Posted on 12/03/2011 6:47:57 PM PST by Grig
Comparing and contrasting Newt and Mitt is a real eye-opener. The two men have taken very different paths in their personal and professional lives, and have wildly different personalities. Newt is a dreamer, Mitt a doer. Newt is reckless, Mitt is careful. Newt is famously undisciplined, Mitt is the epitome of self-discipline. Romney is a leader, Newt simply is not–according to those who worked most closely with him. Both men are intelligent, yet have chosen different ways to use their intelligence.
In education, Romney pursued business and law, while Newt chose modern European History. Romney earned his education quickly and entered the private sector, while Newt preferred academia.
Romney went on to a successful career in business, becoming wealthy helping businesses and creating jobs, while Newt made a career in government, becoming wealthy by exploiting his position of power and selling influence. Romney's skills were in high demand in the private sector, while Newt was removed from leadership in the House due to the chaos he created.
In matters of faith, Romney is a life-long member of his church and has a record of many years of service to it. Newt went from Lutheran to Baptist, to Catholic, with some speculation of political motive in making the conversions. I am not aware of service Newt may have given to his church. In their personal lives, they could not be more different. Mitt married his high school sweetheart after 4 years of courtship, and remains happily married. Newt also married his high school sweetheart - his geometry teacher whom he began dating at age 16. He has admitted that there is some truth in the notion that he hates women. He has a turbulent marital history due to selfishness and uncontrolled sexual appetites. While Romney helped Ann through both MS and cancer, Newt divorced Jackie, who had cancer–saying she was ‘not pretty enough or young enough to be a president’s wife–and besides she has cancer’. Newt divorced Marrianne, who was also diagnosed with MS. At the time, he asked Marrianne if she would please tolerate the six year affair with Callista, and remain married to him. She refused. He married Callista in 2000.
In matters of character, the contrast is keen. Romney has no hint of scandal–personal or professional. Newt has rumors of sexual scandals–including the infamous oral sex in a car with his neighbor's wife, while his little daughter was near. Newt also has a history of ethics violations, shady book deals, sham fundraising practices, and inconsistencies about whether he was hired as an ‘historian’ or as a lobbyist.
In the presidential campaign, they have also chosen very different paths. Romney is serious, organized, hardworking and prepared, while Newt has been flying by the seat of his pants. He now finds himself in the running, but unprepared, due to a severe lack of preparation and organization. While Romney has been mostly humble about his long term frontrunner status, Newt proclaimed himself the nominee after less than two weeks at the top of the polls.
There are many other differences--too many to list here. But we easily know enough to determine who is more worthy of support. We should not divorce the way a man lives in his personal life, from his actions in public life. Character is revealed in both professional and personal decisions. Romney has a solid record of being true to his word, family, and stewardships. Newt does not. While both men have significant accomplishments, only one has the background, character, leadership and temperament we need. That person is Mitt Romney.
Dole was the last time that trick will get played on me.
You are responsible for allowing a non-conservative candidtate.
Blaming me when I won't eat a $hit sandwitch is disingenious, to say the least.
/johnny
“People that berate folks... “
I’m not berating you. I think I’ve made my point. I’m also not trying to sell you anything..... thank you for giving me the opportunity to make my point. I hope you get “your” conservative.
That would be better than me deciding I don't have any use, whatsoever, for a federal government.
Imagine that. Perot got 15% and rocked the world. What happens if 15% say "Screw all of this"
People that compromise with evil will drive me to that point.
/johnny
“People that compromise with evil will drive me to that point.”
I get it Johnny... any “Conservative” that isn’t in your view “conservative” is “evil”.
And yeah Perot rocked the world.... with no legacy whatsoever.
Your comments are now contradictory - time for bed.
I wouldn’t trust either to sell me a used car.
And I'm not the one that decides whether Romney is the candidate for the GOP.
I'm not holding my nose and pulling a lever this time.
People still talk about Perot, so I'd say he's got a legacy.
What some folks miss is why anyone voted for him in the first place.
The short answer is that the GOP screwed the pooch on picking in the primary.
Not Perot's fault, or the fault of the folks that voted for him.
The Party's fault.
You can't get away from that.
/johnny
Yeah after all Willie Mitty has only killed one person so far due to his lousy driving...
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You’re talking about the drunk Catholic Priest that veered across the lane and hit him in a head on in France right, killing his MIssion President’s wife and almost killing Mitt?
You’re so predictable it’s pathetic. But keep it up, even if you have to step out of the Mormon bashing threads. Your fruits are there for all to see. Please don’t stop.
