Newt Gingrich declared last night, when asked about his ex-wife’s recent interview, “I’m tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”
Funny. He didn’t have any problem with the elite media dog-piling on Bill Clinton during the time that he, Gingrich, was involved with the impeachment.
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I think I’m more surprised the moderator didn’t say that back to him during the course of the debate. Its the first thing I was thinking of. As I’m sure plenty others were. You’d think the media would point it out more.
Why would that surprise you?
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Debates like this have more or less become a place where the only thing one should look for is whether one of the candidates manages to shoot themselves in the foot or not.
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For example, a comment made last night from an enjoyable Twitter account regarding these debates:
“FACT: In every single debate so far, Newt Gingrich has attacked a moderator asking him a question rather than answering that question.”
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Attacking and blaming the media? Rule, not exception.
You’d think the media would point it out more.
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Whatever in the world would lead you to think that? Have you not noticed what “the media” doesn’t do these days?
Constant hope at some point a reporter remembers their journalistic integrity and asks the right questions rather than soft balling everything for the sake of profit.
I mean, CNN has GOT to have more integrity then Newsarama for pete’s sake!
The little bit that I saw last night it seems that the monderator let a lot go, perhaps to get to as many topics as possible. Plus John King got jabbed several times himself. It gets tiresome of having the moronic GOP candidates whine and cry foul that they are being picked on when the tables are reversed on their opponents they sit there silently enjoying themselves.
All Moral outrage is convenient.
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Yes I have a rather low opinion of human motivations. Most notably when it comes to politics, the news media, and religion.
What a Hypocrite. (But then, all politicians are.)
There are hypocrites, and then there are hypocrites.
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Newt, on the other hand, falls into a category unto himself: hypocrites.
I have a few good campaign slogans for Newt.
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“Marriage: so sacred and holy that I had to do it three times!”
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“Marriage: it’s sacred and holy, so share the holiness!” (This one also serves for Herman Cain)
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“Boys, don’t have sex before marriage. Because the chicks really dig a married man!”
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“We’re the GOP, we’re the party that most supports gay people. We like them so much that we want THEM to live Christian lives. The rest of us? Off the hook!”
I wonder if we will ever see a candidate for office say “yeah, we have an open marriage. It works for us. It’s none your business.”
Yeah. And which party would have a politician with the balls to say that? The party full of spineless weasels, or the party in bed with the Christian theocrats?
The problem is that he wasn’t really talking about an open marriage, where they both start looking for other partners from the same place. He was only interested in this when he already had someone on the side. It’s akin to winning thousands in the lottery, then telling your spouse that if either of you wins money in the lottery you don’t have to share it with the other person.
Exactly. Pretty much standard procedure for scumbag husband who is caught cheating and wants to pressure their wife into just accepting it.
What I have not seen anyone comment is that it was apparent to me that Gingrich’s response was calculated ansd well rehearsed. I don’t even think the audience response was all spontaneous, I thionk the crowd was seeded with supporters who knew this was coming. He knew the question was coming and devised a faux outrage as a non-answer.
To be fair, nowadays ALL responses in presidential debates, from almost every candidate on both sides, are calculated and well-rehearsed. That’s why, when asked a question they didn’t have an answer for, they always steer their reply to a prepared response that oftentimes has nothing to do with the question. That’s why it’s absurd to call these things debates. The object isn’t to address the questions at hand and present a convincing argument. The object is to not screw up, and there’s only two ways to do that. Either trust in your ability to think on your feet, or else have a list of replies that’s been vetted by your staff and stick to those.
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Where it can bite them on the ášš is that they say the same stuff over and over, which leaves them open to carefully prepared zingers. Lloyd Bentsen had heard Dan Quayle invoke JFK, in terms of comparative age, previously in his stump speeches. So when Quayle did it during the VP debate, Bentsen was waiting in the high weeds with his scripted “You’re no Jack Kennedy” and basically blew Quayle out of the water. Granted, Bensten won the battle but lost the war…but at least he won the battle.
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I don’t think it’s going to bite newt in the butt any time soon though. His calculated and well rehearsed comments aren’t quite the same as Quayle doing his “JFK was a young senator” routine or some of the other lines and stories that politicians like to stump with. His lines about him and Reagan, those are like the JFK routine that Quayle used and we just saw someone prep for a response to that one. But this thing is different. It’s also more of a technique than an actual line.
