Looks Like The Bloom May Be Off The Gingrich Rose...

[Lord Jim]

His pariah-zation in the 90's is yet another example of how the MSM, in conjunction with the Dem Party can turn pretty much anyone into personna non grata.

Dave, please refresh my memory...

Just how many members of the MSM and the Democratic Party were there in the GOP House Caucus at that time?

Consider that Mr. Newt is now being characterized as "whining" about negative campaigning. With multiple candidates announcing that they intend to spend an aggregate tens of millions of dollars in the next couple weeks for the sole purpose of tearing him down, when would it be appropriate to "whine"?

Well, firstly, it strikes me as amusing since it was Gingrich himself who worked overtime to raise negative campaigning to a wholesale, assembly line level. This is from the '96 memo he sent to GOP candidates that I mentioned earlier:

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power
anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
betray
bizarre
bosses
bureaucracy
cheat
coercion
"compassion" is not enough
collapse(ing)
consequences
corrupt
corruption
criminal rights
crisis
cynicism
decay
deeper
destroy
destructive
devour
disgrace
endanger
excuses
failure (fail)
greed
hypocrisy
ideological
impose
incompetent
insecure
insensitive
intolerant
liberal
lie
limit(s)
machine
mandate(s)
obsolete
pathetic
patronage
permissive attitude
pessimistic
punish (poor ...)
radical
red tape
self-serving
selfish
sensationalists
shallow
shame
sick
spend(ing)
stagnation
status quo
steal
taxes
they/them
threaten
traitors
unionized
urgent (cy)
waste
welfare

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... le4443.htm

For the guy who wrote that to be bitching about negative ads aimed at him strikes me as, well, hilarious.....

This ain't exactly Newt's first rodeo; he knows damn well what the dynamics of the race in Iowa are as we go into the final stretch...

Romney is going at him so he doesn't have momentum going into New Hampshire; the others are all attacking him rather than Romney because they want to be the ones to emerge from Iowa as the Romney alternative, rather than Gingrich.

The fact is that if the situation were reversed between him and any of the candidates currently going after him, he would be putting on a negative campaign that would have made Joe McCarthy blush....

The only reason he isn't running a relentlessly negative campaign against his GOP opponents, is because logistically he can't; he simply doesn't have the resources to go on the attack against four or five people simultaneously. So he's making a cynical virtue of necessity, by running feel good commercials and condemning negative campaigning.

And I think it's delicious that blind LW partisans (like those who pose here) HATE him.

They may hate him Dave, but every single Liberal I know, to a man or woman would be absolutely delighted to see him as the Republican nominee.

I know there are some Newt fans, who like to make a comparison between the way the Dems are licking their chops at the prospect of a Gingrich nomination, and the way that many Dems were elated about running against Mr. Reagan in 1980...

There's one HUGE difference....

In Mr. Reagan's case, his persona was such that the more the public got to know him the better they liked him. The more people saw the charming, at ease, avuncular, self-effacing personality that Mr. Reagan projected, the more the "mad bomber" caricature that had been created by the media was rejected. No politician ever came off better in the spotlight than Ronald Reagan.

Gingrich's situation is exactly the opposite. Every bit of available polling data suggests that the more people learn about Gingrich, the more he is the focal point of attention, the worse he is perceived....

You may wish this wasn't so, but there is a substantial body of evidence to support this view. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd be happy to see it.

[Guinevere]

Maureen Dowd nailed it (and him) today:

Just when you thought Newt couldn’t get any more grandiose, he leaps in to save freedom of religion in the most religiously free place on earth.

On his Web site Tuesday, he urgently vowed to establish a White House commission “On Day One” of his presidency (heaven forefend) “to examine and document threats or impediments to religious freedom in the United States.”

Watching his numbers falling in Iowa, he doubled down on his unconstitutional assault on “activist judges,” saying he would investigate “the extent to which courts throughout the U.S. are undermining the First Amendment and misconstruing the historical basis for religious freedom in America.”

His latest manifesto, which should have been addressed “Dear Iowa Fundamentalist Caucus-goers,” states: “As litigants demand that courts and judges intervene to create new ‘rights’ out of whole cloth, such litigants and their supporters seek to limit the freedom of others to express their deeply held religious commitments to, for example, the value of every human life and to marriage as between one man and one woman.”

