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Old 11-16-2011, 03:55 PM   #188
Lamplighter
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Bottom lands of the Missoula floods
Posts: 6,402
Suddenly, Cain is crashing and Gingrich has climbed to the top tier of GOP candidates.
It must be time to review the political history of a man who is almost a phenomenon.
The talking heads are sure Newt will not be the GOP nominee:

John Nichols on May 12, 2011 - 7:53am ET

Five Reasons Why Republicans Are Never Ever Going to Nominate Newt Gingrich
Quote:
So Newt Gingrich has finally gotten around to mounting the race
for the Oval Office he has coveted for the better part of two decades.
<snip>
On message. According to plan. Yes, that's Newt Gingrich. Cool.
Let’s consider the top-five reasons:

1. GINGRICH REACHED HIS SELL-BY DATE IN 1996:
Born during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third term,
Gingrich would if elected next year assume the presidency on the cusp of his 70th birthday.
And unlike the conservative movement's favorite septuagenarian president, Ronald Reagan,
Gingrich has been a political player for his entire adult life.
Barack Obama was two years old when Gingrich went to work on his first national campaign.

There are natural trajectories for politicians. Gingrich's had him running for president in 1996,
as the dynamic conservative challenger to President Bill Clinton.
That would have been a great race between a pair of similar southerners
-- smart, ambitious rascals with plenty of skeletons in their closets
but also with real differences regarding the direction of the nation
-- but Gingrich deferred to the party bosses (and their corporate overseers)
who preferred the predictability of Bob Dole.

Gingrich blinked. He missed his chance.
The same thing happened to Mario Cuomo, who should have run in 1992.
But at least Cuomo didn’t try to run in 2008.

2. GINGRICH IS A QUITTER:
Stop making fun of Sarah Palin. Sure, she quit in the middle
of her term as governor of Alaska, which was kind of pathetic.
But Gingrich quit as Speaker of the House on the eve of the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Talk about “seduced and abandoned.”
He set his fellow Republicans up for a fool’s mission, then he exited stage right.
But the real reason was that his fellow Republicans had lost faith with him as a leader.
That was a smart choice, rooted in actual experience and sincere concern
about trusting the future of their party to a Gingrich.
Why would Republicans abandon it now.

3. GINGRICH GOT HISTORY A “ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICAN”:
He could have signed on with the “Draft Ronald Reagan” campaign of that year.
That's what a visionary conservative would have done.
He could have worked for Richard Nixon.
That's what a cautious Republican careerist would have done.

But no! Gingrich served as the southern regional coordinator for the campaign of
New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the most liberal Republican in the field

4. GINGRICH KEEPS GOING GREEN ON US:
Environmentalist? Appealing to "liberal Democrats"?
That was the old Newt Gingrich. He's a conservative now.

Well, er, um, he did appear three years ago with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
in an ad for Al Gore's Repower American Campaign, an ad that saw Gingrich declare that,
while he and the liberal Democrat did not agree on many issues,
"we do agree our country must take action to address climate change."

5. GINGRICH CAME UP WITH THE LAMEST EXCUSE EVER FOR CHEATING ON HIS SEVERAL WIVES:
Quote:
"There's no question at times in my life,
partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country,
that I worked too hard and things happened in my life
that were not appropriate.
You see, it was patriotism -- the love of the country, not the love of the ladies -- that led him to stray.
And besides all that:

This past week Newt Gingrich climbed nearer the top of GOP presidential polls,
but many pundits insist that the former House speaker has
too many skeletons in his closet to bag the nomination.


The Week
November 16, 2011

Quote:
1. He has too many skeletons in his closet
2. Gingrich doesn't have enough cash to compete
3. Newt would never beat Obama
4. Gingrich simply isn't likable
5. He's too moderate for today's GOP
6. The non-Romneys always fade
While most of these are debatable, # 4 is the over-riding issue
Quote:
"Voters came to know him 20 years ago and they hated him."
And today, "the more people get to know him, the less they like him."
It's obvious why, Newt is mean. says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.
He spends much of the debates scolding the moderators.
Really, "his emotional center of gravity is contemptuous disdain."
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