Gingrich: “lighten up” over meeting with Trump
Posted by Parker V on December 6, 2011 under President | 
Be the First to Comment
As others dodged, Gingrich embraced
George Will and Laura Ingraham warn against both Newt and Mitt
Posted by Parker V on December 2, 2011 under President | Be the First to Comment
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 Troubles with Newt
Posted by Parker V on under President | Be the First to Comment
Problems abound for Newt Gingrich’s candidacy…
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.
Dr Richard Land (not to be confused with Richard Bushnell’s “Richardland” internet theme park) advised in a letter to Gingrich that he must address his multiple divorces to gain evangelical support:
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.
Has Romney Locked the Nomination?
Posted by Parker V on November 12, 2011 under President | Be the First to Comment
As the Perry campaign continues a downward fall, buzz over Newt Gingrich is rising in its place. Could a surprise still happen? Around here we are starting to make predictions…
CandidatesBlog contributor, Ryan Larsen says:
I predict Newt Gingrich will win Iowa and after that the field will narrow to Newt and Mitt. Of course, I want Mitt to win Iowa, but with the other candidates tanking I think the right-wing media is coalescing around Newt, and the people will follow.
This can work out very well for Mitt, because Newt’s intellect is unimpeachable. Romney and Newt need to have one-on-one substantive debates – the type Gingrich wants anyway – and this will finally offer Romney a chance to showcase his own intellect. When he runs circles around Newt, the way he did in the back-and-forth on mandates in a recent debate, everyone watching will finally see how intelligent Romney is. They will see that it’s not just “skills” and being “slick” but it’s sheer brilliance. Romney ONLY gets flustered when others are denying him a chance to talk. Gingrich won’t do that, and Romney will correspondingly shine.
I’m skeptical about Newt winning Iowa but agree about everything else. Iowa is a mystery to me. It seems like its natural Santorum territory but he’s practically moved there and is still at 1 percentiness. There’s definitely a surprise lurking in the weeds, im just not sure what or where. but I think Mitt has the best shot since no matter what 2 people he’s down to, he comes out on top:
Romney vs Perry = Romney on communication & economics
Romney vs Gingrich = Romney on clean record
Romney vs Cain = Romney on experience & clean record
The only threat I can see being credible against Romney on communication, squeaky clean record, economics and private and public experience is Huntsman and theres no evidence that he’s gonna make it down to the 2-man stretch.
Conservatives praise Gingrichs CNBC Debate performance
Posted by Parker V on November 10, 2011 under President | Be the First to Comment
Gingrich gave marvelously detailed answers, reflecting the deep study he has made on American public policy during his years in politics, and demonstrated that he has the best command of both facts and philosophy on stage.
Gingrich was on his game from the beginning when he let loose a ringing anti-Bernake, anti-food stamps, anti-Alinsky answer. … The narrative about his rise will continue.
Hillsdale Professor Burton Folsom, National Review:
The big winners in the debate tonight were probably Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. …
Newt Gingrich was cerebral and wide-ranging. When CNBC tried to trip him up, he fired back with specifics that delighted the crowd. His breadth of learning was refreshing and dominating.
Gingrich got off the best line of the night when he faulted the media for not asking the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators if they have a clue how the new economy works. … Gingrich wants to challenge President Obama to a series of Lincoln-Douglas–style debates that would last for three hours and get into great detail about everything that matters. I have no doubt Gingrich would win such a debate.
Professor William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection:
Newt was the star, combative in a good way and very knowledgeable.
Who won tonight? Newt Gingrich showed once again that his policy knowledge and ability to connect that knowledge to the here and now is unmatched.
Matt Margolis, Blogs for Victory:
[Newt's] performance in tonight’s debate was another impressive performance by a man who not only has a wealth of knowledge on all the issues, but he’s smart enough to not to be played by the media.