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He’s not addressing it to his opponents or to sell himself in the typical way. This is purely for the red meat crowd in the Republican voter base. This is attacking the MSM/press, a popular target of the Right, and feigning outrage and indignation at their even bringing up such a subject and then defiantly flipping the bird to the MSM/press and declaring that Obama’s protectors/defenders/attack dogs aren’t going to yadda, yadda, blather and blarney.
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And it works. Look at the comments that have been made here and elsewhere after prior debates. The stuff that scores Newt the biggest loads of positive responses is when he attacks the questioner or the media in general and defends the “Conservatives” from the media.
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It’s Williams’ fault that Santorum and Newt make comments designed to pander to racists and that the media and others noticed it. And how dare Williams or anyone else ask them about it?
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It’s King’s fault that Newt thinks that marriage is an institution where his wife should stay home and wait for him while he screws anything and everything in a short skirt in his workplace. And how dare King or anyone else ask him about it?
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He’s playing to the Republican base. of course they love it and, no, it’s not a technique that’s going to bite him in the backside any time soon.
All right, everyone: Let’s stop being “holy cow” Democrats. You can’t tell me that CNN isn’t biased — not when John King spent most of the night trying to ignore Ron Paul. He even tried to ignore him when they got around to the subject of abortion (Ron Paul is a licensed physician). I guess it’s more interesting to talk to the guys who only play doctors on TV.
Go back and look at the debates from Fox and other conservative organizations.
They ALL ignore Ron Paul.
That’s not true. There was an interview on Fox a couple months back where they asked him who he thought was going to be the GOP nominee: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich. They didn’t ignore him. They just ignored his candidacy.
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They ignore Paul, rightly or wrongly, because he is viewed by many as not really a Republican but a Libertarian who knows he will get much more attention and airtime in the debates, for example, to espouse his ideas versus being another COMPLETELY IGNORED Libertarian candidate.
Paul’s being a licensed physician doesn’t hold much water when he hasn’t been a PRACTICING physician in about 15 years. I don’t care how much “experience” he has, there’s been a crapload of NEW medical knowledge that’s come out in that time frame as well as new technologies and new techniques, and I seriously doubt that Paul has had much time (doing all his politicking) to keep up with the latest medical info. (If, over the last 15 years, he’s able to read EVERY LAST PAGE of EVERY SINGLE BILL that he’s voted on–something I believe Paul has been critical of his colleagues’ not doing–and he’s able to read EVERY SINGLE PAGE of EVERY SINGLE MEDICAL JOURNAL, then he needs to go into business as a time management expert.)
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Furthermore, Paul lacks one very important qualifier in the abortion debate–he’s not a woman. Additionally, this is the man who, as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988, actually had the audacity to suggest that abortion rights is not compatible with individual liberties. Sorry, but that notion itself seems to be highly incompatible with the idea of individual liberties.
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Just because Paul has a couple of good ideas doesn’t mean he’s Presidential material. You wouldn’t want to use clock that’s stuck at 3:17 even though the clock will be right twice a day. Why would anyone want Ron Paul?
1. Because real doctors make real decisions about real life and real death, and that’s independent of advances in technology or changes in technique.
2. I don’t know what legal system you grew up in, but under Anglo-English law, it is not enough merely to have a “right.” It also is a requirement that a right be exercised in a timely manner. Otherwise, commonly, it is waived.
3. It is beyond the scope here to examine carefully the concept of “personhood” under our Constitution and specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. The one thing I can say is that one does not have to be a woman to understand it. Indeed, the Constitution is written to be understood by any citizen, male or female, young or old, medically trained or untrained.
4. Finally, who would you say is presidential material? What we have now? Before you answer that, I’d suggest you read Ex parte Merryman.
I often wonder what’s worse — someone who is so disconected from reality they believe things that are clearly not true or someone who cannily lies and takes advantage of the worst instincts of people?
I’m not sure which one Gingrich is.
The invention of “media bias” was brilliant because it allows conservatives to reject reality when it’s inconvenient. It also allowed them to react to a at-best center-left bias with an extreme right bias. Rush Limbaugh is not a measured reaction to Phil Donahue.
So, Gingrich’s statement implies that any truths about Republicans are “attacks” and they’re for the bemefit of Obama. This then implies that Obama’s lack of scandal is not a moral victory but further proof of media bias.
The reality is that the media goes for the story that is interesting. Sex scandals are interesting. It’s not about taking down Gingrich, Cain, or Clinton. It’s about selling paper or getting ratings.
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He was being a hypocritical jáçkášš. What’s new in that for Newt. For that matter, what’s new in that about many on the hardcore Right cheering him for that?
