Posted on 01/23/2012 6:54:16 PM PST by LonePalm
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson just endorsed Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination.
Absolutely! The internet, with all its shortcomings - in particular the nastiness that comes with anonymity, and something we all need to check in ourselves - allows the conservative message to be discussed, sometimes rationally, sometimes not, but at least put forth.
We are in a far better place now than we were when leftists controlled nearly everything broadcast or in print, and that, in the end, is very good for America, and at this point in history, I think, imperative for its survival.
Ah, the liberal ' don't you know who I am '! LOL! I'd say that's a real desperate attempt. I don't know one minster who cowers from speaking Truth or blaming others because they can't. Although I do know they exist.
This is a conservative 'WeThePeople' site - not a religious site. We don't bow to or support known lying candidates and never support them. They are repulsive as are their con man tactics designed to deceive. But ministers do embrace them - just ask Rev Jerry Wright! It takes all kinds for evil to survive.
And that's what this site is all about. Now tell us what is conservative about Mitt.
“Never underestimate the stupidity of the ignorant chattering class.”
I am talking about just people in your life.
In local elections or elections for offices people know little about, endorsement can be of real value....but in a Presidential race?
If I may offer another opinion here, which Charles may feel free to correct, I believe what he is saying is that Mitt is not 100% evil and Newt is not 100% good, but that honest discussion is frequently prevented by those who have jumped on bandwagons, and who seek to dishonor all who disagree.
Sort of like you're doing right now.....
Otherwise you might call me a troll, all the facts notwithstanding.
I think you’re missing my point, probably not putting it well.
Do you think Fred’s endorsement is going to really change anyone’s vote?
I would as the same thing about Bob McDonnell’s endorsement of Romney.
This was just a small question that occurred to me the other day.
GOD! Do I need a life! :-)
After last night, I would like a different candidate to enter. There are a handful of good people but for the sake of avoiding a foodfight and derailing my main point below,, let’s say “Rubio” since most everyone here approves of him.
What I’d like the pro Newt group to outline for me is how Newt plans on winning some of the following states. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Penn, Colorado.
We have to win probably three of those states minimum to beat Obama in the electoral college. I live in Wisconsin. People in the Midwest do not like Newt. His favorability numbers are worse than Palin’s in many ways.
I have neighbors and relatives who voted Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Obama in 2008. In the past 48 hours I’ve had some of those people going crazy with comments about how they hate Newt. These are the people we need to get to win the election.
We can scream all we want about how Newt is superior, but at the end of the day, Newt has to explain to us how he’s going to win these critical swing states. I am very skeptical he can do it.
Yep, owners have the right to do what they want with their private property and I respect that.
I know your post was to Rev. Henrickson, but I want to respond as well.
I oppose Romney. Free Republic woke me up to how seriously wrong Romney's past positions were on abortion. I truly did not know that, and I think a lot of other Christian conservatives still don't realize just how bad Romney's prior views are, and how he gave every appearance of changing them based on political polling. Polls said he couldn't win Massachusetts as a pro-lifer so he became publicly pro-choice after a visit to Utah to explain to Mormon leaders what he was going to do. Then he became publicly pro-life when he decided to run for president as a Republican. No way do I want that kind of man picking Supreme Court judges who, after their Senate confirmation hearings, will never have to face voters again in their lifetime term of office!
Lots of us in the Christian conservative movement know Mormons personally. We know their emphasis on socially conservative family values, and we know the strict discipline they mete out to "wayward ones." We don't agree on theology, but many of us just can't conceive of how the Mormon Church could put up with Mitt Romney's pro-abortion politics, so we might be inclined to cut him some slack — until we remember Harry Reid, or get shown the actual videos of just how bad the stuff Romney said really was. Well, at least Reid had the integrity to be a Democrat. Once we realize what Romney's views really were — and had been been all the way back to his mother who lost a campaign based on being pro-choice — many of us Christian conservative start to get seriously upset.
