commentators have become pundit sniffs, turning up their elitist noses at whoever the frontrunner for the Republican nomination happens to be. You’d think we didn’t have other pressing business – like saving the Republic from the mega-Marxist in the White House.
Now, it’s former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s turn for an colonoscopy.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, a CINO (conservative in name only), frets that Gingrich is “a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought.” (It’s called having cojones, Peg.) She approvingly quotes former Bush ‘41 chief of staff John Sununu griping, “Listen to anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he’s inconsistent, untrustworthy, unprincipled.”
What’s consistent, trustworthy and principled – former Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter, the best Democrat a Republican president put on the bench since Earl Warren? Sununu talked Bush, Sr. into nominating his fellow Granite Stater in 1990, proving Nunu’s keen discernment.
Noonan says everything you’ve heard about Newt is true. He’s “intelligent and accomplished,” but “ethically dubious.” Known for “breathtaking success and contributed to reforms in government,” and “presided over disasters.” He’s “erratic and unreliable,” “egomaniacal,” “original and focused,” and “harebrained and impulsive.”
The same was said of Winston Churchill for most of the 1930s – brilliantly original but given to grand schemes that failed miserably (Gallipoli), untrustworthy and disloyal (he changed parties twice), penchant for sweeping generalities and unsupported charges (saying Germany was rearming in preparation for war, imagine!). Egomaniacal? Lloyd George said of Churchill that he “would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother to sound his own praises.”
Churchill somehow overcame the harsh verdicts of his contemporaries to manage Britain’s finest hour.
In her latest Newt-gnashing (“Newt Presents a Fresh New Virtual Face”) Ann Coulter – who thinks Romney is dreamy – paints the Gingrich of the Contract with America as a groupie of futurist Alvin Toffler. She also mentions the former Speaker’s scarlet past not once, but twice – “Newt, who was married at the time, also began dating again” and “Gingrich has spent the years since then having an affair, divorcing his second wife….” In Ann’s world, there is no place for repentance and forgiveness. Next she’ll tell us Newt dated leftist slime Bill Maher.
And syndicated something-or-other Ben Shapiro excitedly informs us that, “Newt has so much personal baggage, he’d be better off buying American Airlines entirely than trying to check it.” Unlike, oh, say, Barack Obama in 2008, with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Louis Farrakhan, George Soros, Frank Marshall Davis, an AOL birth certificate and an early education in an Indonesian madrassa lurking in his shadowy past.
In a political career spanning 40 years in and out of office, Gingrich made some monumental mistakes. He also had some historic achievements – including producing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and forcing Clinton to submit balanced budgets, cut taxes and reform welfare.
Looking ahead to the 2012 general election, Newt has two indispensable attributes: he’s a dazzling speaker, who says things worth quoting, and has the guts to finally throw some light on the cockroaches of the left that are swarming over our republic.
Watching Newt in the GOP debates is like seeing Rembrandt at work; the rest do paint-by-numbers. Gingrich answers questions with laser-like precision, cutting through clichés to expose the essence of issues. Even when I thought he had no chance of winning the nomination, for someone who’s spent his life working with words, it was a pleasure to behold a master in action.
What Noonan calls a “trouble magnet” and “a starter of fights that don’t need to be fought,” Harry Truman called plain-speaking.
At the Des Moines debate Saturday night, Newt repeated his observation that the Palestinians are an “invented people.” To those squawking about this bracing dose of reality (including Coulter’s crush, Mitt Romney), ask them who was the last president/king/prime minister/emperor/czar of an independent Palestinian state?
Says Newt: “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people (the Palestinians) are terrorists. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say. ‘Enough lying about the Middle East.’”
It’s time to stop the equivocating, the euphemisms, the evasion and the waffling about everything political. If Republicans don’t wake up and start slashing this misbegotten administration, they’ll equivocate Obama into a second term.
Not Speaker Gingrich. Here’s a sampling of Newt-ron bombs recently dropped:
If not Newt, who?
In the latest sampling of Iowa polls, reported by Real Clear Politics, Gingrich is running away from the pack with 28.3%. Romney dropped to third with 16.2 % and Ron Paul was 2nd. with 16.7%. As for the rest – Perry and Bachmann, who once led in Iowa, tied at 8.8%, Rick Santorum had 5% and Jon why-does-he-even-bother Huntsman got 2.2%.
