Posted on 12/09/2011 1:31:59 PM PST by Jim Robinson
I posted the below in response to a FReeper who asked me what we should do in regards to progressives Newt and Romney. And he asked me what would George Washington do? So I got to thinking about why I've been gravitating towards Newt. In fact it kept me up for half the night.
Here is my reply:
Well, I’ll tell you, after Palin declined to run I really didn’t have a dog in this race. I liked Bachmann and Cain a lot, even Perry, but not as much as I liked Palin. Bachmann and Cain are both conservative enough, but neither have really been tested in higher office, nor do they have much experience in world affairs.
I also had high hopes for Perry because it looks like he’s done a great job in Texas, but his positions on the border issues turned off a lot of people. And his “heartless” statement didn’t win him much opportunity to turn that around.
I guess Santorum is conservative enough and possibly Huntsman, but neither engender much enthusiasm or excitement. Seems they’re just going through the motions. Don’t know if they have the real world experience to be CINC anyway.
Bachmann seems to be trying really hard but don’t know if she’s really qualified for the top spot either. Even so, had Bachmann really lit a fuse on the trail, I probably would have stood by and supported her, but she flopped and is unlikely to recover.
I thought early on that if Perry got into the race (without Palin) that he’d suck all the air out of it and would dominate. But he flopped. And then Cain took off like a rocket and he flopped.
Now Cain didn’t have elective experience, but he looked like a great conservative so we were all hoping and pulling for him. Well, that didn’t turn out well.
Mind you, that abortionist, lib progressive bastard Mitt Romney is just sitting there smiling through all this and he, Rove and the GOP elite think they’ve got it in the bag. Just gotta hang in there, not say anything rash, not rock the boat, no mistakes, just play defense as one by one the upstart tea party conservative candidates burn themselves out.
In my mind, we must defeat Romney AND Obama. I don’t think George Washington is going to be smiling down on us if we had this great tea party opportunity to knock off the progressives and we let Rove, Romney and the corrupt good old boys club bushwhack us. We’re supposed to be the bushwhackers.
So like a whole lot of conservative Republicans and tea party folks, we’re bouncing candidate to candidate looking for the one to knock off Romney so we can take the tea party battle directly to Obama. Romney is no tea party person. He and Rove, et al, sneer at us. No way in hell are they going to do anything we’re interested in doing even if they do get elected. It’ll be government as usual. Big. They hate us worse than they hate the democrats because we’re a direct threat to their power base.
So in comes Gingrich. Didn’t much care for him at first, mainly because of his well known baggage, and his perceived RINO plumage, but he began making a lot of sense and scoring a lot of points in the debates. Turns out his depth of knowledge and experience in government affairs both domestic and foreign and his experience with Ronald Reagan, the Reagan Revolution and the Republican Revolution of the 90’s are quite extensive and quite impressive if you look.
He’s been through the mill and that’s what a lot of our younger less experienced, less traveled candidates are missing. In the debates he comes off as a wiser, more experienced, more knowledgeable, level-headed senior statesman. And it appeared to me that the other candidates acknowledged and respected that.
So I start thinking back about his history as a congressman and speaker, and lo and behold, it appears to me he’s not such a RINO after all. He was a genuine Reagan protege. And he learned well from the master communicator. He eventually set a goal for himself to build a Republican majority and to take the speakership, and he determinately accomplished that goal.
And he had some great conservative accomplishments as congressman and speaker. He passed the contract with America. He cut taxes. Cut the deficit. Reformed welfare. Blocked HillaryCare. Became a thorn in President Clinton’s side, blocked much of his liberal agenda and ultimately allowed impeachment to proceed. Then of course, he resigned due to his own infidelity scandal. But, unlike Clinton, he didn’t deny it, didn’t lie about it, and he did the right thing by resigning.
Bottom line though, through his years with the Reagan Revolution and the Republican majority much conservative good was accomplished. The Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed and our great Reagan economy flourished for two decades.