Like John McCain, Newt was a Reaganite in the 1980`s and both men continued to embrace conservatism into the 1990’s. In the last 12-15 years both Newt and JohnnyMac have become situational conservatives where political expediency trumps conviction and principle.
Gingrich 2012 is McCain 2008, redux!
You’re talking about the drunk Catholic Priest that veered across the lane and hit him in a head on in France right, killing his MIssion President’s wife and almost killing Mitt?
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I dont know what Willie Mitty had been drinking but Im talking about his lousy driving late at night on curvy roads in France..
Mitt only had a broken arm..
Lets see one Mormon claims they all died but Mitt
Another comes along right after and makes a liar of the first one...
Yeah thats Mormonism..
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part1_side/
Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | June 24, 2007
BERNOS-BEAULAC, France —The mission car was packed that day.
The president of the Mormon mission to France, H. Duane Anderson, was eager to get out to visit congregations after a difficult May in which travel in France had been severely limited because a general strike had caused a gasoline shortage.
A dispute had developed in the small Mormon congregation in Pau, in southern France, and Anderson thought he should pay a call. So he took his wife and two missionaries along, and on the way they picked up a French Mormon couple in Bordeaux.
There were six people in a car that would comfortably seat five, but otherwise it was an ordinary drive that happened to turn tragic.
On the way back from Pau, the car was hit head-on and Anderson's wife, Leola, was killed.
Anderson's driver, a 21-year-old missionary named Mitt Romney, is now a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, with the June 16, 1968, accident one of his rare dark moments.
> Romney, who was seriously injured in the crash and was momentarily feared dead, has long said there was nothing he could have done to avoid the tragedy. Interviews with survivors and people who were directly involved in the accident's aftermath largely confirm his description.
“Mitt was not in any way at fault,’’ said Richard B. “Andy” Anderson, a son of Leola Anderson, who at the time of the accident was 27, attending graduate school at Harvard and living in Belmont. Anderson, who now lives in Kaysville, Utah, said he has gotten to know Romney in a variety of church roles over the years, and considers him to be a friend. “If I had any reason to think he was in the slightest degree at fault ...”
The accident took place on a curving, two-lane highway in southern France in an area that, at the time, was rife with car crashes. In fact, Romney had passed another car accident on the same road, just before the collision. And France at the time was a notoriously dangerous place to drive.
The driver of the car that hit Romney, according to an account in a local newspaper at the time, was a 46-year-old man, Albert Marie, from Sireuil. Marie, according to French Mormons who responded to the accident, was a Catholic priest; in an interview this spring, a priest at the parish in Sireuil confirmed that the church's former pastor, now deceased, was Albert Marie. Many of the Mormons familiar with the accident say they believe that the priest was inebriated at the time of the crash but that assertion could not be confirmed. The priest was traveling with his mother, Marie-Antoinette Marie, and a 48-year-old woman, Marguerite Longué, neither of whom could be located.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as Mormonism is formally known, had had a variety of run-ins with the French government over the previous century, and did not pursue any civil action after the accident, fearful of a confrontation with either the Catholic Church or the French government.
“Duane Anderson refused to press charges because he didn't want there to be difficulties between the two churches,’’ said Andre Salarnier, a French Mormon who now lives in the village of St. Pierre de Plesguen, Brittany, but who in 1968 was living in Bordeaux and rushed to the hospital after the accident to help. The Romney party had dined at the Salarnier home the evening before the accident.
In one of three recent interviews about the accident, Romney said he believes there was a criminal proceeding against Marie, and that he recalls filling out an affidavit about the accident. His spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said in an e-mail, “the governor does not have any records from the court case against the driver who caused the accident in France.” At the local police station in Bazas, officials said they do not have any records because they routinely destroy all documents after 10 years.
The trip to Pau began in Paris, where the Andersons, known to Mormons by the titles “president” and “sister,’’ got into the Citroen DS, the best of several cars owned by the French mission. Some of the missionaries, including Romney, had thought Anderson should drive a Mercedes, which was considered a better car, but Anderson had wanted to use a car made in the country of the mission, and the DS was the best French car on the market at the time.
The couple had Romney, who had just moved into the grand manse in Paris that served as the mission headquarters and was Duane Anderson's junior assistant, serve as their driver. They also brought a second staffer, David L. Wood, a 21-year-old from Salt Lake City who was serving as mission coordinator.
The Paris foursome stopped in Bordeaux on the way south to pick up a French Mormon couple, Bertin and Suzanne Farel. Bertin Farel was the president of the Bordeaux district for the Mormon church, with oversight responsibility for a variety of church branches in the region.