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Newt supports Citizen United. Newt cried and whined about the kinds of garbage that Citizens United now allows when it was directed at him. Newt still supports Citizens United and uses it to do to others what was done to him a few primaries back. The hardcore Right still cheers newt when he protests the dirty politics used against him while cheering him for supporting Citizens United and using it against people that the hardcore Right don’t like.
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Newt is a smear merchant. As a politician, a private citizen and a paid commentator on Fox News, he has lied, smeared and discussed the personal lives of others. He gets cheered by the hardcore Right for doing this. But when it’s done to him, whether it’s an untrue smear or an absolute truth is being discussed, he whines, blames the same media that he was a part of when he did the same thing, cries about being a victim and the hardcore Right cheers.
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Does this really surprise anyone at this point? Newt and his happy band of followers and supporters acting like this doesn’t make this an unusual event, it just makes it yet another average Friday.
I think John Oliver perfectly summed up Newt’s real views on marriage on last night’s Daily Show:
“Newt is right, traditional marriage is the right of powerful men to do whatever the F** they want, whenever the F** they want to.”
Gingrich has always been a superb practitioner of a$$holishness and hypocrisy. Even when I was mostly happy with the republican party, I wanted to plant my fist in his smarmy, holier-than-thou, dishonest suck-hole.
Yup, this trend of *No comment* and *whine, whine, whine* and *Just because I am standing up here holding myself out as a fit candidate to be President of the United States does not give you the right to ask me any pertinent questions whose answers will not make me look good in the eyes of people I am trying to fool … * should come as no surprise to folks who clearly see that GOP candidates are talking out of both sides of their mouths while trying to smile.
I would much rather watch a nature documentary … at least you are perfectly clear from the outset that the hungry lion fully intends to make a meal of their prey and makes no bones about it!
I don’t remember the elite media piling onto Clinton after Drudge broke that story. Instead, I remember a mainstream media deluge of stories and talking points such as “it’s a private matter” and “it has nothing to do with his job as president” and “lying is actually good, as it can spare someone’s feelings.”
Your memory is in error.
You are confusing ‘media stories’ with ‘things you heard people say’. A common republican problem lately.
No, those were the talking points. As a matter of fact “MoveOn.org” got its name from the media talking points or the Lewinski scandal. The mainstream media pushed the notions that the scandal was “irrelevant,” “a personal matter” and even tried to go so far as to convince Americans that lying is good. The only reason they were reporting it at all was because Drudge broke the story. This sort of thing was going on for years under mainstream media protection.
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And now, a short break from our regularly scheduled blogging for this important PSA.
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Ed, before you or anyone else wastes time having a discussion with dipwad here or does the work of seeking out links to the facts that prove him wrong… A friendly reminder of Darin’s stated mission on this and other blogs.
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“Darin March 23, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Guys, Guys, Guys….
Havent you figured out what I do on these political blogs yet?
I go in every once in a great-great while, make statements that I know most of you oppose and then when you throw up little links to provide your side with support, I just repeat myself. I ignore your links and just reiterate what I’ve said. It’s what I’ve done every. Single. Time. Here… when there is a political thread.
Sheesh.
Darin”
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http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2007/03/22/this-is-all-starting-to-sound-extremely-familiar/comment-page-2/#comment-31387
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We now return you to out regularly scheduled blogging.
Jerry has surrendered. Anyone else?
Surrender assumes you ar actually any kind of a threat. Instead all Jerry has done is ignote the toothless gnat that cannot harm him.
Darin, this isn’t a game. You don’t get to declare “victory” or “surrender”. Certainly not when you can’t even offer a rebuttal.
All these complaints against Clinton are laughable in the face of Bush torpedoing the economy and entering into a war under false pretenses.
I’m sorry, but Clinton paved the way for things like Newt’s antics to be acceptable, at least by the mainstream media. The “convenient moral outrage” here is on that same media now at least as much as it is on Newt.
But Clinton wasn’t a member of the party that made a crusade for “family values” their bread and butter. Newt is in a completely different category of political hipocrisy.
Oh I agree that he’s a hypocrite. I’ve never been very fond of Newt ever since he started appearing in “global warming” PSAs with Nancy Pelosi. In a lot of ways, he’s worse than Clinton methinks. But the media who attempted to protect Clinton is now conveniently interested in the marital problems of Newt and that’s the real story here.
You don’t like Newt? I am surprised, I think this is the first time I’ve seen you saying you don’t like something Conservative.
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But I don’t know how much the press managed to protect Clinton, considering that the whole world knows far more than it should about Clinton and Monica and that whole story.
