Posted on 11/16/2011 2:16:46 PM PST by TitansAFC
He's baaack! Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is back in the saddle after falling off his horse at the starting line.
At least according to one poll (Public Policy Polling), Gingrich is actually the GOP front-runner.
Many say it's simply Gingrich's turn to be the not-Mitt contender, now that Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have had their chances.
But that's not entirely fair. Gingrich has been relentlessly seducing GOP voters in the debates.
Romney may have been winning on points and technicalities, but Gingrich has been consistently winning the crowds.
Moreover, he's been deftly using the debates to develop a sales pitch to GOP voters.
The core of his strategy has been to plant a question in the minds of Republican voters: "Whom would you most like to see debate Barack Obama?"
In each debate, he keeps mentioning how he wants to challenge the president to as many Lincoln-Douglas-style debates as possible.
And if the presidential baloney won't march into the Gingrichian grinder? Well then, the grinder will come to the baloney.
Gingrich vows to follow Obama on the stump, offering rapid response after every presidential utterance.
It's a brilliant tactic because the unifying conviction among hard-core Republican voters is that Obama is both overrated and full of it, a man pretending to be presidential and intellectual rather than the real thing. (Ironically, Gingrich has long been the subject of similar criticisms, mostly from the left.)
Gingrich's promise to goad Obama into a fair fight is beyond tantalizing.
Talk to rank-and-file conservatives about such a matchup and they grow giddy, like nerds asked if they'd like to see a battle between Darth Vader and Gandalf the wizard.
Ask them if they'd like to see an Obama versus Romney debate and they shrug.
Meanwhile, if you nominate Gingrich, you'll get a ticket to the fight of the century.
The risk for Gingrich is that primary voters may eventually recognize what he's up to. After all, as a purely practical matter, the point of picking a Republican nominee isn't to find the candidate who can beat Obama in a debate but to pick the nominee who can beat Obama in an election (oh, and be a good president too, a worthy subject for another day).
Winning debates is great and important - as Perry has painfully learned - but they are a means to an end, not an end unto themselves.
It's an open question whether Gingrich can defeat Obama in 2012. It's taken as a truism that he has "too much baggage." Well, some of the baggage is lighter than it appears. He was cleared by the Clinton-era Internal Revenue Service of wrongdoing in alleged ethics violations stemming from a college course he taught in the 1990s. The charge that he surprised his cancer-stricken first wife with divorce papers has been, at the least, exaggerated.
But, as with Kim Kardashian's attic, you can throw away a lot of old baggage and still be left with too much for one person to carry.
His marital infidelities, his verbal indiscipline, the strange mix of God and Mammon that is Newt Inc., and his grandiose way of talking about himself as one of the lions of the 20th - and now 21st - century: It may just be too much muchness for voters once they're reminded of it all.
And, oh boy, would they be reminded of it if Gingrich got the nomination.
On the other hand, this could be Gingrich's moment.
Perry was undone by the debates because voters understand that the only way to beat Obama is to take the argument to him, particularly because - from a Republican perspective at least - the mainstream media has little interest in holding Obama accountable.
Maybe it is his time.
Newt would reduce the kenyan to less of a nothing than he already is.
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006
I want a big eviscerate and hear the ululations of their girly-men
If Newt is the nominee there will be no debates. Obama will find some way not to participate.
Interesting.
I can see how. He’s been expecting to run against someone to the right of him. I still don’t think the Gingrich/Chafee ticket could beat him.
Can you imagine what the debates would be like? If Gingrich is the nominee, he would treat Obama like a public works employee feeding tree limbs into a high speed wood chipper. It would not be pretty for Ø. Newt is a great debater. He wouldn’t hold anything back. He would tear the Kenyan usurper to shreads. Definitely a PPV event.
When he's under real pressure I'm afraid he won't be the lion everyone is hoping for.
The only issue they disagree on is that Gingrich think Pelosi is a genius and Obama thinks she is a moron.
And when he was challenged for his leadership position in the House, he quit.
Another Bob Dole look a like. Another PC opponent the MSM and the Dems have vetted completely. They all want Newt. Obama will win re-election in a walk.
Yeah, he’ll exasperate Obama, then he’ll exasperate us.
But, geez, what choice do we have any more.
AND DON’T SAY FREAKIN’ RON PAUL!!
“But, geez, what choice do we have any more. AND DON’T SAY FREAKIN’ RON PAUL!!”
Preach it, brother.
If they get to debate, it’ll be like bringing a gun to a pie fight.
I remember that time. Everyone was saying "Why don't the Republicans fight back?". They were fighting back, the MSM just refused to let them get their message to the public. I remember watching Newt make a speech on CSPAN, and thinking, if only the American people would see this, we would win!
The times have changed now. We have a small, but growing new media that is not part of the Progressive MSM. We can get our message out if we have a little time to do it. The MSM has lost much of what credibility it had getting President Obama elected, and most of the electorate knows it.
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