On the drive south from Bordeaux to Pau, Suzanne Farel rode in the middle of the front seat; passengers have conflicting recollections about whether the car had a bench seat or a console between two bucket seats. On the drive back north, the two women in the car switched positions; Leola Anderson was sitting up front between Romney and Duane Anderson, with the Farels and Wood in the back.
As they passed through the village of Bernos-Beaulac, in the midst of a verdant landscape known for its fine vineyards, they happened upon a car accident, with police still at the scene, in which a 34-year-old man had lost control of his vehicle and smashed into a tree, according to an article at the time in a regional newspaper, Sud-Ouest. The Romney party pulled over to remove a roof rack from the highway, and then resumed its journey.
“We were all talking about how dangerous how the highways were and the French highways, as you know, have the trees that line the road, and we were all talking about how dangerous that was,’’ Romney said. “And literally as we were having that conversation, boom, we were hit.’’
The accident, according to the Sud-Ouest article, took place in front of the post office on the north side of the village, which is sometimes referred to as Beaulac.
“We were driving, as I recall, through a curvy section of road where the speed limit is very low - I can't remember what it is, but a very low speed limit - and suddenly there was a car in my lane that appeared so quickly around the corner or over the hill, I just don't recall the topography terribly well at this stage, but it happened so quickly that, as I recall, there was no braking and no honking - it was like immediate,’’ Romney said. “My understanding was he ... had been passing a truck and the truck driver said he estimated his speed at about 120 kilometers, which is about 70 miles per hour. And so we had an immediate head-to-head kind of collision.’’
The road has been significantly improved since the accident, but it still curves in front of the post office; it is lined with large trees and one can see that it would be possible for a southbound driver to miss the curve and cross into the northbound lane.
Of the six people in Romney's car, three are still alive - Romney, Wood, and Suzanne Farel. The three said they have not communicated over the last four decades, but in separate interviews, all three offered similar accounts of the crash.
“We were leaving the village, we were going pretty slowly, and there was a little hill and a turn to the left, and a car was coming from in front, and we didn't have time to realize, it crossed the road, and we hit - it missed its turn,’’ recalled Suzanne Farel during an interview at her home in Bordeaux. “My husband was the only one that got out of the car, and he went to get help.’’
Wood, now an instructor of French and Latin at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts in Natchitoches, La., offered a similar description, although he noted that both he and Romney had been knocked unconscious in the crash so their memories of the moment of impact is weak.
Wood said he believes he received a settlement from the Mercedes driver after the accident; Romney has no such recollection.
Wood said Romney was a cautious driver.
“We were conservative - he was below the speed limit,’’ Wood said. Wood also noted, in response to a question, that Mormons are prohibited from consuming alcohol, and said no one in their vehicle had been drinking.
Romney, asked whether he was obeying the speed limit, said, “Oh yeah, I was probably going less than the speed limit, so far as I know.”
Photographs of the vehicles, obtained from the Salarniers and the Farels, are consistent with a head-on crash, showing that the front ends of both cars are smashed in.
Only Bertin Farel was able to walk away and call for help; Romney said he had to be pried out of the car - he was so seriously injured that the police officer who first responded believed him to be dead and wrote “Il est mort’’ - he is dead - in Romney's passport.
The injured were transported by ambulance to a hospital in nearby Bazas, a small town famous for a grand medieval cathedral and for a local breed of choice cattle.
Word of the accident spread quickly through the Mormon world, and help began arriving within hours.
Under instructions relayed to Paris from Salt Lake City, missionaries Joel H. McKinnon, who was the senior assistant to Anderson, and Byron W. Hansen, who was the mission secretary, responded immediately. They left Paris at midnight and drove through the rain, arriving in Bazas at 8:30 a.m. the day after the accident, according to Hansen's journal entry, which begins, “tragedy struck last night.’’
Hansen, now a Chevrolet dealer in Brigham City, Utah, recalled that “when we initially arrived, they thought Mitt had been killed - the nurses told us that was the initial report.’’ McKinnon, now a mission president in Montreal, recalls that the young men had to inform Anderson that his wife had died; the doctors had declined to do so.
From Bordeaux, the Salarniers rushed to the scene.
Meantime, in Michigan, Romney's father, Governor George Romney, called on his son-in-law, Bruce H. Robinson, a medical resident then married to Mitt's sister, to fly to France and oversee the medical care.