As opposed to one man and three women? Nobody is forcing Christians to marry anyone they don’t want to marry; they’re preventing gays from marrying people they want to marry.

Gingrich doesn’t seem concerned about the religious freedom of Muslims. He compared the Muslims trying to put up a mosque near ground zero to Nazis putting up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum.

President Newt just wants the right to limit other peoples’ rights in the name of religion.

Complete column

[Lord Jim]

This is part of a piece with two other things Gingrich has said recently....

The bit about the Palestinians, being a made up people, and the threat to start arresting judges who don't rule in a way he approves of...

What do these three seemingly different things all have in common?

They are all cynically designed specifically to appeal to the evangelical Christian segment of GOP Iowa Caucus goers. (In Iowa, this can represent as much as a third of the vote)

The Evangelicals are very anti-Palestinian (after all, we can't have the Second Coming until Solomon's Temple is re-built, and that can't happen till the Dome of The rock is knocked down)

They are furious with their own state Supreme Court for green-lighting gay marriage, (this also explains Perry's out of the blue commercial about gays serving openly in the military)

And they see Christianity as being under attack generally....

[Scooter]

You can add telling gay people to vote for Obama to that list, because it serves the same purpose.

And, like the others, it will come back to bite him on the ass if he ever does get the nomination. George W. Bush got something like a million gay votes in 2000, based largely on promises he never intended to keep, and those votes were decisive in his victory. There are easily that many again at play in this election after Obama promised much and delivered hardly at all, and in a race that is too close to call based on current polling, openly throwing away a million votes before you get out of the gate isn't the smartest move he could have made, even if he believes it will help him win in Iowa.

[Liberty1]

Dave, please refresh my memory...

Just how many members of the MSM and the Democratic Party were there in the GOP House Caucus at that time?

Come on LJ, you've got to have a better memory than that. You don't remeber things like the magazine covers from 94, before he ever did a thing as speaker.





And the other one I can find immeadiately after that years elections, "The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas".


And this was just a warmup. Unless you think media has no influence on public opinion and therefore political outcome.

[dales]

Adddendumb:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... uldnt-like

NewtGingrich.com Is Sending Surfers To Sites And Stories He Wouldn't Like


12:30 pm

December 21, 2011


by Mark Memmott


Looking for Newt Gingrich? Don't type "newtgingrich.com." You might get directed to Freddie Mac, Tiffany's or other sites that bring to mind less flattering stories about the Republican presidential candidate.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's official campaign website — at newt.org — is working fine.

But if anyone types "newtgingrich.com" and hits enter right now, they're not going to see things that the former House speaker would find very funny.

In the last few minutes when we've done that we've been directed to:

— "Gingrich presidential campaign implodes," a Washington Post story from June.

— The 2008 video Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi - We can solve it.

— An Atlantic Wire report from earlier this month headlined "Gingrich's Campaign Still Looks an Awful Lot Like a Book Tour."

— A "travel guide to Greece," which plays off Gingrich's summer vacation in the Greek Isles.

— Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage agency that Gingrich did some consulting for — and has been catching grief about from his opponents.

There's talk on Twitter that you might also get directed to Tiffany's website, but that hasn't happened to us yet. Stories earlier this year about the big credit account he and his wife have at the jeweler raised eyebrows.

A WhoIs search for the owner of the domain name newtgingrich.com only tells us it was registered by "Domains by Proxy, Inc." through GoDaddy.com. We'll watch for news about who's behind all this.

At least those folks aren't pointing anyone to a porn site, as happened with "whitehouse.com" for a while.

<snip>

[dgs49]

There are a lot of reasons to vote for Gingrich and a lot of reasons to step back and look closely at things he has said and done.

But what is going on now is a lynching. Basically the entire quiver of arrows that are flying his way these days are quotes and actions taken out of context, repetitions of old accusations that were later proven false or dropped, or soundbites of people being snippy about him for something he did. And by the way, criticism by Maureen Dowd is a good way to build support for someone on the Republican side. Think of it as like being castigated on the Rush Limbaugh show for a Massachusetts Democrat.

