I'm done with Newt.
Posted on 12/16/2008 4:15:40 PM PST by lewisglad
Dear Chairman Duncan,
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
The recent web advertisement, "Questions Remain," is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.
In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.
From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.
Furthermore, once President Obama takes office, Republicans should be eager to work with him when he is right, and, when he is wrong, offer a better solution, instead of just opposing him.
This is the only way the Republican Party will become known as the "better solutions" party, not just an opposition party. And this is the only way Republicans will ever regain the trust of the voters to return to the majority.
This ad is a terrible signal to be sending about both the goals of the Republican Party in the midst of the nation's troubled economic times and about whether we have actually learned anything from the defeats of 2006 and 2008.
The RNC should pull the ad down immediately.
Sincerely,
Newt Gingrich
Chairman, American Solutions
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives
(Excerpt) Read more at marcambinder.theatlantic.com ...
I'm done with Newt.
Wow! This letter could have been written by Johnny McCain and not one word would have been changed. Hey, Newt, what about all that “cooperation” and “respect” and “support” that the RATS gave President Bush these past 8 years? Huh? Huh? [sound of crickets]
Good points. McCain was rejected for a whole host of reasons! The only reason many of us even voted for him was because of Sarah Palin.
Thank you. (I didn't see a sarcasm tag, so...)
Truth be told, we only disagree in degrees, I think. I believe that any "attacks" made by the Republicans need to be record-based and reality-based, and need to be formed to support driving a conservative conclusion to the problem. Along with the "attack", a clear message on how to solve the issue should be presented, together or separately.
I've come to the conclusion that allowing the dems to set the boundaries of the debate, such as defining what is an "attack" is counterproductive.
Last, I must apologize for the snarkiness of my last reply yesterday. As I reread it to myself, it was condescending, and for that I must say I am sorry. I hope we can agree to disagree amicably, and I bid you a good day, sir.
Newt’s just an attention whore.
Newt must have been doing more that holding hands with Nancy Pelosi in those recent Gorebull Warming ads.
This idiot will never have credibility with me again. Period.
Can we now tell the difference between the globalists and the few on the hill who aren’t?
This has never been about right and left, it’s been about set-up to get the next phase done.
In this instance, it's more of a case of Newt loving Newt. He's become enamored of his vision of himself as statesman and thought-leader...above the fray, the holder of wisdom, the robed messiah of the right delivering his sermon on the mount.
I used to think highly of Newt. But whatever esteem conservatives may have held for him has been snatched by Newt to shower on himself. It is now wholly apparent that the deep flaws that torpedoed his career were not the exception to a brilliant man; it was the occasional brilliance that was the anomaly in a deeply flawed man.
And he equally consistently mixes it up with non-conservative nonsense.
One of the pamphlets he wrote had an argument that banks should not have to pay income tax on interest payments. Interest payments are just rent paid on money, but he didn't exempt rent paid on land or anything else.
I stopped paying attention to Newt at that time as I could find no argument that an honest many could use to support that argument. Maybe there is such an argument, maybe I misread the booklet, I'd be reasonably happy to be proved wrong, as Newt does have skills in political battle. But I've had enough of Republican winners with mixed values who tend only to follow their liberal values after they win.
Well I agree with Bunk...., and I'm no newbie.
Today’s Dems are all lefties.
I cannot disagree in a substantive way with anything you've said, including your concern for the future.
Perhaps as an index of how radically things have changed in my lifetime, whenever I think about the term "Reagan Democrats" these days, I think about The Deer Hunter.
Besides being one of my favorite films of all time and one with the crashing emotional impact of a .270 Winchester round, the western Pennsylvania men portrayed in the film were all of a classic type. They were the sort of unaffected beer-and-a-shot working class guys who scratched out a living in the mines and great open hearth furnaces of the industrial Heartland of America. As fun-loving, coarse-joking and instinctively patriotic men they came from small towns and farms and were comfortable in their own skin, even while dreaming of things bigger and better.