In New Hampshire, Romney leads with 36%, Gingrich is second with 24.3% and Paul third with 15.7%. Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum and Perry are stuck in the single digits.
Once the frontrunner, Perry is consistent – turning in one dismal performance after another. Last week, he told the Des Moines Register that there are eight Supreme Court justices (did he wonder how they break tie votes?) and called Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, “Montemayor” – well, something Hispanic. There are three Supreme Court justices Perry would like to replace when they retire. He can only remember the names of two.
Ron Paul’s followers are generally described as “committed.” Many think the candidate himself should be – some place where he can get the help he needs. Does anyone who didn't name one of his kids after Ayn Rand really believe the Republicans will nominate a candidate for president who: voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment (Paul says “let the states decide,” which is the same as saying “let the judges decide”), is blasé about nuclear missiles in the hands of Iranian ayatollahs, supports civilian trials for terrorist suspects, and is more anti-Israel than Obama, if that’s possible?
That leaves Gingrich and Mitt Romney
As the nominee, Romney would be a replay of Dole in 1996 and McCain in 2008 – the establishment forcing a well-credentialed RINO on a cringing party base. After 5 years of running for president, the former Mass. governor elicits moderate yawns and 75% of the party saying anyone-but-Mitt, please! For Obama to be defeated next year, the GOP’s conservative grassroots will have to be on fire. Romney couldn’t do it with a flamethrower and napalm.
The difference between Newt and Mitt? Newt has a core conservative philosophy which he sometimes misapplies. Mitt has no core philosophy to misapply. Romney, who helped usher in the first-in-the-nation gay marriage law and trailblazed for Obama Care, has no principles – and those are negotiable. Jeff Katz, a popular Boston-area talk-show host, says: “Romney has a lot of experience. He’s been on every side of every issue. The only thing he’s consistent on is the belief that Mitt Romney should be president.”
Newt has frequently disappointed or mystified conservatives (although his one-time infatuation with global warming is hard to square with his Drill-Here/Drill-Now campaign) - so have all the rest, except for Michele can't-give-her-book-away.
Perry has in-state-tuition for illegals (if you oppose it, you don’t have a heart) and Gardasil among his carry-on luggage. In 2004, Santorum supported Arlen Specter for the Republican Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, and, in so doing, gave the Democrats two Senate seats (his own when alienated conservatives turned on him, and Specter’s, when he joined the party where he always belonged). Jon Huntsman has designated himself the RINO-in-waiting, if Mitt falters, and runs to the left of his record as Utah governor. In 1988, Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate. The Libertarian platform calls for abolishing age-of consent laws and legalizing hard drugs.
In its editorial endorsing Newt, The Manchester Union Leader, possibly the most conservative paper in the country, observed: “Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich.”
Resolved: America can’t take a second Obama administration. It will not survive four more years of: Obama Care, class warfare, the free-market/individualism sucks, America is not a Christian nation, purging references to Islam from terrorism training manuals for intelligence agents, gays in the military, refusing to defend DOMA, an endless tsunami of red ink, radical appointments (Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sabelius, Hillary Clinton, etc., etc.), judicial nominations from living-Constitution Hell, putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt, bashing Israel until it’s bloody and reeling, the Occupy Wall Street Movement (the Obama Jugend), nationalizing industry, and using our troops as uniformed social workers (humanitarian interventions) - all resting on a solid Marxist, hate-America base.
If you’re waiting for the perfect candidate who could actually win to come along, we could all be in shackles and leg-irons sitting in an Obama reeducation camp by the time he or she arrives
“But the tearing down of each candidate puzzles me.”
That’s not really what’s happening. It’s the tearing down of each R candidate not named Mitt Romney. Romney will get his only AFTER the nomination.
The conservative pundits decided three years ago who the nominee would be. These attacks are their temper tantrum that R’s might not necessarily accept their diktat.
I'll bet some are right here on this thread.
bump
We shall see... where are your pom poms? A cheerleader needs pom poms... and more cowbell too!
LLS
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