Kevin Hall, The Iowa Republican:
Newt Gingrich: Once again, the former House Speaker owned the stage. He did not completely dominate, but it is hard to argue that anyone other than Gingrich won the debate. He battled with the moderators again and might have come off as too angry at times. However, on style and substance, Newt delivered. Again.
…
Overall Winner: Newt Gingrich. This is getting redundant. He did not dominate, but Gingrich was the most in command of anyone on the stage.
Newt has hit his stride, and was consistently the most impressive and forceful person on the stage—and forceful without saying a negative word about any of the other candidates.
Monica Crowley, Fox News Contributor:
As usual, [Newt] was dynamite: brilliant, deliberative and right about everything. Now that we all realized that we’re less than a year from the presidential election, we’re trying to visualize the presidential debates. Which of the GOP candidates could thrust and parry with Obama most effectively? All of them would do a great job. Only Newt would truly make mincemeat out of him. That’s the main reason he’s rising in the polls. He’s a serious conservative intellectual who is fearless.
Alexander Marlow, Big Government:
But the winner of the debate was Newt. I mentioned last time that he’s my sleeper pick to challenge Romney, and he did a lot to improve his chances tonight.
Daniel
…what is increasingly clear is that the former House Speaker is the most learned candidate running for president. Drawing on his wealth of knowledge and years of experience in Congress, Gingrich adeptly understands the most trying issues of our time. His ability to answer complex questions, as he did Wednesday night, with specific and innovative solutions is emboldening his candidacy.
John McCormack, Weekly Standard:
As he has done in the other debates, Mitt Romney turned in a solid performance, but Newt Gingrich was the one who really seemed to impress.
A Tale of Two Black and White Photos
Posted by Parker V on October 30, 2011 under Elections, President | Be the First to Comment
Gawker has an interesting headline The Old Mitt Romney Photo That He Probably Wants Destroyed
Time’s Michael Scherer digs up this photo from the Romney media archives showing our man Mittens and his old Bain Capital buddies playing with money.
Look at them, hugging and eating and rubbing and sucking their corporate-raider money. At least Romney had enough sense not to stuff it in his collar like that one guy, instead choosing to simply grab on to the right end of a bill while smiling, devilishly. Oh, and then there’s some money falling out of his coat. Oops!
If this does not appear in an attack ad at some point in the next year, then various rival campaigns will have failed.
An old black and white photo
UPDATE: The first use of this image in media about Romney has been spotted in NY Mag:
SE Cupp and Jay Mohr on the 2012 GOP Candidates
Posted by Parker V on October 7, 2011 under Elections, President | Be the First to Comment
Actor and comedian Jay Mohr was on Imus in the Morning and talked about the 2012 presidential campaign and candidates, saying he likes Jon Huntsman “because he’s hot”.
Author S.E. Cupp was also on the show and commented on the 2012 presidential election now that Chris Christie and Sarah Palin have chosen not to run, saying it’s going to be weird for Conservatives to pretend that they actually like Mitt Romney.
Philip Klein’s false Romneycare claims echo Obama’s
Posted by Parker V on October 4, 2011 under President, Republican | 2 Comments to Read
Philip Klein, senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner, wrote a piece titled, Romney’s false health care claims echo Obama’s. Klein attacks a few sound bites Mitt Romney gave at the recent Fox/Google debate while trying to explain his 2006 MA health care bill. Unfortunately, Klein ignores the larger context of what Romney is saying, which Romney amply provides in his book, No Apology.
In his effort to make Romneycare and Obamacare seem alike, Klein doesn’t deny the differences between them. Moreover, he doesn’t even mention the differences. Romney didn’t cut Medicare/Medicaid, didn’t impose insurance price controls and didn’t do a host of other things Obama did in his 2,700 page bill. Romney’s bill is only 72 pages.
And as Marco Rubio pointed out in an interview for National Review during his 2010 campaign in which he obtained Romney’s endorsement, Romney’s plan didn’t raise taxes or add to the deficit, and is a state rather than federal plan.