I loved those guys. I know people like them still and in spite of my embarrassingly effete Ivy League education, they are the ones I have always sought out as companions rather than those whose tastes run more to camembert and chablis rather than nuts and ale. My choice is not due to some guilty sense of noblesse oblige, but to a shared sense of faith, honor and decency that I have always felt from such men, and women, too. These people, in the 1970s and 80s, were the ones we called the "Reagan Democrats".
Where are they now? Some became Republicans. Many are now Independent voters. Many among both groups have long since moved from the dying Rust Belt cities of the north to the sunnier climes and brighter economies of the south. But they are still here, as are their children, many of whom I would have to believe inherited at least some of the same values as those of their parents.
If America is to be saved from the terrible threats that lie in wait in the descending gloom just ahead, it will not be saved by the academics. It will not be saved by the permanent class of bureaucrats who infest every corner of Washington, DC. It will not be saved by pompous and posturing politicians who fret about polls and perceptions rather than concern themselves with ideas or reality. America will certainly not be rescued by its elitist news media, whose sneering hostility toward their own country's values can scarcely be exaggerated or even satirized any more.
The people who will save America, if in fact it is to be saved are the ones who have done so before: those of modest means and great faith. Those of small hopes and large dreams. Those who love their country, honor their families and take seriously their responsibilities to themselves and to each other.
At the end of the day and in our greatest moment of peril, I have every faith that the people who will rise up to save our nation will be those who can still stand together in a little bar, raise their glasses and sing "God Bless America" without the slightest bit of guilt, irony, self-consciousness or reservation, but with the sort of love and devotion that made God bless America in the first place.
This is from Drudge...Blago is on tape calling Obama an MF because he won’t play ball, and you have this. This is not a good issue for GOP. As for Rove,he was not indicted. They were really after Cheney. Thankfully, fitz failed!
WASHINGTON (AP) - People who have been briefed on the Illinois governor corruption investigation say Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is not a target of the probe. Emanuel, a Chicago congressman who would have been a likely contact between the Obama transition office and Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has been a focus of media attention since Obama said Thursday he has asked for an internal review of contacts between his staff and Blagojevich.
Emanuel has been refusing to answer questions about whether he’s the “president-elect adviser” referred to in the criminal complaint that accuses Blagojevich of putting Obama’s Senate seat up for sale. The complaint does not say that Blagojevich ever spoke to the unidentified Obama adviser about the Senate seat.
The two people who said Emanuel is not a target of the probe spoke on a condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way. One is a person close to Emanuel, who said he has been told by investigators that he’s not a subject of their investigation.
We don’t need Newt... we have Bush and Paulson.
Newt is right. The ad is stupid. Why didn’t they start running this stuff in the summer right after Obama beat Hillary?
The RNC is inept and useless. In fact I got a call yesterday asking to renew my membership to the RNC and I told them to get lost.
Amen. That's tagline-worthy material right there.
It's far past time that conservatives go absolutely nuclear on RINOs, Donks, Jihadis and every other manner of scumbag littering this planet.
>>Wow, one mistake and you hate the man for life.<<
That’s odd...I don’t remember saying that I hate Newt for life. I tend to shy away from childish declarations.
Merry Christmas!
“Also, notice how many of the posters here who are preaching this middle-of-the-road, let’s-not-offend-anybody crap are all 2008 sign-ups, most within the last 2 months. Coincidence? Oh, I think not.”
I’ve also been noticing how much of this stuff has been coming from people with 1998 sign-up dates. That’s made me wonder if somebody has figured out how to hack sign-up dates.
I would be interested in hearing some names of politicians you like. The problem with all politicians is...well...they are politicians. Your example is pretty obscure and I imagine I can find fault in any person's thinking if I look hard enough. I think Newt has consistently demonstrated that he has a conservative bias in his thinking. And the man can articulate conservative ideas without a teleprompter which makes me think he really believes what he is saying.
He's always been an 80/20 kinds of guy (unbelievably brilliant 80% of the time and uncannily stupid the other 20 %)and has always thought that he could get along with the dems and just make fools out of them when in debate.
He forgets that the DBM only picks up on negative stuff about us. He's still a conservative just not politically astute. That's whey he did not run.
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