Everything you say is absolutely beltway thinking....Newt’s talent was unparalleled by any candidate on either side - the ability to take down racism, unions, judges, academia nuts, Democrats in office and the media in one debate answer that ties it all up in a bow.
You don’t have any damned idea what Newt could, or could not have done. There is no cult of Newt, there are those of us mature enough to understand that at over 60 years of age, 30 in the public square, Newt has made a lot of mistakes, but he’s learned a lot too.
And he is, and has been for years, when he’s the “good Newt” - a peerless articulator of why conservatism works and liberalism fails. Yeah, the bad Newt might embrace some of that liberalism a tad, so it’s not a slam dunk he would have won. No one said it was.
What we’ve said is this: A Newt candidacy would have made the election highly ideological, which is the only way Republicans win. EVER. There would be no escaping the Tea Party vision v Occupy Wall street vision of America.
Newt might have struck out, but Mitt was out on called strikes. And Santorum doesn’t have the talent to even be considered. Nice guy I guess, but just no talent.
Eddie, you’re WAY too emotionally invested in Gingrich, and that’s why you’ve lost your perspective here. So you say he can debate ? So what. Talk is cheap. I watched him in action when he was Speaker. He brought the GOP to the majority and what did they do with it under him ? He crumpled in less than a year on the job and he looked really bad doing it. He had a spectacular opportunity to hold firm against Clinton like the Rock of Gibraltar. He failed. If he had succeeded, he could’ve had the Presidential nomination in 1996 or 2000 for the taking.
You forget he was tossed out on his ass ahead of the Speaker vote. There would be no comebacks for him. I knew it then and his actions ever since demonstrated that. For anyone who thought with someone whom had toxic approval ratings could make it to the Presidency was and is suffering from a serious case of cognitive dissonance. Democrats might pull that off with their usual liberal amount of cheating and fraud, a Republican can’t.
Newt isn’t 60 or in the public square for 30 years, he’s almost 72 and began running for office in 1974, so that’s 41 years now. Newt is no Reagan, either. Reagan was 55 when he first ran for office (Governor) and within 14 years was elected President on his 3rd try. Reagan didn’t commit colossal foul-ups or have toxic negatives. The media went after him hammer and tong and couldn’t get much to stick. Everything stuck to Newt.
It was not a matter of if Newt might’ve struck out as the nominee, the matter was by how much. Willard was execrable, but Newt was already a proven negative and he never turned it around. You gotta take off the fanboi glasses and smell the coffee. What you think he is and what he is are two different things. That he has a deep-seated emotional need and want for the media to like him (something WAY too many Republicans suffer from) is one reason why he never did “get it.” It’s one reason I’m looking forward to a Cruz candidacy, someone who doesn’t give a damn about the adulation of leftists. That’s someone who will present a real ideological choice, not Newt’s squishy Stay-Puftiness which was only some number of degrees starboard of Willard’s.