Why Gingrich is Bad (and Romney is Awesome): A Politico Megathread Spectacular

[Politico]

In a two-way race, you win 55% of the male vote for a majority (assuming female vote at 46%), but you might be able to get by with 53%-54% of the male vote depending on the exact support of third party candidates. That's how.

Theoretically, yes. In practice, Bush managed 55% of the male vote in 2004, and still needed 48% of the female vote to barely win (60,000 vote swing in Ohio and Kerry wins the election). In fact, Bush is the only person in recent history to win the presidency without winning the female vote (and nobody needs a reminder on how close both elections were).

[Politico]

Females also represented 54% of the electorate in 2004. That changes the numbers from what you asked.

We have to consider that all of the polls have a margin of error. The last few election cycles it has been anywhere between 52-54%, so I picked 53% in the original post as it is the average/median.

In any case, how does a candidate with a history of behaving like John Edwards win over 46% of females even? I see those numbers being below 45% but above 40%. I do not see how he gets his numbers up to 46%, let alone 47%, so I do not see how he beats Obama.

[Politico]

In a conference call today, former White House chief of staff John Sununu and ex-senator Jim Talent rapped the former House speaker as "anti-conservative" and "unreliable" as they defended the credentials of their guy, Romney.

"The speaker is running as a reliable and trusted conservative leader, and what we're here to say, with reluctance ... he's not a reliable and trusted conservative leader because he's not a reliable or trustworthy leader," said Talent, a Missouri senator from 2002 to 2007 and former House member.

On the call and in an e-mail, Romney's team hit on Gingrich's comments in the spring calling House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's Medicare plan "right-wing social engineering."

The comment was widely criticized by conservatives as undermining Ryan and nearly derailed Gingrich's campaign just as it began. Gingrich apologized.

Sununu, chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush and an influential voice in New Hampshire politics, says the Gingrich remark was "self-serving."

"For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizing, to come out and throw a clever phrase that had no other purpose than to try and make himself a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership, to undercut Paul Ryan is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening," Sununu said.

Source: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/12/mitt-romney-newt-gingrich-attacks-john-sununu/1?csp=34news

[Politico]

This thread is for a discussion about the values of the GOP field since the GOP has made values a central part of its plank in recent decades. Feel free to bring up any values subject with regards to the current field. I think it would make sense to start off with marriage and faithfulness since the type of relationship one has with their significant other gives you a pretty good sense of what the candidate is like privately (or at least shows you that somebody can stand the SOB):

Ron Paul - married to the same person for 55 years

Mitt Romney - married to the same person for 42 years

Rick Perry - married to the same person for 40 years

Michele Bachmann - married to the same person for 35 years

Rick Santorum - married to the same person for 32 years

Jon Huntsman - married to the same person for 28 years

Newt Gingrich - married to a third wife who is younger than his daughters

[Politico]

I can't being to tell you what the jmfcsts think of John Sununu's advice...suffice it to say, this is a HUGE boost for Newt

What about Gingrich's opposition to Ryan? What is wrong with Ryan's plan? Gingrich just wants all of the attention/glory, and cannot stand the idea of there being a brilliant Congressman who came into the House after Gingrich left.

[Politico]

Feel free to bring up any values subject with regards to the current field.

Okay.  Here's the subject of cruelty to animals:


Ron Paul - no known record of animal cruelty

Newt Gingrich - no known record of animal cruelty

Rick Perry - no known record of animal cruelty

Michele Bachmann - no known record of animal cruelty

Rick Santorum - no known record of animal cruelty

Jon Huntsman - no known record of animal cruelty

Mitt Romney - strapped his family dog to a roof rack and drove from Boston to Ontario, pausing to hose the dog down after it crapped itself from the distress

Funny, my dog loves to feel wind blowing into her face as I drive. And a relative of my southern belle still drives his mutts around in the flatbed of his truck (only enough room in the passenger seat for one of them). Can't find a man who loves dogs more than him and I. I did not know all of that constituted animal cruelty these days.

[Politico]

Your misunderstanding of the events aside, that line of attack on Romney is as accurate and politically relevant as yours on Gingrich.