Now, if a progressive RINO had been in charge of the congress during this period, who knows what would have happened. I’m sure the history would have been a lot different. Remember, before Gingrich and his Republican Majority, we conservatives had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years!! And our country was on life support after Jimmy Carter nearly killed it. And the democrats were saying at the time that there was nothing we could do about it. We were going to be stuck with the cold war. Stuck with the Soviet Union, stuck with Iran. Stuck with high oil prices, gas lines and rationing. Stuck with recession, high interest rates, high inflation and high unemployment from that point forward. They could not be fixed. Jimmy Carter and the democrats had given up on America and surrendered the USA to our fate as a failed nation.
In walk Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and reestablish that great shining city on the hill! Thank God! It’s not the end of the world after all. Iran returns the hostages immediately. Reagan takes the Soviet Union head on! Reagan takes the democrats head on and doesn’t take no for an answer. Takes his ideas to the people. It was a struggle but eventually the economy began turning. Reagan’s central theme domestically was that the government was too big, too intrusive, taxes too high, too much spending, too many regulations, too many restrictions on business and industry and they all must be cut. And he took that battle over the heads of the democrat congress to the tax payers and they loved it. Sound familiar?
And in 1994, Newt Gingrich leads the charge against the democrats who had been in power for 40 years and the Republicans take the majority and Gingrich becomes Speaker. He dreams up the contract with America which was designed as an extension of the Reagan Revolution and and included items attempting to balance the budget, reform welfare, tort reform, term limits, line item veto, etc. Some of it was successfully implemented, some not. But under Gingrich they did cut the deficit and balance the budget four years running. Sound desirable? Sound progressive?
How many times in our history have you seen a liberal progressive, cut taxes, cut regulations, cut spending, cut welfare, balance the budget, block big government programs like HillaryCare, impeach a sitting president, etc?
Never! In other words, all this to say Newt is NO RINO!! He’s a pro-life, pro-small government, pro-national security, Reagan conservative!! In short, we’re desperate, and he’s exactly what we’re looking for, and he’s running head and shoulders over the rest of the field, so what the hell are we squabbling about?
Yes, Romney and Rove hate him, the Republican establishment elite ruling class hates him, the liberals hate him, the democrats hate him and they hate him for the same reasons the taxpayers will support him, the lovers of liberty will support him, the defenders of life will support him, the defenders of national security will support him, the lovers of the Reagan Revolution will support him, and we the tea party should support him!! He’s a tax cutting, budget balancing, strong defense, small government, pro-life Reagan CONSERVATIVE!!
After reviewing Newt vs Romney, George Washington would say, go, NEWT!!
I’ll take a chance with Newt. Over Romney? You betcha!!
What say you?
Perfectly stated Case Jim.
I just joined Newt’s effort here in Iowa.
For almost exactly the reasons you just stated. And if you’d have asked me 6 months ago? I would have said NEVER. I too, was with the Organize for Palin effort and prayed she would run. But, you are correct, we MUST stop Romney and we MUST beat Obama.
Go Newt.
Yes, and those seats were going to be lost to DEMOCRATS, not to more conservative Republicans.
Far more than the impact on any one congresscritter's seat was the conclusion (right or wrong) that Gingrich was wrecking the gains the party had made as a whole. There were actually some Republicans who were actually concerned about maintaining a majority, if at all possible, not just with their own political fate.
This distinction, I think, is at the heart of what is being bandied about as the recent "targeting of Newt by the elites" meme.
So many (including Rush, who made me mad for the first time in 20 years yesterday) *automatically, reflexively* spout the imbecilic psychoanalysis that people who disagree with or don't support a candidate take that stance soley because they "fear" the candidate.
Please. Plenty of people in the GOP "elite" hate Gingrich because they think he's a jerk, a poor leader, someone who betrayed them by being an undisciplined jerk and poor leader after they'd finally gotten a majority, and whom they think might possibly be a trainwreck again.
Sometimes people hate someone for a legitimate reason (whether or not you or I agree with it).
