Posted on 01/20/2012 11:48:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
During last night’s Republican debate, the candidates were asked to name something from the campaign that they would have done differently. Here was Newt Gingrich’s answer:
I would skip the opening three months, where I hired regular consultants and tried to figure out how to be a normal candidate, and I would just go straight at being a big-ideas, big-solutions, Internet-based campaign from day one, because it just didn’t work. I mean, it’s not who I am. I’m not capable of being a sort of traditional candidate. I’m a very idea-oriented candidate. And I think the Internet makes it possible to create a momentum of ideas that’s very, very exciting.
I have, for my sins, watched Gingrich make his pitch across what feels like seventeen thousand Republican primary debates, and I am at a loss to identify the “big ideas” and “big solutions” that he is supposedly campaigning on. Yes, he has an implausible supply-side tax plan, but you never hear him talk about it. He has technically signed on to some form of entitlement reform, but you never hear him talk about that, either. Instead, so far as I can tell, his “idea-oriented” campaign consists almost entirely of promising to hold Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with President Obama, grandstanding about media bias and moderator stupidity, defending his history of ideological flexibility much more smoothly than Mitt Romney, and then occasionally throwing out a wonky-sounding notion (like, say, outsourcing E-Verify to American Express) that’s more glib than genuinely significant. His last-minute momentum in South Carolina, which last night’s debate did nothing to derail, has been generated almost exclusively by the politics of ressentiment:
(Excerpt) Read more at douthat.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Douthat has not been paying attention?
Rich Douthat writes like a pompous, arrogant fool. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.
As opposed to Hussein’s detailed plan of “hope and chage”? LOL.
Well big ideas are the Trans-Continental railroad. The Louisiana Purchase. The Lewis and Clark expedition. The purchase of Alaska. You can go on and on. However from the small minds of the nyt they can’t see it. GO NEWT GO! See the big picture.
As opposed to Hussein’s detailed plan of “hope and change”? LOL.
BINGO!
What big ideas would you say Newt is campaigning on?
Replacing the EPA with a new EPA to subsidize 'green' businesses?
Your contention is that Newt Gingrich's big idea is the Lewis & Clark expedition?
RE: Douthat has not been paying attention?
Any jounalist worth his salt would at least go to Newt’s website :
And look at his IDEAS.
Douthat does not even do that and then writes this asinine piece... just shows what a dreg the New York Times has become.
My contention is that those were considered grandiose ideas at the time and I am countering the nyt article. We need some one who sees the big picture and I believe that person is Newt. GO NEWT GO!
RE: What big ideas would you say Newt is campaigning on?
Here they are :
http://www.newt.org/contract/legislative-proposals
http://www.newt.org/contract/day-one-plan
Or perhaps the big idea is that he’ll be the one Republican who is not afraid to kick the media’s ass? That’s big enough for a starter.
bcsco wrote:
“Rich Douthat writes like a pompous, arrogant fool. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.”
OK, it’s Ross, not Rich. But otherwise I do believe you’ve put your finger on Ross’ reason for saying what he says. He was after all deemed suitable to be published by the New York Times, the epitome of pompous, arrogant, and fool(ish).
Exactly. Perry was going to go to zero-based foreign aid, part-time Congress, and a detailed flat tax proposal. He was also going to stop every lawsuit against states by Feds.
Has Newt been saying similar things and I've missed it or has it been generalities like "cut spending and regulations" over and over again. Generalities don't translate to big ideas.
p.s. FR needs to reboot the server or check background jobs or something. Two days of painfully slow interface.
U haven't heard Newt say he wants a new EPA to subsidize 'green' business. I have heard him say that he wants to replace the EPA with an Environmental Solution Agency which will be charged with considering the economic implications of its regulations and rulings.
Do you have a problem with that? I don't. It hardly makes Newt some kind of left-eing environmental whacko.
There IS an arguable role for the federal government in terms of regulating what pollutants can be pumped into the air and dumped into interstate waterways, as well as American waters.
It makes sense to ensure that such federal authority is vested in a federal office that is bound to recognize the law of economic reality. Even if that doesn't go far enough for you, it certainly a giant step in the right direction.
RE: He is running on the idea that yelling at a TV news idiot will be enough cover to blunt the ex wife fiasco and if he claims to be the new Nixon oops i mean Newt he can get enough of the rubes to buy his jive.
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Any comments on his ideas as presented in the links in Post #12 above?
Exactly, and now he is not. So get over it.
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