It’s very simple, Rene. I don’t think Newt is a conservative. Not really. He’s also an egotist. I actually dislike Newt MORE than I dislike Clinton because at least Clinton didn’t claim to share my beliefs and values.
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The only reason we ever found out anything about Bill and Monica was because of Matt Drudge, who operates OUTSIDE the mainstream media. Once the story broke, the mainstream media (i.e. the media wing of the Democrat Party) there was nothing they could do about it except try to minimize the impact.
Had a system hiccup there. What I meant that last sentence to say was: Once the story broke, the mainstream media (i.e. the media wing of the Democrat Party) could do nothing about it except try to minimize the impact.
Which is why they breathlessly reported on every salacious leak they were given. [eye roll]
the mainstream media (i.e. the media wing of the Democrat Party
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And this is why it’s time to stop feeding the troll again.
Again, Sasha… the mainstream media wasn’t leading the coverage of this story in the beginning. “Salacious leaks” were broken by New Media sources like Drudge. Once this all got national attention, the mainstream media had to follow it in order to maintain the guise of credibility… but every time they were forced to report on the details of the scandal, these news organizations tempered their coverage with puff pieces designed as damage control. These were in the form of on-air op-eds and loaded panel discussions on shows like Meet The Press. If the mainstream media (i.e. the media wing of the Democrat Party) had had their way, the Lewinski scandal wouldn’t have seen the light of day in the first place.
I should imagine that the ratings that having a juicy bit of salacious gossip would generate was a far greater motivator than being forced to seem credible.
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Wow… Newts out there today stating that he would like to see the government prosecute the people creating the toxic political climate of the day by injecting”despicable” things such as lies and smear into it. I’d pay good money to see the next interview he does start out with the interviewer presenting him with the long and well documented lists of lies and smears that he and some of his Fox News colleges have inject into political discourse and ask him how soon he’d like the prosecutions to start.
Perhaps you are speaking of the media that made it seem that the impeachment was about the hillbilly horndog’s infidelity.
I knew many people who honestly think that was what the trial was about.
It was about using presidential power to intimidate someone into committing perjury. Every day the media played up the ‘cheating husband’ angle and continued the attack on Starr as being sex obsessed.
Impeachment is not about personal character, it is about miuse of power. Nixon, for example, was on the verge of being impeached because he lied to Congress, used extremely underhanded (and, for the record, definitely illegal) methods in his re-election.
If a president was to, let’s say, instruct the jutice department to not investigate persons intimidating people at the polls, such as, hypothetically, the Black Panthers, THAT would be grounds for impeachment.
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“If a president was to, let’s say, instruct the jutice department to not investigate persons intimidating people at the polls, such as, hypothetically, the Black Panthers, THAT would be grounds for impeachment.”
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Well, yeah, but then we can’t impeach W. Bush because he’s not in office anymore.
At the risk of being ratted on to ‘Attack Watch’, I am talking about Obama
Just lettin’ ya know!
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Yes, you’re talking about Obama. But you’re wrong.
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The incident in question happened in 2008 while W. was president. W. Bush’s justice department looked into it and discovered that there was nothing to it, that this New Black Panther Party group was nothing more than a handful of cranks and recommended that no action be taken. Again, the Bush administration’s Justice Department, not the Obama administration, made the decision not to pursue criminal charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for alleged voter intimidation at a single polling center in Philadelphia in 2008. It was resurrected under Obama’s Justice Department and they came to the some conclusion as W.’s.
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It was a phony scandal drummed up by a conservative writer at The Washington Post. It was garbage. Hëll, there were never even any who voters have come forward to claim that they were intimidated by the New Black PAnther Party twits.
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Oh, and Bush’s crew were doing what they had done before. The Bush administration DOJ chose not to pursue similar charges against members of the Minutemen, one of whom allegedly carried a weapon while harassing Hispanic voters in Arizona in 2006. Same exact scenario, you just didn’t have Fox News making up “facts” and “details” about the case and sensationalizing it so most people missed that one and the Bush DOJ not doing anything there either.
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And, on top of that, Obama’s DOJ actually did more about it than Bush’s did. Obama’s justice department administration actually obtained a default judgment against Samir Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party for carrying a nightstick outside the Philadelphia polling center on the date in question.
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So, phony, bûllšhìŧ scandal manufactured by The Washington Post and Fox News, blaming Obama’s DOJ for not moving on it when it was in Fact Bush’s DOJ who said there was no there there and ignoring the fact that Obama’s DOJ actually did choose to pursue it more than Bush’s did with this case or like cases and actually meted some form of legal punishment for the dipshit’s actions.