Look, Gingrich was leader of a bunch of politicians, right? If he had been able to convince them that under his leadership they would be able to maintain their majority status, regardless if some seats were turned over to more conservative Republicans (NOT Dems), they would have continued to support him.
They have no problem saying to the guy who can't win against ANOTHER REPUBLICAN, sorry, pal, it sucks to be you.
But Gingrich was (in their view) losing the party seats and, therefore, he had to go.
Yep, he was there for that, too!
I cooked a wonderful fish dinner for my wonderful husband tonight, and the thanks I got was sitting down in front of the TV with him to watch BOR!
BOR is completely in the tank for Romney! Argued for Romney against Michael Reagan and another lady who were clearly for Newt Gingrich as the better candidate to oppose the Marxist.
I was so mad, I shot off an email under another name because he's tired of receiving mine. He used to sometimes read mine on the air. I hope he reads this one. It was pithy.
WOO-Hoo!
That’s one heck of great picture, JPB!!!!
Thank you very, very much!
Gingrich always seems to need a haircut....LOL.
A Reagan conservative would not have been, for money, fishing for a way to keep Fannie and Freddie not only alive, but thriving at a time when their operations had and were destroying the economy of this nation and, to a large extent, the world.
No one who has ever believed, even for a second, that the “era of big government is over” — or even SHOULD be over — would have gone there.
Imagine how different things would be today if the Republicans had overcome the opposition of Newt and the Dems and actually straightjacketed Fannie and Freddie in 2005. We might not have had TARP or any of the bailouts. And we might not have President Barack Obama.
Words have meaning and so do deeds. And Newt has some very stinky deeds that he should be held accountable for.
Do you remember when Speaker Newt proposed buying a laptop for every school kid in America? Back when laptops cost around $5,000 each? The bullcrap just shoots out of his mouth and always has.
Doesn’t mean he can’t, won’t or shouldn’t,, under all the circumstances, be the nominee. But I would never in a million years say he has the track record of a Reagan Republican.
Doesn’t sound the Gingrich I remember and I’ve been voting for conservatives since Nixon the first time around. We apparently have different recollections.
I’d feel somewhat better about it if I thought that a lot of conservatives were not going to have their socks shocked off.
Of course, during the campaign, it will likely be dismissed as “he’s just saying that to get elected, once in the White House, good old conservative Newt will be back.”
Man, does that sound familiar.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong because it sure looks like conservatives are going to be a cheap date for old Newt.
During the Huckabee forum he said he would eliminate the EPA....and replace it with an environmental solutions agency. His solutions always tend to be government solutions when Americans need less government.
I met lots of O4P and Tea Party people.
I'm with you.
I'm in contact with Tea Party Charlie.
He doesn't have to be pretending he's a conservative to have a problem staying on track with conservatism.
He just has a problem staying on track with conservatism.
It could be because of his worldview or his ideology, or it could be because he's an undisciplined person, an egomaniac or a difficult boss. Or a million other reasons.
It doesn't matter why.
Janine Turner made a very valid point of contrast between Mitt or Newt vs Obama. Mitt not so much. Newt has a stark contrast and she stated “That is what the voters want”. I agreed with the assessment she arrived at. She is smart and easy on the eyes to boot.
Well said and spot on!
I can't stand to watch BOR anymore. Watching Coast Guard Alaska instead! :)
Quite possible, so I went back and rechecked the actual record to refresh my recollections.
I say that the ascendancy of Newt in the GOP race represents the triumph of substance over style.
And I say I like it.
So wrong in so many ways. Fannie and Freddie are PRIVATE CORPORATIONS funded by private funds. Tax-payer money doesn’t enter into it. Wow! Do you even bother to do any research, or do you just parrot what you read on some other candidate’s website?
If and that's a big IF Newt should somehow become the nominee to run against Obama then I'll give Newt another LONG HARD look. I'll also be looking at who is running on any third party ticket as well. I'm not of those that must win at ANY cost, I am the type that votes for the one I believe to be the most qualified no matter what party they hail from or what their chances are. I'm through with voting for the least evil one and have been since 1996.
Sheesh.
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