I have not attacked Gingrich. I have pointed out a basic fact: He is the only one in the race without a history of stability in marriage. Marriage is clearly a values issue among GOP faithful.

Anyway, let's get back to the purpose of this thread: Discussion of the values of the GOP field...

[Politico]

attacking Newt Gingrich, a man who shut down the federal government ...

Yeah, that proved to be a real winner in 1996 when Clinton won re-election.

[Politico]

I'm still having trouble believing Mitt is dumb enough to have Sununu craw out from under his rock.

the fear of a repeat of the Bush41/Sununu administration is EXACTLY why the jmfcsts are against Romney...so why roll out Sununu?!

it's as if Mitt doesn't even understand why he never had a path to the nomination to being with...and he's just compounding his problem with this error

the guy is tone deaf

Other than raising taxes, something Romney will never do, Bush 41 wasn't so bad. It certainly beats Bush 43, not to mention eight years of Obama.

[Politico]

I'm still having trouble believing Mitt is dumb enough to have Sununu craw out from under his rock.

the fear of a repeat of the Bush41/Sununu administration is EXACTLY why the jmfcsts are against Romney...so why roll out Sununu?!

it's as if Mitt doesn't even understand why he never had a path to the nomination to being with...and he's just compounding his problem with this error

the guy is tone deaf

Other than raising taxes, something Romney will never do, Bush 41 wasn't so bad. It certainly beats Bush 43, not to mention eight years of Obama.

yeah, Souter has been the pride and joy of the jmfcsts

What did you expect after the Bork fiasco? Souter was a necessary compromise. Kennedy would not have had it any other way in 1990. While the timing of his retirement is unforgivable, along with some of his votes, we cannot blame Bush 41 and Sununu for unforeseeable events...

[Politico]

Excerpts with the bold for personal emphasis (I was not aware of these facts about Gingrich)

Let me start with something important. I have two goals for 2012:

I want to prevent the European debt crisis from consuming America next.

I want to elect a president who will defend the ideas of constitutional conservatism and limited government.

I believe Romney’s candidacy is well-established. He’s a moderate, northeastern, don’t-rock-the-boat Republican, and I think everyone in the party clearly understands that.

But what worries me is that the voters are being sold a bill of goods in Gingrich.

Gingrich began his career as a Rockefeller Republican from the liberal wing of the party. And though he has often spoken and occasionally acted like he left that wing, it is clear from his flip-flops and multiple “apologies” that his heart is still there.

His record features “highlights” such as global warming commercials with Nancy Pelosi, support for cap-and-trade, funding Planned Parenthood, and, recently, announcing that life does not begin at conception.

Not only that, but Gingrich took money as a Freddie Mac lobbyist — one of the well-known government-backed agencies that served as a root cause of the financial meltdown of 2008.

While one candidate in the race, my father, Rep. Ron Paul, was publicly warning about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the crisis they were helping to create, Gingrich was earning millions to not only endorse but also promote the status quo.

One group of Gingrich’s also took in nearly $40 million promoting big-government ideas, such as the individual mandate.

His lobbying and promotion of the housing crisis and the health care mandate have helped to make him a wealthy man, but they have also put him outside the conservative mainstream on most issues.

While in Washington, Gingrich also refused to stand up on right-to-work laws and Second Amendment battles. He supported the Brady Bill and the Lautenberg rifle ban. He voted to create the U.S. Department of Education.

Gingrich will tell how he helped balance the budget and voted for President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts. So did many Democrats. Those two acts do not excuse the long and exhaustive list of things where Gingrich or other big-government politicians have gone against the principles of the conservative movement both in and out of Congress.

My concerns aren’t limited to the distant past.

In the race that helped launch tea party electoral activism in 2009, Gingrich earned the ire of conservatives nationwide for his endorsement of the liberal establishment Republican in a New York congressional race, just as the conservative, Doug Hoffman, was set to win. Gingrich returned to his Rockefeller liberal roots to support the candidate who favored abortion, and who was anti-right-to-work, anti-gun, and anti-family values.

Once Gingrich’s endorsed liberal Republican candidate realized she had no chance of winning, she chose to endorse the Democrat in the race instead of the conservative, Hoffman.

So much for Gingrich’s desire to put political party over principle. In the end, both lost.