Exhibit A would be the silly link posted by Scooter above. An individual gay man asked Gingrich, basically, if he would be taking any initiatives that would be favorable to gay interests. He will not, and no other Republican will either. Gingrich told THAT GUY that if that's what he's looking for, he probably should support Barry. And this is reported as, "telling gay people to vote for Obama." Right. NO REPUBLICAN will be pushing initiatives that promote the interests of any ethnic or racial group, either gender, any religion, or self-identified "gays." And those who are looking for that sort of initiative out of the White House damn well better look someplace else. Newt's answer was entirely appropriate.

Newt would not be the first former pariah to win the Presidency. Few national figures were ever as disliked as Nixon was after he lost the California election in 1962, and yet if memory serves, he squeaked by in a couple of presidential elections a few years later, didn't he? And Barry is not the most lovable character in politics today, is he? Arrogant, dismissive, pedantic. The number of Americans who say they "like" him is shrinking faster than the polar icecaps.

I will support whomever enters the general election with an "R" in front of his name, but this piling on is bullshit, and I frankly don't see anyone else in the Republican race who (a) has a chance of winning, and (b) excites anyone outside their own little gang. Do you?

Take away Mormon support and money and Mitt's poll numbers would be in the mid-teens.

[Scooter]

So what you are saying is that he is so lacking in imagination, that the only way he could manage to interpret "engage gay Americans" was how he planned to pander to them? Do you think gay Americans don't care about having a rational tax system, or a coherent foreign policy, or how to stimulate economic growth when they have lost or are in danger of losing their jobs? He could have taken 20 seconds to say, "here are 1, 2, 3 things that I think matter to gay Americans as much as anyone else, and this is what I intend to do about them". Instead, he summarily wrote off 15 million or so people as if they were just so much garbage. Well that's fine, I'm sure the feeling is mutual now if it wasn't before.

[Lord Jim]

Come on LJ, you've got to have a better memory than that. You don't remeber things like the magazine covers from 94, before he ever did a thing as speaker.

Lib, it's of course true that the LMSM despised Gingrich from the get go, but that isn't what led the Republican Caucus drive him out as him as Speaker....

And by the way, criticism by Maureen Dowd is a good way to build support for someone on the Republican side.

Come on Dave, you know verywell that the criticism of Gingrich isn't just coming from snarky Liberal pundits like Dowd, nor is it coming just from the camps of his rivals for the nomination....

It's coming from Republicans across a very broad spectrum....

BTW, I've been meaning to respond to your assertion about Coulter opposing Gingrich because she doesn't think he's Conservative enough...I know that's part of the reason..(that's one of the lovely things about Gingrich....he provides so many reasons for people to be opposed to him)

But that can't be the only reason; surely she didn't compare him to Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell on the basis that she believes theyweren't Conservative enough....

Few national figures were ever as disliked as Nixon was after he lost the California election in 1962,

I brought up this comparison earlier and pointed out that if Gingrich hoped to have any chance in hell of winning the general election, than the Nixon '68 election model was the one he had to hope for....

However, there are a couple of major differences between Mr. Nixon and Gingrich....

First of all as we are all now painfully aware, Nixon had a very unfortunate proclivity for saying crazy, outrageous and offensive things in private....

Gingrich on the other hand, has a very unfortunate proclivity for saying crazy, outrageous and offensive things in public....

Big difference....

When Richard Nixon unveiled the "New Nixon" persona in '68 (a "kinder gentler Nixon" more thoughtful, no longer the bomb throwing hatchet man) he had the discipline to keep the "Old Nixon" in check, and out of public view. (in fact Nixon was possibly the most disciplined American public figure of modern times)

Gingrich has clearly tried to mimic this strategy, but he is so lacking in discipline, the "Old Gingrich" keeps popping out and tripping him up....

I frankly don't see anyone else in the Republican race who (a) has a chance of winning, and (b) excites anyone outside their own little gang. Do you?

Well, yeah, actually I do...

How about the guy who has demonstrated in all the polling data both nationally and state by state for at least the past 10 months that he can clearly draw the support needed to defeat Obama?

He could have taken 20 seconds to say, "here are 1, 2, 3 things that I think matter to gay Americans as much as anyone else, and this is what I intend to do about them".

