Posted on 01/26/2012 10:12:01 AM PST by Windy City Conservative
The Romney campaign sends along a statement by Bob Dole pasted below. Relations between Dole — an establishment figure in the party — and Gingrich were well known to be tense during the 1990s. Here it is:
I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.
Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999 and had trouble within his own party. Already in 1997 a number of House members wanted to throw him out as Speaker. But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when the writing was on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources.
Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with Bill Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.
In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty ice-bucket in his hand — that was a symbol of some sort for him — and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it.
In my opinion if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer. He has the requisite experience in the public and private sectors. He would be a president we could have confidence in.
Almost everything about Ron Paul is ‘off the wall’.
the Romney bots had better wake the hell up and see that Romney is the reach across the aisle and help obama, hell his campaign said yesterday they will not overturn obamacare
WTH
The GOP says Newt is a bomb thrower, er yea that is what we want , someone who can fight the left not say OK no problem , how much do I get.
FOX your bias along with Drudge, some of talk radio, the establishment has been the most disgusting thing I have ever seen on one of ours.
The establishment actually think that we will just shut up and vote for their guy, well not me , no more of that crap
You refer, I trust, to the 1964 GOP Primary.
That was between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, not Romney.
That’s the 2nd time I’ve read that joke. It’s a good one though, lol.
Sarah needs to come out and help Newt with all these attacks now, Rick needs to d what is best for the country and go against Newt but I sense the establishment has got to him already and promised him something.
What the establishment has done has been the most disgusting attacks I have seen from them.
As for FOX, screw them and their talking heads now
Dole blames his loss in ‘96 on Newt?
lolol
This is enough to make a person swear off party politics forever.
Is this the year we want to have the Republican-Tea Party fight, or is this the year we save our country by stopping Barack Obama?
If we can do both, cool. But I’m not a fan of fighting the band over the tune while the Titanic sinks.
We wouldn’t be in this position if we had gotten a good conservative candidate to run for office to stop Romney. Newt isn’t that candidate. All the things that make so many here love him are not going to help win the election. And he’s not conservative enough to sacrifice the election for.
The fact is FR is supporting Gingrich because he is seen at the moment as the one who can beat Obama. If we knew he couldn’t do that, we wouldn’t give him the time of day, and we’d be looking to support the guy who could.
Or maybe not. Maybe we HAVE given up on beating Obama, and all we care about at this point is who can keep Romney from being the nominee. I want to stop Romney because I don’t think he’s electable. I wanted a conservative because I wanted a conservative.
But if I can’t have a principled conservative, I’ll settle for a candidate who can stop Romney and also win the general election.
I hope I don’t get banned for this, but I have to say this: If we are going to LOSE the general election to Obama, I’d much rather lose it with Romney, the “establishment” candidate, than with Gingrich sold as the “tea party” candidate.
Because if we lose with Gingrich, we won’t be able to push a true conservative for a LONG time. If Romney loses, we are DONE with him, and the establishment once again proves they are idiots, and a few million more republicans support us next time around.
But I’d rather win the general election, because I don’t see our country surviving 4 years of Obama acting as King. The congress can’t stop a guy who ignores them.
So, all these "Republicans" just piling on today are probably a little richer today?
You need to find a way to seperate the wheat [Social Conservatives who are not part of the TEA Party] from the chaff.
It still looks like war against the Tea Party to me.
Why?
"Because I said so."
Give me telephone numbers, please. Thank you.
As General Patton said, "This match will not be postponed." Obama wins anyway if Mitt is the nominee, so it might as well be now.
“I think you ought to listen to Alinsky,” Romney told his white allies, according to T. George Harris’s 1968 book, “Romney’s Way.” “It seems to me that we are always talking to the same people. Maybe the time has come to hear new voices,” he said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2837345/posts
http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/24/when-saul-alinsky-met-george-romney/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2838167/posts
His father was a Dem..he was known to hob nob with Alinksy. There is a picture of them here on FR. The Romney family have been Dems for decades. They destroyed Detroit.
We’re not in this to lose. That’s a silly game to play.
I don’t know about the ethics thing. He was my congressman for as long as he served in his final district. I remember most of my family, friends and acquaintences deciding we wouldn’t vote for him again because of his Calista problem. Regardless, he certainly wouldn’t have been re-elected as Speaker, in my opinion.
That said, I haven’t changed my mind about him, personally, but I intend to vote for him in the upcoming March Georgia Primary and in the General Election should he prevail for the nomination. It simply is the least of three bad choices that is operative here.
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