Posted on 01/27/2012 3:18:48 PM PST by Timber Rattler
We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan, and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.) To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stanlin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.
But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 that didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.
I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama. Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate. The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.
As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?
- Sarah Palin
>> “Listening to Rush pretty regularly, he’s not pro-Romney.” <<
.
You’re not understanding the underlying dynamic.
Rush is not pro Romney, but he is owned top to bottom by the establishment. He dares not come out against Romney, nor for another candidate or his ride is over. Capiche?
.
Your little sing-song pushing of Romney is nothing but a boring, wordy, chant.
If you want to promote the man then get into some facts, something, anything, rather than this little emotional humming that you have been doing since yesterday.
Why do you prefer Mitt Romney, and why are you badgering us here to support him?
What do you have against Newt Gingrich that makes you feel that Mitt Romney better represents you?
I tried to tell myself that in 2008.
‘’I think the one candidate of the three still out there on our side that matter... in saying who more closely embodies all three legs of this conservative stool, you’d have to say that it’s Mitt Romney. There’s actually no choice in the matter.’’
(Monday, Feb 4, 2008)
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020408/content/01125109.guest.html.guest.html
But on Bloody Thursday, I had to come to the conclusion that Rush really does support Romney strong enough that he will do anything that he can, to stop anyone who is seriously in Mitt’s way.
It has been five years now, two primaries, and when the chips are down for Mitt, Rush steps up for him.
Their audiences will shrink some, but what really hurts them is that they lose credibility with conservatives, who will never take them at face value again, who will never totally trust them again, never give them our full respect.
Coulter gone, Drudge gone, Rush, the warm and fuzzy is over as he went Medved on us on Bloody Thursday.
I’m not going to vote for or support the ABORTIONIST/STATIST Mitt Romney, PERIOD!!
Suggest we redouble our efforts to get pro-life, small government, strong defense, Reagan conservative Newt Gingrich nominated and ELECTED!!
Rebellion is ON!!
Go, Newt!!
Live free or die!!
Newt is right about looking to the future. The young generation (under 40) have no desire to go back to the ‘good ol days’ of yesteryear. Today’s young people remember Clinton not Reagan. The Clinton years were the ‘good ol days’. (Luckily for Newt, they also remember that the sex life of the president is nobody’s business.)
Newt is right to say - move forward not backward. My son who is in college tells me all the time the problem with the GOP is they are tagged as ‘conservatives’ which to a young person means no energy. Young people are filled with energy and enthusiasm. Youth is about taking chances, making mistakes, and dreaming big. That used to be America. We are supposed to be about forward progress and risk taking. But the government has regulated and taxed ideas and citizens into submission and stagnation. The young people are clamoring to be set free. That’s why they voted for (now) old man Obama. Newt’s talk about space exploration is a great idea. Obama promised vague hope and change. Newt is telling them ... here’s something concrete for you to strive for. He’s going to out-witt Mitt. And then he’s going to out-dream Obama. (I hope.)
Right now I don’t know what the answer is, but just as the establishment drew a line in 2008 and 2010, where they showed us that they were willing to lose elections, and defeat even the Republican nominees to stop conservatism from prevailing over the party, then it is time for us to face facts and know that this is a do or die moment.
I won’t be voting for Mitt Romney, what will I be doing? I will follow and participate in discussions to come, as many of us have to confront the ugly truths of the last three years, and as we face having to reevaluate decades old political knowledge, loyalties, and what we considered our personal ‘wisdom’.
To devote all this passionate posting to getting us not to vote for Romney’s opponent is a strange passion, not exactly typical of how political primary passions run among conservative primary activists.
You say that you have already decided to lay low and not vote for either of them, fine, now move along and lets us deal with the primary among ourselves as we fight to defeat Romney and advance newt Gingrich.
Thanks. Have to wonder if Santorum’s return home will affect his supporters in FL. Or, really, how many will even know he’s left the state over the weekend?
Floridians are being inundated with ads from Mitt/Newt and their superPACs. Is Santorum getting any coverage at all? Is all the ‘news’ coverage on the war between the frontrunners, and, are people still paying attention?
A bug that seems to be going around the forum right now...
NO I didn't - you not getting any credibility by including me in what you said! Don't try that w/my post!
Mitt hasn't been vetted - what's this about 'further' vetting? LOL!
It's the same old tactic - the media is covering their POS candidate and the GOP E are doing the same and trashing his opponent. Same s**t, different election. And you saying Sarah words are flawed or didn't go far enough are bogus - step down off your high horse because you didn't offer up any new brilliant idea - trust me! LOL!
You think these politicians backing him don't know the POS mitt is? Sure they do but they endorse for their political advantage. You see - it is EVIL we are fighting here - Evil trying to suppress truth. And we'll see, if voters are more attracted to evil or truth. A different strategy doesn't change what reigns in the voters heart - evil or truth.
If voters didn't run from him and his romneycare - well, one can imagine how deceived they are already - BIG TIME deceived. He really shouldn't even be a R race or kicked out after the first debate. But when Perry and Santorum brought it up in the debates, they were trounced on by MB, another one of mitt's flukes. And Cain stayed neutral. So much for those faux conservatives. With 'real' conservatives in the race, mitt wouldn't be a subject right now.
So, I don’t know how many times I have to say this for you, by IMO Newt needs to make everything that comes out of his mouth, including how he debunks unfounded negative attacks, relate back to his ability to defeat Obama.
Don't say it anymore - once was enough to debunk it! Newt's ability to defeat Barry has already on display - it's ALREADY been done! Now how is your Mitt going to do it - he doesn't even have to open his mouth - his record shows he can't. They are as parallel as one can be - no one else has romneycare but him! And that's just for starters. So forget talking about what Newt should - he already has.
What you should be addressing - 'it's impossible for Mitt to beat barry'. But that isn't even the biggie - it's WHO will turn America around? Mitt will not - he doesn't even know enough about America except he made it in America. And Romneycare is NOT the mindset that will restore our country. So mitt fails the litmus tests on two accounts - too parallel to barry - he'll be squashed and a mindset that cannot restore but destroy!
Newt is the PATRIOT, historian and lover of America, the visionary for America. And he will take on the judges who have been tampering with it along with the federal reserve.
FUMR?
I’ve missed knowing this ...
That’s it. This should throw the Palin voters entirely to Newt.
If not, they are not paying attention.
I’m wondering if Sarah would run for VP again if Newt asks her to.
She either puts her (and our) money where her mouth is, to take down Romney. If Santorum refuses to wise up and show some brains for a change and drop out before Tuesday, then we need some other kind of miracle to win.
If Newt can't win Florida, it will be over for our side.
Yes, Palin should put her money where her mouth is, and actually show up for Newt.
(Some are using her contract with FOX as an excuse to stay away from Newt rallies.)
The way its shaping up, those elections may be more critical than a slimey Romney win. Let the Tea Party begin to stir...
You think I don't know that?
Thank you for re-confirming my original point. Lots of "groupthink" going on around here these days, and apparently if you dissent from it, then you are labeled a propagandist.
And please tell me how posting factual information about Gingrich's recent record, AS PREVIOUSLY POSTED AND DISCUSSED HERE ON FREE REPUBLIC, amounts to "propaganda" and "disruption?"
As I said, I'm writing in Sarah Palin's name and will sleep peacefully with a clear conscience.
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