Newt Gingrich intensifies Deep South strategy, shifting resources to Alabama, Mississippi

WashPo ^ | 3-7-12 | Thompson

[VinL]

Newt Gingrich is canceling campaign events scheduled for Kansas at the end of the week to shore up support in the Deep South. The former House speaker plans to pour his time and resources into Alabama and Mississippi.

“Everything between Spartanburg all the way to Texas, those all need to go for Gingrich,” said campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond.

The candidate’s bus, his rallies and campaign events will be trained on a southern strategy...

Campaign aides also brushed off suggestions by supporters of Rick Santorum that Gingrich drop out...

“All of the logic being used by the Santorum campaign is simply reversed and it could be used on Rick Santorum,” Hammond said. “We’ll argue, Santorum is splitting Mitt Romney’s moderate vote.”

The GOP primary will go on for many more months, Hammond said. “We’ll stick in the race.”

In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Gingrich himself made clear that he has no plans to get out of the Republican primary, allowing Santorum to face Romney in a head-to-head match up.

“If I thought he was a slam dunk to beat Romney and to beat Obama, I would really consider getting out. I don’t,” Gingrich said on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show Wednesday. “I think each of the three candidates has strengths and weaknesses and that this is a very healthy vetting process.”

Gingrich described himself as a “tortoise” moving slowly but steadily toward the nomination as he hailed his victory in Georgia on Super Tuesday.

Gingrich was greeted in Montgomery by an enthusiastic crowd in the downtown Renaissance Hotel, where a banner hung reading “Promise of a Newt Day.” ...

Gingrich looks at the Republican strongholds of Alabama and Mississippi as “Gingrich country” — places “where you can sniff out what a conservative is,” Hammond said.

[JediJones]

I just think it’s overdoing it to have the family stand there on camera for the entire speech and also to spend almost as much time talking about them as you do your own qualifications or ideas for the country. I know most of the politicians show them at the beginning or end of the speech.

[DaxtonBrown]

“If his own wife(s) can’t trust him, why should I?”
Well I doubt he would be cheating in office, for a lot of men the fires don’t burn so bright after 60, but I know that wsn’t your main point.
I think at this stage Gingrich is the grand dad who wants to do right. That is a powerful motivating factor that swamps a lot of the wild years. I am like Gingrich in many ways, for me a lot of those wildness issues have evaporated with age. I’m 59.
Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t keep his feet to the fire.

[central_va]

We have enough problems in the conservative movement without neo-Confederate linkages.

What you are saying is you have a problem with states rights, the intent of the original republic and freedom from centralized oppression on the Federal level.

I find that odd you would even come to a web sight called FREE REPUBLIC. You don't seem to fit in.

[darrellmaurina]

163 posted on Sunday, March 11, 2012 6:57:42 AM by central_va: “What you are saying is you have a problem with states rights, the intent of the original republic and freedom from centralized oppression on the Federal level. I find that odd you would even come to a web sight called FREE REPUBLIC. You don't seem to fit in.”

Why am I here? I'm a right-wing conservative. If I thought Free Republic were a neo-Confederate secessionist website, I wouldn't be here, but it's not.

You won't hear me objecting to state's rights. I'm a strong advocate of limited government at all levels. Furthermore, because government usually works best when it's closest to the problems at hand, I'd like to return as much power as possible to state and local governments, limiting the federal government to its constitutional duties, of which the most important is national defense. Ideally I'd like to see most of the federal bureaucracy dismantled and its functions either eliminated or returned to state and local government, but I'm realistic enough to know that would be an extremely long process and likely requires changes in federal tax policy to make it possible.

What you will hear me objecting to is advocacy of secession in a 2012 political context. First, it's impossible, and second, secessionist comments can be picked up by leftists and twisted to make conservatives look like racist bigots. I'm not a racist, I'm guessing you aren't either, and I'm well aware the Civil War was about much more than slavery, but to even raise issues like that in a modern political context runs great risks for no good reason.

Rather than talking about secession, which is not going to happen, I'd rather focus on fighting battles that we have a reasonable chance of winning.

[darrellmaurina]

Central_va, as long as we're discussing secession and you seem to think I don't fit in on Free Republic because I object to secession, look at this post in which Sean Scallion, referring to the League of the South, wrote this: “They banned me too when I posted a piece from the LOS website back in 2001 ‘We're not a secessionist website!’ and I was gone.”

http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2010/06/free-republic-now-pro-secession.html

I note that you participated on some of the threads referenced in that post, and got into a discussion with fightinJAG.

I happen to think this comment by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, quoted on Free Republic, makes sense: “I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘one Nation, indivisible.’) Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2453349/posts

I note that your tagline is a reference to Confederate Maj. James Innes Randolph's poem in which he said he hates the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the American flag, and wished the Confederates had killed three million Union soldiers, not just 300,000. You posted it yourself here, and got into an argument with IrishCatholic about it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2541766/posts?q=1&;page=86

RockR said this about you on Post 91 and 94 of that thread: “The differences between the assertions that central_va makes about ‘love of country’ and the anti-American diatribes can’t be more stark. He constantly wets his pants in anticipation of tearing our country apart...but of course does nothing but talk. I think the true answer is there for all to see... I understand and appreciate a lot of the anger felt by those on the right about the egregiousness abuses that the left is heaping upon our country right now. I even understand a little of the secessionist talk - within context and within reason. I just hate to see reasonable discussion hijacked by scum with agendas as malevolent as Øbozo’s. We can take our country back but not by stupid talk from idiots like cantral-va.”