“It’s a work in progress,” Rubio says, speaking of the Bay State program. “There are major distinctions between that and what Obama is trying to do in Washington. For one, it didn’t raise any taxes. Number two, it is not adding to our deficit. That is my biggest objection to Obamacare, although there are many others. My number-one objection to Obamacare is that we can’t afford it, even if it was the greatest idea in the world.”
“Florida and Massachusetts are very different places,” Rubio continues. “All I would say to you is that states were designed to be laboratories for creative thoughts and ideas. That’s what the Framers of our great republic intended. They wanted the states to be the places that came up with innovation and competition. And I’ll tell you what, if Massachusetts gets it wrong and Florida gets it right, people will move to Florida, and businesses will move to Florida, and vice versa. There are just major distinctions between what’s happening in Washington and what I hope states will do. Like I said, what I’m not in favor of is what Barack Obama has done, which is to raise taxes and add to the federal deficit in exchange of taking a step toward a single-payer system in America.”
Most importantly, Romney’s plan has slowed rising health care costs in MA, despite flawed studies claiming otherwise.
Klein cites a number of quotes from President Obama regarding his own health care plan, comparing them to selected statements from Romney, made during the debate. For our purposes, Obama’s statements are not relevant. Whether or not Obama is being truthful about his own plan has no bearing on the truth of Romney’s statements.
Rather than admitting that Romney’s 30 second debate answers are not intended for a hyper-technical audience the way his book is, Klein claims Romney is “consistently making a series of blatant lies.” That is a serious accusation, so let’s look at the first of Romney’s statements which Klein is referring to (from the official debate transcript):
ROMNEY: Let me tell you this about our system in Massachusetts: 92 percent of our people were insured before we put our plan in place. Nothing’s changed for them. The system is the same. They have private market-based insurance.
Admittedly, the second half of Mitt’s statement is not technically accurate unless taken in the context of the first sentence. Romney wasn’t saying their lives haven’t changed in any way at all, but was addressing the primary concern people have expressed to him, which is the mandate to own insurance. Mitt appears to be minimizing that particular concern by explaining that since most people in MA already had insurance, the new law was only telling them to do something they were already doing.
But Klein doesn’t see it that way:
Neither bill literally says that people have to drop their coverage, but both Obamacare … and Romneycare … effectively make people lose their current coverage. For one thing, both mandate that individuals purchase insurance, and once the government does that, it has to define what qualifies as “insurance.” Obamacare employs the phrase “minimum essential coverage,” where as in Romneycare, it’s called “minimum creditable coverage” (see Chapter 111M, section 1). In both cases, anybody who does not have a qualified insurance policy, therefore, has to obtain one that meets the government-imposed standards, or pay a fine.
The first fact to defeat Klein’s argument is that the coverage mandates are on insurance companies, not on policy holders. So his claim that people lost their coverage and had to switch is untrue.
The second problem with Klein’s argument is that he complains about “minimum essential coverage,” however states routinely “define what qualifies as ‘insurance.’” States regulate insurance just like they regulate other companies. Texas, for example, has mandated benefits for insurance coverage, which it applied universally as recently as 2004, at which point the state implemented “consumer choice plans” which do not contain all of the state mandated benefits but must be individually approved by the state. Regulations like “minimum essential coverage” were nothing new for MA. As Romney accurately said, “the system is the same.” Regulatory changes are inherent in that system.
Perhaps Klein is thinking of how the MA legislature expanded regulations further by mandating that “the division shall include within its covered services for adults all federally optional services that were included in its state plan or demonstration program in effect on January 1, 2002.” Romney vetoed this in the bill but the legislature overrode the veto. In his book, Romney explains, “I would reinstitute my vetoes of the legislature’s additions. Among these, one of the most significant is my conviction that the state should not mandate which benefits must be included in health insurance policies: Consumers should be free to choose which benefits they want” (PB, p. 194).
