The letter is accurate. It WAS handed out by Rick’s campaign. It is jumping from that letter to some type of argument that it shows that his recent statements somehow represent a lie that I object to, and that those at politifact and other liberal media (and supporters of name-your-candidate) completely misrepresent, in this case by their willful analysis as if that letter occurred in some type of a vacuum rather than being part of a whole body of events. Similarly, I object to those who solely present “in a vacuum” such things as:
Mr.Newt’s early foray into “individual mandates” (along with Heritage Foundation);
his “sitting on the couch” with Pelosi and supporting some type of CapNTax;
Newt’s wife problems;
Newt’s “anger”;
his comments about Ryan’s budget proposal;
and other such things that I could put up here if I were a Newt basher.
There are surely objections to Mr.Newt, that I can understand people having. There are objections to Mitt, Santorum, and RonPaul, just as surely that there were to Cain, Bachmann, Palin, Perry, Daniels, JebBush, ... who have I forgotten ... I could go through objections to every one of them just as I could about the objections to Obama and Hitlery. Heck: I could cite even more objections to ME!!!
Is MrNewt a great thinker, and has he been a great asset to conservatism in general? ABSOLUTELY - possibly his contributions to my cause have been greater than any other person in the last two decades - with Justice Scalia being one of the few others in his class. Is MrNewt the best candidate for the GOP in 2012? That is a much closer question. No matter what _I_ think that of him, he also has some deficits, including his like/dislike numbers, and some powerful voices against him. That I disagree with those assessments is not material to the importance of my weighing those factors, and trying to figure out whether he can overcome them. I believe that Newt a pretty good chance of overcoming much of his problems, by the way. I am NOT as sanguine about Mitt’s chances of overcoming his.
I agree with your touting Mr.Newt’s assets. Please continue to do so. You make some great posts in support!
The problem I have with many on this type of forum dragging down other candidates is that ALL are much much better than the person now in the whitehouse. That person is the odds-on favorite for re-election. I know that one of those much much better people will be our candidate in November, and I believe we should do our best to maximize each of their assets and minimize their liabilities for us to achieve the goal of replacing him. I can find much to support in any of them, even second-last Mitt, though I find aspects of RonPaul extremely troubling. Parroting overblown assessments by the liberal media (or the anti-whoever forces) intentionally bashing of any of these candidates works against that goal.
I wrote a couple months ago that I think that any of those seven or so candidates could beat Obama, there is good in all of them, but we need to work with each other, not against each other, to take maximum advantage of this opportunity.