That is exactly the way Dutch handled those sorts of situations....

Whenever he was asked, "what are you going to do for XYZ group?" He would always turn it around, and talk about what he was going to for all Americans, that would benefit everyone, including XYZ group...

It's what any skilled politician ought to know to do.

[Scooter]

OMG, I've begun emulating Ronald Reagan????

Someone shoot me now.

[Lord Jim]

Dave my conclusion that Mitt Romney can win the election is based on the evidence provided by an enormous amount of independent scientific polling data, from numerous sources, accumulated over a fairly long time line...

Your conclusion that Newt Gingrich is the one most likely to beat Obama is based on...

what, exactly?

You've asserted it several times, but I really can't figure out what your basis for believing this is...

[Crackpot]

Personally I think this looks like a John Kerry year for Republicans

[Scooter]

Code: Select all

Poll                     Date      Sample Obama Gingrich   Spread

RCP Average           12/5-12/19   --      50.3     41.3 Obama +9.0

Rasmussen Reports     12/18-12/19 1000 LV    48       37 Obama +11
CNN/Opinion Research  12/16-12/18  928 RV    56       40 Obama +16
PPP (D)               12/16-12/18  700 RV    49       44 Obama +5
ABC News/Wash Post    12/15-12/18      RV    51       43 Obama +8
USA Today/Gallup      12/15-12/18  898 RV    50       48 Obama +2
Rasmussen Reports     12/12-12/13 1000 LV    49       39 Obama +10
Reuters/Ipsos         12/8-12/12   900 RV    51       38 Obama +13
Associated Press/GfK  12/8-12/12  1000 A     51       42 Obama +9
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl12/7-12/11       RV    51       40 Obama +11
USA Today/Gallup      12/6-12/7    883 RV    50       44 Obama +6
Rasmussen Reports     12/6-12/7   1000 LV    45       40 Obama +5 
FOX News              12/5-12/7    911 RV    46       40 Obama +6
Rasmussen Reports     11/28-11/29 1000 LV    43       45 Gingrich +2
Rasmussen Reports     11/19-11/20 1000 LV    46       40 Obama +6
Quinnipiac            11/14-11/20 2552 RV    49       40 Obama +9
FOX News              11/13-11/15  914 RV    46       41 Obama +5
CNN/Opinion Research  11/11-11/13  925 RV    53       45 Obama +8
Pew Research          11/9-11/14  1576 RV    54       42 Obama +12
PPP (D)               11/10-11/13  800 RV    49       43 Obama +6
Rasmussen Reports     11/11-11/12 1000 LV    50       38 Obama +12
McClatchy/Marist      11/8-11/10   872 RV    47       45 Obama +2
Rasmussen Reports     11/3-11/4   1000 LV    44       38 Obama +6
Quinnipiac            10/25-10/31 2294 RV    52       37 Obama +15
Rasmussen Reports     10/12-10/13 1000 LV    49       34 Obama +15
PPP (D)               10/7-10/10   700 RV    50       39 Obama +11
PPP (D)               9/8-9/11     665 RV    53       41 Obama +12
Rasmussen Reports     6/24-6/25   1000 LV    48       30 Obama +18
PPP (D)               6/9-6/12     520 RV    52       39 Obama +13
FOX News              6/5-6/7      912 RV    53       34 Obama +19
Reuters/Ipsos         6/3-6/6     1132 A     55       34 Obama +21
ABC News/Wash Post    6/2-6/5          RV    50       44 Obama +6
PPP (D)               5/23-5/25    600 RV    51       37 Obama +14
Reuters/Ipsos         5/5-5/9      600 A     53       35 Obama +18
PPP (D)               5/5-5/8      814 RV    52       38 Obama +14
CNN/Opinion Research  4/29-5/1     964 RV    57       40 Obama +17
ABC News/Wash Post    4/14-4/17   1001 A     54       39 Obama +15
PPP (D)               4/7-4/10     532 RV    52       38 Obama +14
Rasmussen Reports     3/18-3/19   1000 LV    49       37 Obama +12
PPP (D)               3/10-3/13    642 RV    50       39 Obama +11
PPP (D)               2/11-2/14    600 RV    49       40 Obama +9
FOX News              2/7-2/9      911 RV    55       35 Obama +20
Rasmussen Reports     1/15-1/16   1000 LV    47       39 Obama +8
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl1/13-1/17   1000 A     54       35 Obama +19
PPP (D)               1/14-1/16    632 RV    51       39 Obama +12
PPP (D)               11/19-11/21  707 RV    49       43 Obama +6
CNN/Opinion Research  10/27-10/30  921 RV    49       47 Obama +2
PPP (D)               9/10-9/13    590 RV    47       43 Obama +4
PPP (D)               8/6-8/9      606 RV    49       42 Obama +7
PPP (D)               7/9-7/12     667 RV    45       46 Gingrich +1
PPP (D)               6/4-6/7      650 RV    47       39 Obama +8
PPP (D)               5/7-5/9      707 RV    49       42 Obama +7
PPP (D)               4/9-4/11     622 RV    45       45 Tie
CNN/Opinion Research  4/9-4/11     907 RV    55       43 Obama +12
FOX News              1/12-1/13    900 RV    53       29 Obama +24
PPP (D)               8/14-8/17    909 RV    49       41 Obama +8
PPP (D)               7/15-7/16    577 RV    50       42 Obama +8
PPP (D)               6/12-6/16    638 RV    49       41 Obama +8
PPP (D)               5/14-5/18   1000 RV    53       36 Obama +17
PPP (D)               4/17-4/19    686 RV    52       39 Obama +13

