No doubt he made mistakes of which he takes full accountability. The point is that conservatism wasn’t ready to go full bore yet. People weren’t ready as a whole for what Newt was preaching. He adapted & changed.
Newt has recognized the mistakes however. Times have changed & America is finally ready to handle what Reagan, & later Newt, started. Have you ever changed your line of thinking based on circumstances? I certainly have.
I think Newt has as well. If that’s the case, there’s no better in our current field to bring about the change we’re all so desperate to see. A Gingrich/Cain ticket would be dynamite! Newt could do his thing while Cain learns the ropes & gets up to speed.
Newt was taken out by Tom Delay and others in the GOP. I consider what they did to be motivate by little more than petty jealousy. Delay is proud of his role in getting rid of Newt.
From a transcript of Rush’s show with Delay as guest:
[RUSH: Now, how many of the ‘94 freshmen were involved in the coup? I’ve talked to some of them, and of course they arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and they really believed that they were there to implement the agenda they had all campaigned on, and it was a revolutionary thing here. They had taken over the Congress. A number of freshmen here that gave the Republicans this huge majority, how many of them were dispirited by what they learned and saw and how long did it take for that to happen?
DELAY: At least half of them, 35 to 40 of them. It took a couple of years, particularly the second term of Newt Gingrich, where the members had just had enough. At the end of 1997, they wanted to see a change, and they didn’t see Newt bringing about that change, so they were going to take him down. So Dick Armey, myself, Bill Paxon from New York, and John Boehner — the now minority leader — came together, frankly, to handle the situation and try to keep that up. Whether you were supporting Newt Gingrich or not wasn’t the point. The point was our conference did not need this kind of divisive action right in the middle of our Congress. It would have destroyed everything that we were working for.]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1802383/posts
This leads to an obvious question: Considering how much was accomplished under Newt’s leadership compared to what the Republicans accomplished after his departure, why would anyone be proud of having gotten rid of him?