“I was making rounds that afternoon in Michigan, and George Romney called me, and said, ‘Mitt's been in a fatal car crash; he's survived so far, but we don't know the extent of his injuries,’ ‘’ said Robinson, who now lives in Idaho. Robinson drove straight to the airport and flew through the night to Paris, and then to Bordeaux, arriving June 18.
“Mitt was just coming out of his coma, but his face was all swollen, his eye was almost shut, and one arm was fractured,’’ Robinson said. “We didn't have CT scans or MRIs in those days, but we got what tests we could to show that he was OK, and that he was certainly going to survive, although he probably came within a hair of not surviving.’’
But Robinson said Romney recovered quickly without surgery, benefiting in part from his youth and general good health.
Anderson had a tougher recovery; Robinson recalls that he had a crushed chest, fractured ribs, a collapsed lung, and injuries to his liver and spleen. The church, Robinson said, rented a private train car to transport Anderson back to Paris on June 20, and the next day Robinson flew with Anderson back to Los Angeles for the burial of his wife in San Bernardino and for his own medical treatment. Anderson died in 1995.
Romney threw himself into work, and his fellow missionaries said they were struck by his resilience. But Romney says the accident affected him deeply - he recalls sobbing on his return to Paris when watching Anderson realize his wife was really gone - and says he talked about the accident repeatedly with his family.
“I was frightened of driving a car, or being in a car, and had a sense of vulnerability, that I had not experienced before,’’ Romney said. His fear was described in a letter that his assistant at the mission home, Bill Ryan, wrote to his family in fall 1968; Ryan, who had been in an earlier accident himself in France, wrote of Romney, “He is as scared, if not more so, than I am of driving in France.’’
The missionaries apparently had good reason for concern. In December 1968, they were in another accident, in which the Peugeot Romney was driving through Le Mons was hit from behind by a dump truck.
“I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was a garbage truck coming quickly behind us, with people in the front seat, all laughing and talking, and it was a snowy day,’’ Romney said. “He ... slammed into the back of my vehicle, which caused it to slam into the car in front of us, and they kept going - bang, bang, bang, bang!”
No one was seriously injured, but Ryan, now a retired assistant US attorney in Utah, said Romney, who would return to the United States a few weeks later, had had it with French roads.
“Elder Romney is glad not to have to drive anymore,’’ Ryan wrote.
Michael Paulson can be reached by e-mail at mpaulson@globe.com. Globe correspondent Julie Chazyn contributed to this report from France.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
I agree with you. I will NOT vote for Mitt or Newt. I will write in anyone, before I vote for one of them.
By the way, if Obama breaks America, then I’m prepared for that contingency also. Like you said, the GOP left me, I’m not leaving them.
LOL thanks for the chuckle!
You are confusing the issue. Romney is polling at 24% because he's way to the left of the electorate in the primary he's running in. You are actually claiming he's a conservative. If anything, his 24% is a testament to the organizational skills of his team. He should be below Huntsman. His political ideology behind, Romney actually has led a successful life. He has a successful marriage, he's built a company, etc. He's never screwed up his life.
Everything Gingrich touches turns to crap. Even with immense luck, he has managed to destroy everything in his path. He is a serial adulterer, who has had terrible relations with 3 wives. He betrayed his wives and children. He was hired by the people of the United States to rescue the country, and he proceeded to ruin that and drive the country leftward. He rescued the presidency of Bill Clinton in a way that has damaged conservatives to this day. He has a rabid hatred of conservatives. He has bizarre, anti-conservative religious beliefs. He now has a trophy wife, he is ruining his finances. They are probably both involved in adultery. If he is the presidential candidate, Obama will win reelection with numbers in the 60s or even 70s.
Gingrich and Romney are both terrible candidates to be president. If they win, be very scared.
Are you claiming people are supporting Romney because they are both Mormon? I can't believe that since Romney is complete MINO. Romney is as Mormon as Ted Kennedy is Catholic.
the June 16, 1968, accident one of his rare dark moments.
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No consicence eh ???
Reflection on his wasted life is a “rare” thing with Willie Mitty ???
If those “dark moments” were honest ones of regret and guilt and remorse and repentance, Willie Mitty would have dark moments every minute over the millions of innocent babies he has caused to be aborted..
Gingrich plays both sides of the aisles.
Freepers will regret voting for him. I will not. I’m now backing Perry.
Claiming?
You are kidding, right?
Romney is mormon enough for the Mormons...
Hes still a card carrying member in good standing...
he has his temple recommend...
The Mormons made him a bishop and a stake president ...
Thats like an arch bishop...
So if the Mormon CEOs promoted him in front of others and have no complaints...
Why would you ???
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