This list could go on. So I will conclude by saying two things: Gingrich is not from the tea party. He is not even a conservative.

He is part of the Washington establishment I was sent to fight. He has been wrong on many of the major issues of the day, and he has taken money from those who helped cause the housing crisis and create millions of foreclosures.

What establishment politicians like Gingrich don’t understand is that the Republican Party wins when it stands up for what it believes in, as many of my new colleagues did in 2010.

We also win when we effectively run against big government. We cannot do that if we nominate a candidate who has both embraced it and been enriched by it.

We have a choice to make in a few weeks. If the tea party is to continue the work we resolved in 2010 to undertake, then we must not make a giant leap backward by electing big government, status quo Republicans like Gingrich in 2012.

Source: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20111209/OPINION01/312090025/-1/gallery_array/Rand-Paul-Republicans-would-take-giant-step-backward-by-choosing-Gingrich

So let me get this straight: Newt Gingrich was Ted Kennedy's ally in passing the the Brady Bill, the Lautenberg rifle ban, and the creation of the Department of Education. It begs the question: Was it during these big government buddy-buddy sessions with Ted Kennedy and his ilk that Newt Gingrich picked up his philandering habit?

Here is another video of Rand Paul joking about Gingrich having more positions than wives (From back in March!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62j93NbLL7U

[Politico]

The Newt Train is beginning to look more and more like the circus train (How soon before it derails?):

The gay half-sister of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich slammed his position on gay rights on Wednesday and said she will support President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the 2012 election.

Gingrich is known for his socially conservative views and has said he opposes gay marriage. Gingrich-Jones, a director at the Humans Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group, said he did not attend her wedding.

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-gingrichtre7b70b4-20111207,0,6539803.story

[Politico]

The Newt Train is beginning to look more and more like the circus train (How soon before it derails?):

The gay half-sister of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich slammed his position on gay rights on Wednesday and said she will support President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the 2012 election.

Gingrich is known for his socially conservative views and has said he opposes gay marriage. Gingrich-Jones, a director at the Humans Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group, said he did not attend her wedding.

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-gingrichtre7b70b4-20111207,0,6539803.story

Please knock off the phony assertions.  Gingrich does NOT has "socially conservative views"!!!  Yes, right now he is sort of pretending to have such views, but his acting job on this matter is even phonier than Romney's.

I could not agree more that Gingrich is a phony's phony, and his family life is something from the Jerry Springer Show.

Thank you for pointing out all of this. I can only start off with so much these days...

This is quickly becoming an embarrassment for the Republican Party beyond what I expected. It looks like the jmfcsts are going to need to come around to Romney or embrace Huntsman. I can live with either decision by the kingmakers.

[Politico]

Or how about the colonization of the moon? Because guess what: Newt Gingrich supports these Big Government initiatives...

Excerpts from David Brooks' latest editorial:

Gingrich loves government more than I do. He has no Hayekian modesty to restrain his faith in statist endeavor. For example, he has called for “a massive new program to build a permanent lunar colony to exploit the Moon’s resources.” He has suggested that “a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.”

I’m for national greatness conservatism, but this is a little too great.

Furthermore, he has an unconservative faith in his own innocence. The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. Gingrich was perfectly content to belly up to the Freddie Mac trough and then invent a Hamiltonian rationale to justify his own greed.

Then there is his rhetorical style. He seems to have understood that a moderate Republican like himself can win so long as he adopts a bombastic style when taking on the liberal elites. Most people just want somebody who can articulate their hatreds, and Gingrich is demagogically happy to play the role.

Most important, there is temperament and character.

In the two main Republican contenders, we have one man, Romney, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1950s, and another, Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s. He has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with ’60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form.

As nearly everyone who has ever worked with him knows, he would severely damage conservatism and the Republican Party if nominated. He would severely damage the Hamilton-Theodore Roosevelt strain in American life.

It’s really too bad. We could have had a great debate about the progressive-conservative tradition. President Obama is now embracing Roosevelt. Gingrich has tried to modernize this tendency.