Another post by org.whodat to someone else advocating secession: “If you wish to post about over throwing the Constitution, perhaps you should read Jims rules before you find yourself on the out side looking in.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2381910/posts

It's up to the owners of Free Republic whether they want to tolerate neo-Confederate views or talk of secession. That's their call, not mine. But don't argue that I'm out of place here because I'm not a secessionist. It's crystal clear that Free Republic does not advocate secession — at most, it tolerates posts discussing secession.

Look, I'm an American and that means I have to believe that 1776 was a legitimate action. If you push me really hard and ask me what I'd say about resisting tyranny by someone like Stalin or Mao, you'd get me saying some things that don't look good in print. That's the sort of problem Rick Santorum has — he's my candidate, but I really wish he'd be more careful about saying politically unpopular things that antagonize people for no good reason.

My personal view is we aren't anywhere close to the point that we should be talking about secession. Yes, President Obama is bad, but my goal is to remove him at the ballot box, not give Democrats a reason to cite unfortunate postings here and claim that Republicans are neo-Confederates advocating a violent revolution. A year and a half ago, we had a massive victory of conservatives at the polls. We have a good shot at taking back the Senate this year, and despite some very weak Republican candidates, we may still manage to take back the White House.

Why talk about seceding when we're winning, or at least have a good shot at doing so?

[central_va]

You won't hear me objecting to state's rights. I'm a strong advocate of limited government at all levels.

BS. THere is no point at which you would advocate secession. The founders would have been shooting by now. You are another lost statist tool. As long as "our guy" runs rough shod over the states its ok.

[central_va]

I note that your tagline is a reference to Confederate Maj. James Innes Randolph's poem in which he said he hates the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the American flag, and wished the Confederates had killed three million Union soldiers, not just 300,000.

Just so we all know what you are refering to:

The Unreconstructed Rebel

Oh, I`m a good old Rebel,
Now that`s just what I am;
For this `fair land of Freedom`
I do not care a damn.
I`m glad I fit against it-
I only wish we`d won.
And I don`t want no pardon
For anything I`ve done.

I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic too;
I hates the Freedmen`s Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
With all his brag and fuss;
But the lyin`, thievin` Yankees
I hates` em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankee nation,
And everything they do;
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence too.
I hates the glorious Union,
`Tis dripping with our blood;
And I hates the striped banner-
I fit it all I could.

I followed old Marse Robert
For four years, near about.
Got wounded in three places,
And starved at Point Lookout.
I cotch the roomatism
A-campin`in the snow,
But I killed a chance of Yankees-
And I`d like to kill some mo`.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is stiff Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Befo` they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot;
And I wish it was three million
Instead of what we got.
.
I can`t take up my musket
And fight` em now no mo`,
But I ain`t a-goin`to love` em,
Now that is sartin sho`;
And I don`t want no pardon
For what I was and am;
And I won`t be reconstructed,
And I do not give a damn.

[central_va]

Another post by org.whodat to someone else advocating secession: “If you wish to post about over throwing the Constitution, perhaps you should read Jims rules before you find yourself on the out side looking in.”

I guess I am in the same league as that radical Thomas Jefferson:

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. [That age though] was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading."

                -- Thomas Jefferson

[central_va]

Rather than talking about secession, which is not going to happen, I'd rather focus on fighting battles that we have a reasonable chance of winning.

Thou dust protest to much - methinks.

[central_va]

If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.

Only the people of a State have the right to make that call, not the SCOTUS or and other Federal organ. If a State(s) wants out of the abysmal union that Illinois Butcher™ bequeathed us as his bloody legacy, if the people vote for it they are out.

We now live in a color coded anti-white male feminized society that has been rubber stamped by the Supreme Disappointment. A Constitution not followed is worse than no Constitution at all. This state of affairs breeds contempt for the government in the intelligent, and a sentimental belief in the phony protections it was supposed to have in the weak minded. As such, the Constitution now provides a fig leaf for the naked aggression of the socialist statist agenda.

                                 - cental_va

Beautiful ain't it?

PS: I will never vote for that statist carpet bagging Yankee mAsshole.

[rockrr]

Thanks for the ping and welcome to the bizarro world of neo-confederate Lost Cause Loserland, population central-va. I see you’ve already met ;-)

In #164 you said, “If I thought Free Republic were a neo-Confederate secessionist website, I wouldn’t be here, but it’s not.” You are correct that FreeRepublic isn’t, but not for lack of trying on the part of its libertarian population like cva here. I was surprised to encounter them as well since there isn’t much conservative or pro-America in any of their rants, but have come to recognize that they are mostly just deluded.

You have to forgive them because few of them have thought this thing (secession) through. Even with the stark historical evidence of the Civil War to remind us of the terrible price of such a conflict there are still a few who would goad their neighbors into such lawless acts again, just to vicariously satisfy their own blood-lust.

I don’t need to remind you of your own states history, but it is instructive to note because I believe that the struggle and strife in Missouri during the Civil War is indicative of what the entire nation would see and suffer. The internecine warfare between neighbors without defined borders or banners was among the most fierce and savage seen during the war. What sort of moron would willingly advocate that?!

So yea - cva sees people like us as “statists” for wanting to defend our nation and I see people like cva as agitators and loons for desiring its downfall and destruction. In the final analysis it is only Jimrob who calls the ball on which of us may be an embarrassment to FreeRepublic.

[central_va]

"The withdrawal of a State from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a Sovereign a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language."

              --Jeff Davis

[rockrr]

Words of another thief attempting to rationalize away his crimes.