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But you keep pushing those talking points like a good little conservative regurgitator should.
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Facts and reality VS talking points and bûllšhìŧ. What are you gonna do?
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“It was about using presidential power to intimidate someone into committing perjury. Every day the media played up the ‘cheating husband’ angle and continued the attack on Starr as being sex obsessed.”
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No, it was about bûllšhìŧ.
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The entire thing came out of the Whitewater investigations. Years of wasted taxpayer money to keep digging and keep expanding the scope of that thing only to keep coming up empty. So then, in a completely unrelated to the subject of the investigation move, they pushed to have the Whitewater investigation expanded again to include an on the record Q&A with Clinton about rumors of an affair with an intern. And then Clinton lied about getting a BJ. And then, as a result of the Whitewater land scandal investigation that had absolutely no there there and wasted taxpayer monies and was a pointless distraction in the halls of power, we got to see the Republicans make áššëš out of themselves by trying to impeach Clinton because he lied about getting a hummer.
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And one of the loudest voices condemning such actions? Newt. Yes, Newt, the man who was cheating on his second wife (who he married after cheating on his first wife with her) with his future third wife who worked in as political staffer and wasn’t much older at the point that they started their affair than Monica was when she and Clinton had their little fling.
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Newt, flagrant hypocritical and all around general ášš. You just know that Obama and crewing are praying that Newt gets the nod here. That would be a slam dunk reelection for Obama.
Sorry, eyes getting bleary…
*misuse of power
*justice department
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Newt’s recorded statements form last night in bold. Newt’s unspoken comments in italics.
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“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news mediasuch as Fox News and myself who have lied, smeared and made up things for years now and have really escalated the destructive, vicious, negative nature of our lies, smears and made up garbage once Obama took office makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run of for public office which is why you’re stuck with choosing between people like me, Mitt and the frothy one over there and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that because, really, this isn’t Fox News and I thought you had better standards here than people like Hannity, Rove and I do. Now sit back and watch the idiots in the audience cheer me criticizing things that I’ve spent a lifetime doing and attacking you for doing what I and my Fox News compatriots have spent years doing and, by the way, been cheered for doing by the same idiots in the audience who are cheering me now.
John Roberts (JD Roberts to me, he will always be a Much Music VJ) in an interview with a Democrat whose name escapes me: “How are we going to defeat the Republicans”
Not “what are your plans” or “how are YOU going to defeat the Republicans”
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So one station for the Republicans and all the rest in the Democrats’ corner and that is bias?
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First, source it. That quote doesn’t exist anywhere that I can see and I can’t even find a similar quote being discussed in outrage on conservative blogs.
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Second, you mean the John Roberts who has been a senior national correspondent for Fox News for about a year now? That John Roberts?
10 days later…. No source. Shocking.
Methinks this be one of the sock puppets.
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I think my head is going to explode after today. The one person on the Right making the most sense when discussing Newt is… Ann Coulter.
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Maybe 2012 is the end of the world after all.
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ann-coulter-to-oreilly-newts-media-attacks-are-like-jesse-jackson-accusing-people-of-racism/
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ann-coulter-with-newt-gingrich-you-throw-out-the-baby-and-keep-the-bath-water/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediaite%2FClHj+(Mediaite)
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http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-01-25.html
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Sigh
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Post in the filter due to the links in it, but the short version is…
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Google “Ann Coulter” and “Newt” and see the scary results. Ann Coulter, bat-šhìŧ crazy and reliably insane these days, is making 110% sense when discussing Newt in general and discussing the subject of this thread specifically.
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This has to be one of the signs of the end of days.
It is amazing. She has had about three of her last four columns bashing him. I find this a nice counterbalance to the bûllšhìŧ being spouted by many on the Right, that Newt will win the debates and be a “warrior” against Obama and win.
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Bob Dole just lashed him today. It is really ridiculous. And to paraphrase George Will, the theory is that four and a half hours of brilliance on a debating stage should entitle him to control all our nuclear warheads.
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This is insane.
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More than ever before, we have turned the race for the most powerful position on Earth into American Idol. Newt has baggage as far as the eye can see, is eccentric, last held office 14 years ago, is being endorsed by virtually no one who served with him, is not a veteran and has never run anything of note, yet he is impressive in a few debates so that trumps all that.
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Meanwhile, a Governor of the second largest state in the Union, whose state has produced jobs and who is both a veteran and a farmer is dropped like a hot potato because of a couple debate flubs.
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Again, this is insane.
