That coupled with his baggage - personal and political - plan for amnesty (that he claims isn't amnesty) and other things sunk Newt.
Your say right.
They do have the least amount of charm and
Likability .
Palin has it which makes The Dems scared
I think you nailed it.
I have to say that I agree completely w/ you! There is just something about them that is like one long trip to creepytown. Call it shallow, but there is no getting around that observation!
While I agree with you that Callista is “unlikeable,” I still think Gingrich has a shot. Callista is going to have to soften her image. When Michelle The Moocher started out, she was worse than she is today (if you can believe it). Callista has got to get rid of that blond-on-blond helmet hairdo and let down her guard a bit (as well as swearing off facelifts and botox treatments). She comes across as incredibly brittle. That being said, I can still support Newt if he can rise above the negative ads being run against him by wealthier candidates.
The left got their messiah in “The One” and now us on the the right demand our turn to have one. Since Romney and Huntsman are the only ones vying for the job of god, they have a head start, and every other candidate may have too many flaws for us. (Ron Paul appears to have been the victim of an alien abduction and some kind of mind altering extraterrestrial experience, which allows him to escape earthly reality. This is godlike enough for some. (RP call home.))
But when it’s all said and done, many Republicans just pick their candidate the same way they get a cold, it’s simply given to them. -sarcasm, sorta-
When Newt announced his proposal in a debate, he said he was "ready 'to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.'”
The morning after the debate, Gingrich was already swamped with accusations from a wide variety of quarters that he was supporting amnesty, for example, HERE, which is a typical example describing Gingrich's plan as about amnesty ("The plan seeks to break the political deadlock over whether to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants by splitting them into two groups.")
Sorry, but Gingrich knew VERY WELL that when he said what he said, how he said it, when and where he said it, that he was going to have to fend off accusations that his plan amounted to amnesty. He specifically said he was "ready to take the heat for that."
Then when his political opponents brought the heat, instead of accepting responsibility for explaining away the mess he himself made, he wails about how he's being lied about and it's so unfair.
It's not unfair and Gingrich knows it. He PREDICTED that his comments would be viewed as advocating a form of amnesty.
Whether his plan does or does not constitute amnesty is beside the point here. We are talking about political strategies.
Gingrich knowingly and deliberately made it VERY EASY for his opponents, from the minute he said it in that debate and forward (go back and watch the tape and read the threads about AMNESTY here on FR the next day), to characterize his position as allowing illegal immigrants a way to stay in the U.S.
Again, this is precisely what he claimed he was "ready to take the heat for."
Except he wasn't ready to take the heat. And he didn't go out there the day after the debate, and the day after and the day after, and make damn sure that HE explained himself again and again, if necessary.
Saying "Newt has a plan on his website" has zero impact on how politics gets done in the real world.
But the fact is that Gingrich proposed to allow at least some illegal immigrants to stay, be provided a "path to legality," which everyone knows then makes them, just by virtue of being here legally, eligible to apply for citizenship. Please check the voluminous FR threads on these points in the days after he made this proposal. These discussions about amnesty and Newt's proposal were not had by a bunch of Romney supporters; they were based on what NEWT SAID.
Gingrich made this mess and he didn't clean it up. End of story. So he had to pay the piper.
To go from that to crying that his opponents "lied" about the very thing he predicted they would say if he said what he said shows a shocking level of political incompetence (or delusions of grandeur). Gingrich would have been in a much stronger position to have simply said, "I said all along they were going to peg me as an amnesty supporter, but here's how my policy is not amnesty."
As it is: call the whhhhaaaaaaambulance.