For me, that's an absolute deal-breaker because of the Supreme Court issue. Too many Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices have gone on to become serious problems in their lifetime terms of office.
Again, Free Republic woke me up with regard to Romney. If it weren't for Free Republic I might still be on the fence. Thank you to FR — and let's see if we can get that message out to people who don't read FR but might watch a YouTube video of Romney talking if it's sent from our email accounts.
As for Gingrich, I'm not yet convinced. I can't vote for him anyway in Missouri because he didn't make the Republican primary ballot, and by the time the Missouri Republican caucuses come around, the nomination will probably be settled.
But barring something new showing up, I can almost certainly vote for Gingrich if the choice comes down to Gingrich versus Romney, or Gingrich versus Obama.
Hope that's clear enough for some Freepers who felt I've been attacking Gingrich. I remain seriously concerned, but elections count, and South Carolina proved that Gingrich can win Christian conservative votes by double-digit margins. I'm not sure what that says for the future of our country, but it does show Gingrich can win the South.
I think the best thing we as Christian conservatives can hope for now is that Gingrich means what he says about involving us in his culture war on liberalism and his international war on Islam. I was impressed, and frankly shocked (in a positive way), by what the pastor whose comments I linked to earlier posted about Gingrich's animosity toward Islam and belief that the Roman Catholic Church has the intestinal fortitude necessary to fight Islam. That's not politically correct at all, and that side of Gingrich I can really appreciate.
Like lots of other Freepers, I'm old enough to remember when Newt Gingrich did what many of us thought was beyond impossible, namely, taking control of the House of Representatives and becoming Speaker of the House.
He said and did things then I didn't like, and he's saying and doing things now I don't like.
But it's hard to argue against success. He won South Carolina. I didn't think he could do that. He won the Speaker of the House post; I didn't think he could do that, either.
And speaking as someone who sometimes gets accused of being too intellectual, I don't have any problem with the accusations that Gingrich thinks he's the smartest person in the room. I think in a lot of cases he may well be the smartest person in the room — he's definitely smarter than me, and he definitely won elections by using his smarts to figure out ways to do what most of us thought was impossible.
Now if Gingrich can figure out a way to convince evangelical Christians outside South Carolina not just to vote for him but also to work for him and donate money and serious campaign time, maybe he can just win this thing.
Right now, unless Santorum catches fire, I can't see we have any other choices left in the Republican race.
"smarter than I " ;*)
(Good post, darrell).
What I'm writing is standard political doctrine. Granted, endorsements often are just attempts by a politician to collect a payback later, but endorsements in major races can and sometimes do make a difference.
Endorsements most often make a difference under the following circumstances:
1. The endorser has an active political machine and puts it to work on behalf of the candidate. That can be especially helpful if the endorser is a governor or the mayor of a major city who needs to have a political machine to get elected and uses it aggressively to back other candidates as well. If a person giving an endorsement gets lots of people to volunteer their time and make donations and make phone calls to friends and supporters, it counts a great deal. In addition, a “get out the vote” operation is inherently local, which means a local political leader can carry tremendous influence in actually getting their candidate's supporters to the polls.
2. The endorser represents an ideological cause. If that happens, the endorsement can cause people to say, “If A says B is okay, then A knows B well so I should take their advice.” We have seen that happening with Sarah Palin in several races and with Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa. It's also the role traditionally played by organizations such as Right to Life and the NRA.
3. Celebrity endorsements work. Sorry, but they do... I don't like it, but there are people who really **WILL** vote for a candidate because a prominent actor or musician or sports figure likes them. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it works, and I can't argue with facts.
At the very least, Fred Thompson's endorsement is category #3. Let's not minimize it — there are people who remember his TV show who don't pay attention to normal Republican politics and will listen, especially if he goes on TV ads and says things supporting Gingrich. I can't speak for the level of clout he still has in his home state and its political machine (i.e., #1 and maybe #2) so I will defer to others on that.