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I am particularly pìššëd at Fox right now. Newt finishes fourth in Iowa, with 13% of the vote and he is still treated as Romney’s biggest threat, especially by Sean Hannity and Ðìçk Morris. Rick Perry, who again has all those conservative credentials going for him,finisher fifth, ONLY THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS BEHIND NEWT, and he is instantly treated as an also-ran, in the segments in which he is mentioned at all. Fox treated Perry like Buddy Roemer for heaven’s sake, especially Morris and Hannity.
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I guess an “analyst’s” position goes further than we originally thought. It was so extremely biased and slanted it made me sick.
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Now on MSNBC we have Chris Matthews saying Santorum looks like he is itching to start a war with Iran and the MSM’s lovefest with the young, hip Obama to look forward to.
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And what really drives me crazy is when someone like Palin or Mitch Daniels talk about how Obama is a “socialist” (a bit over-the-top)and is inching us toward Greece (more spot-on) YET THEY STILL CHOSE NOT TO RUN. Which means they either don’t believe what they spout or are so self-absorbed they are fine with sitting out while the nation arguably is in a tremendous crisis that will take true leadership to solve.
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I’m just amazed by what I’m seeing every time I watch a GOP debate. Newt has the crowds eating out of his hands and cheering him. I could see the stuff he’s saying working if he was newer and the scene or an unknown, but it baffles me to no end that he’s getting away with it.
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Newt presents himself as a “bold, Reagan Conservative” despite an enormously long track record as anything but and gets held up as a “bold, Reagan Conservative.”
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Newt, a life long Washington insider, presents himself as an Washington outsider and gets celebrated as a Washington outsider.
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It’s insane. And the Tea Party is running to support him as well. 100 Tea Party leaders from over 20 states have joined Newt to form the Tea Partiers With Newt coalition. Seriously? When you look at Newt’s record (especially the parts where he was an elected official who loved special interest pork deals for himself and his friends) you see a record that is dámņëd near everything that the Tea Party supposedly dislikes. Yet they’re showing greater support for Newt in this than they did for Perry, Bachmann and (if memory serves me correctly) Cain.
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This election season is already disgusting me beyond words as a voter. I would have liked to have seen the GOP play smart and offer up a viable candidate to Obama. It seems like they’re just going off of the deep end of the extreme. The sad part of it all is that I don’t seem them changing any time soon; or the Democrats for that matter. We’re hitting a point of political polarization that’s insane and where you have to play to the fringe to get noticed and really supported. It’ll probably have to hit absolute rock bottom before one party smartens up enough to actually give us a mainstream candidate to vote for rather than guys who we vote against.
When you realize that the Tea People are nothing more than the rebranded GOP base that got Gingrich and the GOP into office in the 90s, it makes perfect sense. Newt is their collective Monster from the Id.
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Well, I’ve said here and elsewhere that much of the Tea Party, certainly the Tea Party power brokers, are little more than the right-wing of the Republican party with a new coat of paint and a new name, but even they should be smart enough to ditch Newt. They were, after all, the people who ditched him when he became an out of control egomaniac and liability back in the 90s.
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He’s been a great booster and cheerleader for them as a media personality, but even they have to know that he would all but destroy their party as a high profile, high powered elected official these days. I’ve accused them of not being the brightest bulbs before, but not so stupid as to be practically politically suicidal.
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Of course, this is the same group who cheered for and supported Christine O’Donnell.
Last debate before the FL primary is tonight. If Newt wins, there will be (in the words of one GOP strategist) “a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language. People will go crazy.”
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Should be fun to watch.
“a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language. People will go crazy.”
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We’ve all seen this train wreck coming from hundreds of miles away.
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The establishment courted the likes of the Tea Party and (whether you think the Tea Party is part of this or not) the far right fringe with birthers and such.
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Now, as we’ve suspected was the case for some time, the establishment which thought it could control the likes of the Tea Party is finding out the hard way that they could not. Being driven crazy should be the least of their concerns at this point.
Oh, and the funniest thing? Newt’s credible challenge would not have been possible without the SuperPACs allowed by Citizen’s United.
I would argue that Newt’s biggest factor has been the debates, which allow him to rise above the smears of Romney’s SuperPAC for example.
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I do agree if Newt wins the intervening month will have party leaders desperately trying to get a Daniels or a Palin or a Jeb Bush into the race, all of which will fail and SHOULD. These are the people who answered the call and have taken the hits.
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So we will have a choice between a flip-flopper extraordinaire who still can’t explain away convincingly nagging questions and arguably the most polarizing figure in American poitics.