It’s hard to argue that someone supported something they vetoed. But Klein tries anyway, and in the process tips his hand about his lack of objectivity:
In the past, Romney’s tried to tout the fact that he vetoed some of the benefit mandates but was overridden by the legislature. That’s a disingenuous argument, because he spent years crafting the bill, signed it with a smiling Ted Kennedy at his side, touted it publicly, and issued symbolic vetoes knowing that they would be overridden, just to give him some conservative cover. This argument would be the equivalent of a Republican Senator having worked with Democrats for a year to pass Obamacare, voting it out of committee, giving it the 60 vote threshold it needed to break a filibuster, and then voting against final passage and trying to use that final meaningless vote to make a case to primary voters.
Contrary to Klein’s claims, the legislature in MA continued making changes to the bill throughout the entire process. His U.S. Senate analogy fails because Romney always opposed the provisions he vetoed and never did anything comparable to voting them out of a Senate committee. It would be more accurate to say the Senate sent the provisions in the first place knowing Governor Romney would not be able to stop them from overriding his vetoes (although in the case of two of the vetoes, the legislature was not able to garner enough votes to override).
Klein continues his analysis:
“Furthermore, both plans create incentives for businesses to drop employer-based private insurance and dump workers on the government exchanges. We’ve seen rumblings of this as Obamacare moves closer to implementation, and last year the Boston Globe reported the following news: ‘The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.’
“So, Romney’s claim in last night’s debate is just as dishonest as when Obama made the same claim to the American people two years ago.”
Romney never denied that our country is in an economic crisis. Small businesses are struggling and cutting wages and benefits. But the facts show that Romney’s health care plan has lowered the rate of cost increases.
And most importantly, Klein again neglects to crack open Romney’s book:
“When the reform was passed … we required everyone who received subsidized insurance to pay a fair share of their premiums–the new liberal administration decided that some people should get their insurance for nothing. Imagine the additional cost to the state of such a decision.” Romney further noted, “elections have consequences.” (PB, p. 194)
Now let’s look at Klein’s next example in the alleged “series of blatant lies”:
“ROMNEY: We had 8 percent of our people that weren’t insured. And so what we did is we said let’s find a way to get them insurance, again, market-based private insurance. We didn’t come up with some new government insurance plan.”
Indeed, the Massachusetts Connector is not an insurance plan. It just helps people find private insurance companies, and when necessary diverts medicaid funds for that purpose. Ronald Reagan proposed a plan to do something similar, with Medicare:
“The plan expands opportunities for Medicare beneficiaries to use their benefits to enroll in private health plans as an alternative to traditional Medicare coverage”
– Ronald Wilson Reagan, February 28, 1983, transmitting to Congress his Health Insurance Reform program
Now that we’ve heard from Reagan, let’s hear from Klein:
“It’s not clear if by “new government insurance plan,” Romney meant a “public option,” but either way, that’s moot, because the idea wasn’t a part of the final version of the national health care bill that Obama signed, either. Yet what both plans do have in common is a government-run health care exchange, in which individuals use government subsidies to purchase health insurance that meets requirements set by government-appointed officials.”
As we have already discussed, every state government sets requirements for private health insurance. If Klein is claiming that these constitute a “new government insurance plan,” he would have to apply that to the other states as well. Or perhaps he is claiming that medicaid is the “new government insurance plan,” but Romney didn’t create medicaid. It’s been around for a long time.
Now for the last of the alleged “blatant lies” cited by Klein:
“ROMNEY: Our plan in Massachusetts has some good parts, some bad parts, some things I’d change, some things I like about it. It’s different than Obamacare.”
Klein’s claim:
“Romney says there are some ‘bad parts,’ but won’t specify what they are.”
No. Klein just made that up. Klein is making the same mistake as our friends at RedState. And clearly Klein did not feel the need to do any real research before writing his attack. In his book, No Apology (PB), Romney explains some aspects which he once supported but no longer does, and has consistently opposed many aspects which were foisted upon the health care plan against his desires.
If Klein would actually learn more about Romney, he might like him.