In order, she has made the following on-air pronouncements in the role of Fox News commentator:
A long primary is good for the process and the candidate which emerges.
Voters should support Newt Gingrich in order to keep the primaries going.
There is nothing wrong with a brokered convention.
Conservatives should have doubts about the perceived front runner, Mitt Romney.
Now all of these statements are certainly legitimate opinions, though when they come from someone who teased for months that she was going to run for president and who may have a profound political interest in no Republican becoming president so that she can remain more relevant, having her specifically urging voters to take certain actions while in her role as a paid commentator is clearly a cause for concern for any journalistic organization.
However, any question as to whether Palin has indeed crossed the line into the realm of commentator illegitimacy ended yesterday when she said on Fox that she might run for office again and strongly implied that she would accept the nomination of a brokered convention.
So, the obvious question is: If Fox’s policy is to suspend commentators who are making moves to run for high office, how in the world does campaigning on air for a brokered convention, urging voters to take actions which would facilitate that, knocking the frontrunner, and giving the impression you would accept the nomination of any such brokered convention, possibly NOT qualify for such an action?
SomethingAwful.com writer Zack Parsons said on his website [SIC] that Mitt Romney should shut up about how he “saved the 2002 Olympics” because “no one cares”, using Romneys own website as an example:
Whenever I hear Mitt Romney touting his credentials as a candidate for President, I can be sure that at some point he’s going to mention that he “saved the Olympics.” He literally mentions it in every major speech. On his Why Romney website “Saving the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics” is the title of the second section. He thinks “Saving the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City” is only slightly less important than “Business” when it comes to impressing people with his experience.
The problem: The link goes to a Mitt Romney fan site that is not affiliated with the Romney campaign.
We at CandidatesBlog happen to know one of the Authors of WhyRomney.com, the site that echoes Romneys involvement in the Olympic turnaround and got a statement. From WhyRomney.com spokesperson:
“WhyRomney is not an official Romney site and Romney is not responsible in any way for our content.”
This information can also be found on the sites “About Us” page which is linked to on every page of the website.
The following clip is from the Michael Medved radio show:
Todd Palin has endorsed Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin had said she would have voted for Newt in South Carolina, Florida and Nevada but has come short of officially endorsing him.
MyWay.com chose an…interesting photo of Mitt Romney to post in this story by the AP. The photo (also by the AP) show’s the candidate stepping off a platform, getting a little help from the front and back.
“I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do,’” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. ”He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”
Mr. Gingrich,
If I may ask a couple follow up questions, since I would hate to think you were engaging in a cover-up. You said you have always been upfront abotu your extramarital affairs.
So, first, when you say the story from your ex wife is completely false, are you denying that you had a 6 year affair behind your wife’s back and thus were having an “open relationship” albeit in secret? You have previously admitted to this affair, so does that not mean that at least that much is true?
Second, when your wife found out about the affair, if her version of events is false then what DID happen?
How DID that conversation go? You ended up choosing your mistress over your wife, after being discovered, but are you saying that you would not have been willing to continue having both a wife and a mistress, if your wife had consented to the idea?
Via HotAir: On “The Laura Ingraham Show” today, Will took Gingrich to task for a lack of wisdom — and prophesied a bleak future for the conservative movement if either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich happens to become the GOP nominee (or, worse, according to Will, actually president!). The Daily Caller reports:
“Mr. Gingrich said it’s not enough that he is the smartest guy in the room, he also has to be wise,” Will said. “Now you can associate many things with Mr. Gingrich, but wisdom isn’t one of them. Surely the Republican nominating electorate should understand the fact that people have patterns. Don’t expect the patterns to go away. Expect the patterns to manifest themselves again. If Newt Gingrich has any pattern at all, and he does – it is a pattern of getting himself into trouble because he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room.”
Will said that he thought Gingrich actually believed it when he said he was going to be the Republican nominee, particularly because the stage in Gingrich’s mind “is lit by the fires of crisis and grandeur.”
“Ask yourself this: Suppose Gingrich or Romney become president and gets re-elected – suppose you had eight years of this,” Will said. “What would the conservative movement be? How would it understand itself after eight years? I think what would have gone away, perhaps forever, is the sense of limited government, the 10th Amendment, Madisonian government of limited, delegated and enumerated powers – the sense conservatism is indeed tied to limitations on federal authority and the police power wielded by Congress – that would all be gone. It’s hard to know what would be left.”
The 68-year-old has compared himself to Charles de Gaulle. He has noted nonchalantly: “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz.” As speaker, he liked to tell reporters he was a World Historical Transformational Figure.
What does it say about the cuckoo G.O.P. primary that Gingrich is the hot new thing? Still, his moment is now. And therein lies the rub.
As one commentator astutely noted, Gingrich is a historian and a futurist who can’t seem to handle the present. He has more exploding cigars in his pocket than the president with whom he had the volatile bromance: Bill Clinton.