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As someone said, with Gingrich you get the GOP’s Clinton, only with half the charm and twice the abrasiveness.
Oh, the debates helped, but without the SuperPACs Gingrich would not be able to compete financially with Romney (especially if the establishment GOP tries to freeze Newt out of the usual fundraising networks and ask that key GOP donors not to him). This GOP primary has the ability to go much longer than usual.
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And I think you over- and underestimate Gingrich’s attributes by a very large margin.
And now conservatives are savaging Drudge for attacking Newt (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/conservatives-criticize-drudge-for-anti-gingrich-assault/).
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It’s fun to watch the GOP form up a circular firing squad for a change ..
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“That prompted conservatives who support Mr. Gingrich to accuse Mr. Drudge of selling out to the Republican establishment — many of whom have come to Mr. Romney’s aid as the battle with Mr. Gingrich has heated up.”
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See, again, I don’t get this. I’ve actually seen conservatives and Republicans, both voters (many old enough to know better) and pundits, discuss the Newt VS Romney thing like this and described Newt as the establishment outsider. How in the blue hëll can anyone consider Newt an establishment outsider?
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Newt was the face of the establishment in the 90s and a cog in it for years prior to that. When he finally got booted out for being too smarmy even for his contributions to gaining power to counterbalance in the eyes of his own party, he just turned around and became a lobbyist and cheerleader for the GOP establishment. He’s been one of the establishment Republicans favorite people insofar as having him as a speaker at their big events and booster rallies.
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How in the hëll can anyone delude themselves to such a degree that they can say that Newt is a “Washington outsider” and not a part of “the establishment” and keep a straight face?
Wow, that’s a hard hitting article…I had no idea that such influential consrvative voices like Ana Beavenhouse, verigatari, and “Elizabeth” had taken to twitter to voice their outrage. Circular firing squad? Hëll, this is this is Verdun and Waterloo!
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This is the silliest excuse for an article I’ve read all day. Alternate headline– “ordinary supporters of candidate A upset that someone supports candidate B”. Since it’s the new York Times we can add “Women and Minorities hardest hit”
The thing is, Bill, that although this kind of internecine warfare is typical among the left wing, conservatives savaging each other like this is something new — and hints at the growing divide between establishment and TP Republicans. That’s noteworthy.
I think the divide between the TP and the establishment GOP was pretty well demonstrated when the TPers beat several GOP incumbents in the last election cycle. And it would be pretty easy to go back and find examples of people angry that McCain was the nominee, or wasn’t the nominee, depending on the year. the idea that the GOP primaries are not filled with exactly the same hurt feelings and cries of “We was robbed!” as the Democratic primaries is nonsense.
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Ans “savaging”??? “Drudge is officially irrelevant now!” “Is this #Drudge report, or MSNBC?” “On this Thursday, this quite bloody Thursday, I can only say, et tu Matt.” If this qualifies as savaging, boy have we nambied up the pamby. Give me the days where gangs of street children would follow Grover Cleveland around and taunt him about his illegitimate child “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? In the White House, ha, ha, ha.” and Andrew Jackson would miss votes so he could go shoot people who accused his wife of being a bigamist. Which, in fact, she was.
That a divide between TP and establishment GOP exists isn’t new, but the increased amount of acrimony between them (and the apparent widening of the divide) is. I’m sure that people were pìššëd that McCain wasn’t or was the nominee, but I do not recall anything resembling this level of vitriol about it, one way or the other. And, yes, “savaging” is an appropriate term (although adding the adjective “verbal” might have made it clearer). This level of emotionally heated rhetoric is what you’d expect when TPs denounce liberals and Democrats, not fellow conservatives.
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I’m not expecting it to last though. The TPs will inevitably coalesce around the GOP nominee, even if he ends up being a raging RINO, since the one thing TPs hate more than an ideologically impure apostate is Barack Hussein Obama.
I think though that illustrates a problem for the GOP–they have voters that want to vote AGAINST Obama…but not many that want to vote FOR someone. as the Democrats found out with Kerry, that may not be enough.
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Obama’s star has faded but there is still a hard core that will walk across broken glass to cast a vote for him. I don’t see anything like that level of passion for Romney or Gingrich (I do see it for Ron Paul but it is not enough for him to win)
I suspect that in this election cycle, GOP SuperPACs will do their dámņdëšŧ to make sure that even if conservatives won’t walk across broken glass to vote for the Republican nominee, they’ll endure a broken-glass enema in order to cast a vote against Obama.