But how you believe something is as important as what you believe. It doesn’t matter if a person shares your overall philosophy. If that person doesn’t have the right temperament and character, stay away.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/opinion/brooks-the-gingrich-tragedy.html?_r=2&hp

[Politico]

David Brooks and George Will do NOT speak for GOP voters... they speak for the establishment. They are Ivy League big city elitists

Absolutely, but do you want your taxes going towards mirrors in outer-space and colonization of the moon? Because David Brooks and George Will did not force Newt Gingrich to support those policy objectives. I mean, for crying out loud, this is infinitely more outrageous than George W. Bush's version of Big Government. I fail to see how somebody can support Gingrich and call themselves a supporter of smaller government.

[Politico]

quoting from the NYT only serves to make the jmfcsts point for them

I done goofed. But hopefully they will remain focused upon the absurdity of Gingrich's proposals for outerspace. I mean, I am a bigger supporter of NASA than most people, but putting mirrors into outerspace to light highways and colonizing the moon are absurd, costly projects. There are better ways to use our limited resources.

Obama must be laughing his ass off at the prospect of cruising to re-election against Space Cadet Gingrich.

[Politico]

Feel free to add any other suggestions. In the meantime, here is a tribute video for Gingrich:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wugY6HNLOCo

[Politico]

Point to me where he has proposed these as laws or proposed bills... he is a thinker, he puts ideas forward, and thinks forthe future

It's not like Mitt who has implemented some crazy ideas

It's all over the web. I could not believe it when I first heard. It's almost as damaging as Al Gore's "I Invented the Internet." Rumor has it that a video is going to surface that is going to make Gingrich look about as serious as this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wugY6HNLOCo

[Politico]

How is the repeal of child labor laws "big government" exactly?

Doesn't make sense.

Fixed. I started the subject of the thread before deciding upon the choices. The repeal of the child labor laws was an after-thought thrown in for good measure. I am, of course, shocked by Gingrich's Space Cadet proposals, as disgusting as the other proposal is (which is old news compared to the Major Tom stuff).

[Politico]

Never
Enough
Wacky
Thoughts
2012

[Politico]

It is pretty simple: A man with a wife who is younger than his daughters is not the leader of the party of values. A man who cheats on not one wife, but two wives, is not the leader of the party of values. A man who is fined $300,000 for ethics violations is not the leader of the party of values.

Mark my words: If Gingrich is the nominee, the GOP will lose over 40 states next year in the worst Republican setback since 1964, and the Democrats will regain control of Congress. Yes, it will be THAT bad because only Gingrich can actually revile people enough for enough folks to buy into the Do-Nothing Congress schtick that Obama will successfully push against Gingrich and Co. The worst part: Taxes will be raised to levels not seen since the 1970s upon everybody who thought it was a good idea to nominate Newt Gingrich. And America will look a lot like Europe by the end of the decade. But at least Newt Gingrich will get in a few potshots at Obama, right? That will make it all worth it, right?

[Politico]

I am not saying Gingrich is going to win, but he may win. I admit there is a chance. But I will bet $10,000 on this: If Gingrich does win, people are not going to get what they want. In fact, they're going to deeply regret enabling the return of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. If you thought the original was bad, just wait until you get the sequel. They will shove a tax hike right down your throat immediately in February 2013. And it will ultimately be brought to you by Newt Gingrich's epic loss.

[Politico]

Someone didn't like how the debate went to night I see...

Ever notice how Democrats, on television or in the streets or even on here, are pretty much quiet about Gingrich? They cannot believe the GOP is even considering nominating him. They could be not be more delighted by the prospect. It's not only a path towards getting Obama re-elected, but getting Nancy Pelosi back in charge of the House of Representatives. Get ready for a massive tax hike! But at least Newt will get in a few jabs at Obama. That should make it all worthwhile, right?

[Politico]

Ever notice how Democrats, on television or in the streets or even on here, are pretty much quiet about Gingrich?

No, both Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi have made highly-covered comments about Gingrich.

Higher powers shut them up about it rather quickly, and I don't blame them one bit.

[Politico]

Ever notice how Democrats, on television or in the streets or even on here, are pretty much quiet about Gingrich?

No, both Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi have made highly-covered comments about Gingrich.

Higher powers shut them up about it rather quickly, and I don't blame them one bit.

"Higher powers"?

Team Obama, of course. Nothing nefarious/conspiratorial.