But next to Romney, Gingrich seems authentic. Next to Herman Cain, Gingrich seems faithful. Next to Jon Huntsman, Gingrich seems conservative. Next to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Gingrich actually does look like an intellectual. Unlike the governor of Texas, he surely knows the voting age.
Even my own mother, a rock-solid Evangelical, was extremely uncomfortable voting for Sen. John McCain until he acknowledged to Rick Warren that the failure of his first marriage was the greatest regret of his life and it was his fault.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to get large numbers of Evangelicals, particularly women, to vote for you, you must address the issue of your marital past in a way that allays the fears of Evangelical women.
You must address this issue of your marital past directly and transparently and ask folks to forgive you and give you their trust and their vote.
Mr. Speaker, I urge you to pick a pro-family venue and give a speech (not an interview) addressing your marital history once and for all. It should be clear that this speech will be “it” and will not be repeated, only referenced.
As you prepare that speech, you should picture in your mind a 40-something Evangelical married woman whose 40-something sister just had her heart broken by an Evangelical husband who has just filed for divorce, having previously promised in church, before God, his wife and “these assembled witnesses” to “love, honor and cherish until death us do part.”
Focus on her as if she were your only audience. You understand people vote for president differently than they do any other office. It is often more of a courtship than a job interview. I know something of your faith journey over the past 20 years. Do not hesitate to weave that into your speech to the degree that you are comfortable doing so. It will always resonate with Evangelical Christians.
You need to make it as clear as you possibly can that you deeply regret your past actions and that you do understand the anguish and suffering they caused others including your former spouses. Make it as clear as you can that you have apologized for the hurt your actions caused and that you have learned from your past misdeeds. Express your love for, and loyalty to, your wife and your commitment to your marriage. Promise your fellow Americans that if they are generous enough to trust you with the presidency, you will not let them down and that there will be no moral scandals in a Gingrich White House.
Such a speech would not convince everyone to vote for you, but it might surprise you how many Evangelicals, immersed in a spiritual tradition of confession, redemption, forgiveness and second and third chances, might.
Your fellow American,
Richard Land
His personal history is no small issue and if he continues to rise in the polls, expect to hear lots more about it…
Throughout, Gingrich’s modus operandi has been startlingly similar to the way he shifted money from GOPAC to the charities that were secretly supporting his college course. And here’s a mystery: According to Bruce Nash of Nash Information Services, a company that tracks movie sales, these films — some directed by a man best known for a TV show called Bikes from Hell — are spectacular failures. “The most popular appears to be Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny, which is most likely selling a couple thousand copies a year through major retailers. Rediscovering God in America sells perhaps two thousand units.”
But the lavish productions do afford Gingrich and his wife luxurious world travel. At the premiere of the latest, Nine Days that Changed the World, a film about how Pope John Paul II toppled communism, the producer joked from the podium about Gingrich’s champagne tastes. “We didn’t travel steerage, that’s for sure.” Most of all, the religious emphasis of his documentaries underscores his recent conversion to Catholicism, and perhaps helps to dim the memory of his ugly divorces.
When asked about his conversion, Marianne laughs.
Why is that funny?
“It has no meaning.”
It has no meaning?
“It’s hysterical. I got a notice that they wanted to nullify my marriage. They’re making jokes about it on local radio. The minute he got married, divorced, married, divorced — what does the Catholic Church say about this?”
She’s not angry at all. She just thinks it’s the only path Gingrich could take after his idealism died, threatening the self he had invented out of the biographies of great men. “When you try and change your history too much,” she says, “you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way.”
In New Orleans, Gingrich strides onto the stage at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger.” Thousands of activists in a party looking for deliverance rise to their feet.
Gingrich stands there grinning, soaking up the applause.
When he begins, his voice is strong and confident. “When you speak from the heart, you don’t need a teleprompter,” he says, launching into his slashing and scholarly indictment of the Obama secular socialist machine that wants to take away their rights. And once again, when a man from the audience says we should just end the goddamn income tax already, Gingrich walks him back. “We’ve got to pay for national security.” He even defends spreading the wealth. “None of the Founding Fathers would have said that George Washington, owning Mount Vernon as the largest landowner, should pay the same tax as somebody who was a cobbler.”
At a moment of doctrinal crisis in the Republican party, Newt Gingrich is the only major figure in his party who is both insurgent and gray eminence. That is why twelve years after his career ended — twelve years after any other man in his position would have disappeared from view — he is ascendant.
“Will he run?” Marianne asks. “Possibly. Because he doesn’t connect things like normal people. There’s a vacancy — kind of scary, isn’t it?”
One thing is certain — Newt Gingrich loves the question. “That’s up to God and the American people,” he tells you, in the serene tone of a man who already knows what God thinks.
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