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I don’t thin the rift between the Tea Party and the Republicans is a savage as some make it out to be for the simple reason that it’s always been there to a degree. The Tea Party is nothing but the same old extreme wing of the party that’s always been there.
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They’re interesting at this point since they’re the most successful re-branding for a splinter group in quite some time. They’re also benefiting from having the MSM treating them like they really are what they claim to be (a genuine, grassroots political movement) and having (for now) institutional cheerleaders in Fox News.
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While we’ve seen this battle of extreme VS mainstream in the party before, I honestly think that the Tea Party has the ability thanks to it’s media cheerleaders and financial backers to hijack Republican elections on many local levels and have a serious impact on the Presidential elections for at least a decade to come. And the more they blindly and insanely push some of the candidates they support, the more the rest of the party is going to tire of them.
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The fun bit is going to be seeing when the fracture point comes and in what form it takes. A lot of the tea Party leaders and the politicians bowing down to kiss their ring strike me as far more arrogant and unflinching in their “my way or the highway” attitude about what the party must do than even the Republicans backed by the Religious Right in the 80s. It’s going to reach a point where the Tea Party gets broken and forced to get back in line or it could actually cause a serious split in the party. I don’t know if we’re talking third party split or just decade long self destructive split, but if they don’t back it down a bit there will be a split.
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Either way, I can easily see the Tea Party and Republican Party dynamic becoming a serious issue for them by 2014 to 2016 and the Tea Party being just too dámņëd arrogant and stupid to back off what is essentially politically extreme and more and more politically suicidal actions. After that, if it goes that way, the Republican Party will be limping and hurt for quite a while. The only thing that might ultimately save them is that the Democrats will be too dámņëd stupid to run mainstream candidates because their fringe will see the easy elections as a chance to run their extreme idiots.
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Which would actually be really cool if it caused the sensible and more mainstream moderate politicians and voters in both parties to band together and form a new party that was less stupid and less likely to pander to the fringe and the extreme than the currant two parties. Unfortunately, I doubt that there are enough politicians and voters smart enough to do that.
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Well, Newt just got his ášš handed to him in tonight’s debate and one reason he got slapped around was playing this dumb game of expressing outrage towards the press asking questions he doesn’t like. I loved it when he went after Wolf Blitzer for asking such irrelevant questions about Romney’s tax filings and Wolf turned it around and pointed out that it was Newt who was just this week out there making a big stink about Romney’s tax filings.
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Newt looks great in a “debate” when he can throw zingers from out of left field, but Romney knocked him totally off of his game by being prepared for Newt and launching comebacks and quips of his own that even had the crowd turning on Newt from time to time. Master debater indeed.
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And the amazing thing was that Santorum played the game of staying out of the personal bickering between the two and then plastering them both to occasionally coming off looking like the more presidential and adult member of the bunch. I figured Newt would have an uphill slog with the Florida GOP voters because of how much more diverse and moderate many of their voters are compared to SC. He just kicked his own ášš tonight. He’ll be lucky if he comes in third when the primary votes are cast.
He’s really a one trick pony and his opponents are now wise to the trick.
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But if Romney gets elected–a huge if–he an probably thank newt in large part. Romney actually looked less like an animatronic puppet and/or Al Gore last night, so at lest Gingrich manged to move him out of his comfort zone into a better place. And when Obama uses some of the expected attacks against him it will seem like old news.
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But newt is just flaming out, as expected. It’s how he does things and nobody should expect anything different. If he were the nominee republicans would wake up every morning with a sick feeling in their stomachs wondering “Is this it? Is this the day he blows it?”
The best analogy I’ve heard is that although Newt Gingrich pulled off some miracle wins, the game film is out on him and now everyone knows how to take away his greatest asset. (I.e., he’s Tim Tebow, and we saw what happened when Tebow went up against a well-run organization.)
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And that debate really hurt him is seems. He’s getting stomped in polls this weekend and the friends and relatives I have down in Florida have said that the general vibe on the street is about the same as we’re seeing in the polls.
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Newt is going to bomb in the Florida primary and bomb hard.
Looking forward to the inevitable Santorum surge …
Looking forward to the inevitable Santorum surge once those disillusioned Tea People leave Newt and support the next not-Romney.
Latest exit poll from South Florida (we’ve been voting for about a week):
Romney: 256;
Gingrich: 114;
Santorum: 25;
Paul: 9
Remember: In Florida, the further South you go, the farther North you are. Also, in a big state, it is very difficult to run against a plutocrat (the “negative” ads here are really outrageous, though no worse than they will be in the general election).