Oh yeah, with polling numbers like those, I'm sure Obama is quaking in his boots at the prospect of a Gingrich candidacy. I'm surprised he hasn't already conceded the election.

[dgs49]

LJ, today's polling data are totally meaningless. To me, the only interesting tidbit is that Barry currently loses to a "generic" Republican.

My belief is that any Republican can win, except one who is (a) hated, or who is (b) boring.

There is a cure for being hated. The candidate will get thousands of opportunities to explain and talk and be seen in favorable circumstances. There is no cure for being boring. Ask Al Gore about that.

Newt may not win, and if the election were held today he would lose in a landslide.

But the Republicans have a giant arsenal of issues and facts with which they will be able to beat Barry bloody, and that arsenal remains in the armory, gathering dust. He is a failure, in every sense of the word. He is a catastrophe. He has done NOTHING to create "real" (i.e., non-government teat-sucking) jobs, and many, many things to destroy them. He has bowed and scraped at the feet of our sworn enemies, and insulted and angered our friends. He has played golf while the nation crumbled. He has REFUSED to even address the Government's fiscal crisis; on the contrary, he proposes new ways to worsen it almost daily.

I do not see Mitt Romney as having the personality to effectively take this campaign to the people. He has a history of not wanting to be offensive, even when being offensive is absolutely called for. Even today, he refuses to take the battle to Newt in Iowa, instead insisting that it be carried out by paid minions - whose ads he haughtily disclaims. He is a PUSSY.

Newt is the only Republican candidate with the intelligence and personality to carry out this campaign. He can not only articulate the Conservative vision for the economy and the Government, but he can explain why Barry has been such a disaster, in terms that everyone will understand.

I am honestly befuddled at the virtual blitzkrieg against Newt by people who should have the best interests of the Republican Party at heart. George Will is writing defamatory and history-bending nonsense. Ann Coulter has become detached from her moorings. People who praised Newt even in recent years are stabbing him in the back mercilessly. There is something going on that is not public. Even Limbaugh is mystified by it.

It is a long, long, long time until November 6th. This is a Conservative-leaning country, and when both parties have laid out their vision for the future, the electorate will soundly reject four more years of THIS - unless the Republicans fail to generate any hope that they can change things.

Newt might lose in November. Mitt WILL lose in November. Take your pick.

[Liberty1]

He is a failure, in every sense of the word. He is a catastrophe. He has done NOTHING to create "real" (i.e., non-government teat-sucking) jobs, and many, many things to destroy them. He has bowed and scraped at the feet of our sworn enemies, and insulted and angered our friends. He has played golf while the nation crumbled. He has REFUSED to even address the Government's fiscal crisis; on the contrary, he proposes new ways to worsen it almost daily.

You've got it all wrong DGs, just ask him