http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnOMFL1ZfDg
Levin’s judgement trumps all those you just listed. Limbaugh must have had a lapse in judgement too.
Levin worked in the Reagan administration as Assistant Attorney General. If anyone knows Newt, Levin would, and yet Levin still made a conscious decision to support Santorum and Bachmann over the others.
Also, can you tell me something conservative Newt has done in the last 5 years? Going back to the 80’s and 90’s is like going back to Barry Goldwater’s record in the 60’s and 70’s. By the 80’s, Goldwater was much different from the conservative he was in the 60’s. He still considered himself a conservative, but most would call him a libertarian who soured on Reagan and started going after the Christian right. If Ronald Reagan had never been born and Barry Goldwater had ran for President in 1980 or 1984, what do you think his prospects would have been given his conservative record from the 60’s but his evolution into libertarianism in the late 70’s early 80’s. Do you think Goldwater could have still gotten away with running as a true conservative?
I know in the last 5 years, Newt has written a book on the environment with a chapter devoted to climate change, endorsed a liberal Republican in line with his “big tent Republican” concept, referred to Paul Ryan’s plan as “right wing social engineering”, sat with Pelosi on the infamous couch, and criticized the TARP on TV as an analyst, but admitted he would have voted for it as a member of Congress.
Now he wants us all to forget that and go back to his record of the 80’s and 90’s.
Newt trying to run as a conservative in 2012 is like Goldwater trying to run as a conservative in 1984. It only works if you ignore recent history and go back to the past.
Please note that the last of those occured in 1997. It’s the stuff he did since then that has many concerned. I’m not typing this to change minds, simply to point out why Santorum’s positives are much higher than Gingrich’s at the moment.