Is Fred to be Newt’s VP choice? That ‘screen presence’ would be a big bonus ... just sayin’
Are you his spokesperson? Or are you mind reading? Try speaking for yourself - not hiding what you want to say behind what you think someone else's thinks.
Talk about jumping on a someone else's bandwagon!
I suppose you can accuse me of being a troll or of jumping on a bandwagon, but I don't think anyone will accuse me of the slightest sympathy to the Mittwit. I had no use for his brainwashed father and have none for Mittwit as I have expressed here repeatedly.
OTOH, I do think you have been unfair to the Rev. Mr. Henrickson. I say this knowing that his denomination was founded (at least in my Roman Catholic view) in opposition to mine. All that was a long while ago before he or I were here on earth.
I have had numbers of exchanges with him here, always pleasant and respectful, always with each of us holding to his respective views. When he describes himself as a constitutional and social conservative in his tagline, I have every reason to believe that he is both from my experience with him. He deserves better than to be called a troll or to be disrespected.
It is one thing to have anonymous fun here bashing our enemies (Obozo, Romney, Paul, Huntsman would be my selection of enemies to make fun of), but it is quite another thing to bash those who are, in fact, our allies and ought to be our friends even if we differ in some respects.
I would advance to all that "winning" an election is not merely defeating Obozo but must include defeating him with someone who shares to some substantial extent our views. That disqualifies Romney who is (whatever he may say this week after conferring with his pollster): pro-abort, pro-homosexuality, a gun grabber, a genuine global warming "true" believer, a private sector job destroyer, a trust fund baby enabler, a man who cares not a whit for foreign policy or for beefing up and re-equipping our military, totally disconnected from the daily experience of the overwhelming majority of Americans (whatever his intentions) and will have no problem gutting social security and medicare out of excessive concern for "the bottom line." Our candidate MUST be a conservative and Mitt Romney is no conservative.
One example that particularly galls me is that he claims to have become a pro-lifer in 2005 as he pondered the embryonic stem cell matter. Suddenly he realized (!!!) that abortion kills a human being. He wasn't bothered apparently by the body count from more than 50 million abortions, by partial birth abortion, by sex selection abortion, but instead was suddenly grabbed by embryonic stem cell controversy??? I suggest it was more likely that he conferred with his pollster, learned that Osama bin Laden had a better shot in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election than did Mitt and that nationally GOP primary voters would not sit still for an eager baby-killer candidate. Voila!!! Mitt converted then and there. However, despite his "conversion," Mitt included $50 abortions (cheaper than most non-generic prescriptions) in Romneycare and put Planned Barrenhood on its board to guarantee abortion in futuro. He did these things the year AFTER his alleged conversion to pro-life.
All that having been said, The Rev. Mr. Henrickson has simply expressed his open attitude and his concern that arguing for Romney even in the alternative, may have consequences here. I trust otherwise since his good and earned reputation precedes him.
Finally, he is a pastor. I am not and never will be. He has the same right to an opinion as any layman here and I do not recall his ever claiming special political expertise because of his profession. Certainly never with me.
All I ever got back from Fred Thompson is a cashed check.
I totally agree but he claiming he can't is what the topic was. And the slur from others about unless you jump on a certain bandwagon their opinion isn't welcomed. Beating around the bush in a lame accusation is weak. They should just say it or shut up - but stop the constant whining about it on threads. It's nauseating - supposed victim hood to get their way is so liberal as it is childish.
Wow. You're really itching for a fight, aren't you?
Back off. There's no one here to fight with.
Black Elk, thanks for your wise words.
I'm not coming back, presently, to fight with someone who's just swinging his fists in the air.
Sorry, but with all the real dangers we have to fight, picking fights for the heck of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Oh stop with your nonsense, already! You are becoming a bore. Don’t come back because you certainly won’t be missed.
I'm sure I won't.
I have a sure-fire method of solving your problem with FR. Just give me the word, we’ll git ‘er done.
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