I posted yesterday the spot on article by Byron York, The insider-outsider divide over Newt Gingrich, which delves into the great divide between Washington Republican political players (politicians and media) who have their noses out of joint over Newt because he was mean to them in the 1990s, and the general Republican electorate which remembers the glory days of the takeover of the House, the Contract with America, balanced budgets, and welfare reform.
There is a disbelief how a Tea Party-motivated electorate could support an “insider” like Newt, particularly an insider who did not make many friends in the Republican party and media.
I think the question answers itself. Newt is not seen as beholden to anyone, and that is what makes his insider status non-toxic, and a plus. He’s the insider who is on the outs with the insiders.
Update: Tweet of Day from @FloridaJayhawk:
And, now this, let’s let Nancy Pelosi select our nominee, or at least scare us away from someone:
Newt’s response is at Right Scoop.
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This TEA Party motivated voter as noticed that Newt can think. He is open to all ideas, and willing to turn a problem on its side to solve it. He is the intellectual that the Democrats claimed Obama to be.
I think the question answers itself. Newt is not seen as beholden to anyone, and that is what makes his insider status non-toxic, and a plus. He’s the insider who is on the outs with the insiders.
1. A traitor to his class? I like it.
2. Whereas your defense of Palin did little to alleviate my negative opinion of her (hopefully because my opinion is not based on the cheap shots that you debunked), your advocacy of Newt is materially reducing my skepticism.
Yeah, Newt is hated most by the Liberal Media, Progressives everywhere and RINOs – how is that bad for Newt?
I’ve always though he was our best bet to actually get problems fixed in Washington because he knows how to actually get them done instead of giving grand ideas with no possible chance of ever getting through. I’ve also known he is the candidate most likely to get down and dirty doing the hard work we actually need done. I just never figured others would see him as electable because I sadly feel the world is too superficial – so i believed the “Romney is the only electable one”
Turns out, Mitt is probably the only candidatewe have who flat out can not get elected to the office because hardly anyone on any side of the aisle thinks he is anything more then a used car salesman willing to say anything. (well, possible exception being Paul there – no way America is voting for him either)
Now I look at a Newt/Perry ticket and smile, seeing a real possibility of 12-16 years of White House control!
Newt also has a lukewarm feeling with the base conservative wing of the GOP.
He might be smart but he sure does some stupid things which that so called “Liberal Media, Progressives and RINOs” will not hesitate remind all of us of in the months ahead.
Your dream of a Newt ‘n Perry ticket is the sure way for Obama to slide in for another four years.
Both have ample excess baggage and the democrat attack machine will grind ’em up just as they did to Cain.
Smile you won’t…
Yeah, you know, you’re right – I probably shouldn’t get out the vote because clearly Republicans have zero chance of winning anything and we should just sit at home like the Liberal Media tells us…
Thank you for reminding us that we are actually supposed to just fall to our knees for the media and Dems desires, and I appropriate your not notifying the thought police of my transgression!
So, I guess like a good little brainwashed drone I’ll prepare to cast my primary vote for Mitt, so we have a candidate that no one is happy with and can utterly fail to gain any ground what so ever in 2012.
The Wills, Brooks, Noonans, Rubins, Frums, Parkers, not to mention the MSM, don’t like him. How much more outsider can you get?
It’s been more than a decade since he’s held elected power. When he held it he got some significant conservative-leaning changes done (like a balanced budget and welfare reform).
It’s interesting when people who dislike (hate?) the Tea Party are now the arbiters of what their beliefs about insiderness are. Like when is the last time they were at any event where they talked to large numbers of Tea Party or Tea Party-like people?
I like Byron York’s tweet:
“Washington insiders can’t get their heads around a Gingrich nomination; GOP voters in IA, NH, SC & FL aren’t having that problem.”
Mr. York doesn’t realize that the Washington insiders are liberal democrats while the voters in Iowa are participating in a GOP pre-election event.
Iowa along with the other early primary states will have not have a great amount of influence since the “winner take all” results exist no longer.
This is going to be a long bitter primary season…
Remember the hilarious ‘honey badger don’t care’ video? Replace honey badger with Tea Party as you listen to it. “Tea Party don’t care. Tea Party don’t give a S**T.”
When was the last time we saw Congress truly balance the budget? Truly cut spending? Truly reform an entitlement program? And who was Speaker of the House when it happened?
It’s hilarious. We can’t nominate Newt! We big government RINOs don’t like him! We leftwing journalists don’t like him! My God… ONLY THE PEOPLE LIKE THIS GUY! THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!
I’m enjoying the crap out of visiting the assorted establishment GOP and ‘conservative’ blogs and other onloine outlets and watching them go apoplectic about a potential Gingrich candidacy. The NRO, which, after years of posting there, banned me for consecutive posts unfavorable to Mitt Romney – no cussing, nothing ugly, just statements bout why I couldn’t support Romney – has posted a general missive from the editors collectively instructing their readership not to watch the Trump moderated debate. It is an absolute comedy of reasoning. They think Trump has liberal leanings, therefore he’s inappropriate to moderate. Uhhh.. NRO? Chris Matthews? Scott Pelley? A dozen other ultra libs who’ve moderated GOP debates this year?
When you’re taking flak from both the lefty media and your own party’s moderate elites, you know you’re on the right track.
Incoming flak is how you know you’re nearing your target.
Mitt must be saying to himself (in the voice of his affectual doppelganger, Ned Flanders), “what the aitch ee double hockey sticks has a fellow got to do to get nominated around here!”
I stopped reading both NRO and The Corner since the debates started; couldn’t stomach the Establishment elitism.
For years, “Getting Things Done” in DC ment that everybody gets together with a shopping list.
I’d rather they did nothing.
A vote for Romney is a vote for business as usual.
In prior years, I would have agreed with you. Now, we need to focus on UNDOING stuff, lots and lots of stuff. Some of it the President can undo on his own, but some must be undone by Congress.
The new Congress will have lots of work to undo all the damage done in the last 10 years.
Newt responds:
“I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift.”
And Nancy flees yelping into the night….
The words of Dana Milbank ring true: “The first votes of the Republican primary season don’t come until next month, but we already know how it’s going to turn out: Washington will win, again. It may be Mitt Romney or it may be Newt Gingrich, but from the point of view of this town, it doesn’t matter: Neither poses a threat to our way of life. Our hometown industry — a commission-based economy in which the local citizenry helps the powerful get what they want from a too-big government — will survive.”
As for Pelosi, we’ll have to elect Newt President in order to find out what the dirt is.
“As for Pelosi, we’ll have to elect Newt President in order to find out what the dirt is.”
Too funny! Roosting chickens!
It’s so nice to see that the “Politics of Personal Destruction” are dead.
This is exactly what I mean by valuing Newt’s willingness and skill at political infighting, necessary to whomever the GOP candidatge is to be. Pelosi threatens Newt with releasing info from a sealed congressional investigation and Gingrich comes right back, immediately, with:
“First of all I’d like to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift. If she’s suggesting she’s gonna use material she developed while she was on the ethics committee, that is a fundamental violation of the rules of the House and I would hope members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it.”
If we’ll remember, after the ethics committee did its dirty work and got Gingrich fined $300k and eventually ousted, the IRS investigation into the ethics allegations totally cleared Gingrich.
If Pelosi made this threat or a similar threat to Romney, what do we think his reaction would be – if any? Would he get Chris Christie or Ann Coulter to do it for him?
If this were table tennis, Pelosi would be chewing on her first serve right now, trying not to choke on it.
Given Pelosi’s juvenile slip of the tongue regarding what she intends to do to Gingrich should he become the GOP nominee during the election, we now see the curtain drawn back on why the Democrats are so hot and heavy beating up on Romney to knock him out of the GOP contention. I’m no Romney supporter but it’s becoming all too clear that Democrats and the MSM are once again attempting to choose the GOP nominee. The elimination of Cain was definitely needed to preserve the race card in the elections and the elimination of Romney is needed to take away the moderate (left of center) choice that Obama is hoping would propel him to victory.
This is going to be one of the dirtiest election cycles in the history of the Republic, the liberal sleaze machine is going into high gear. They have settled on making false allegations to take down any candidate they see as a threat to their winning in 2012. I sincerely hope that Cain gets the proof he needs to expose the liberals in their sleazy undertaking as this would blunt any further attacks and make the voters extremely angry at the chicanery of the left.
When Cain furnishes proof that he was the subject of a vicious ‘hit’ by the opposition party and there is no substance to the charges, cbsnbcabc won’t cover it. (still impossible to prove a negative.)
With Cain gone, the liberals will next focus on the new front runner and since Newt has 10X the baggage that Cain had, they will find the ground fertile indeed.
Even though most of Newt’s baggage has already been exposed, they’ll find new ways to capitalize on the past in an exceptionally base and underhanded way. Then there is the Newt factor itself; over inflated ego, political bully, holier-than-thou etc.
I look to Newt imploding within six to eight weeks.
The MSM can try all they want, but they’ll either be preaching to a choir of folks who wouldn’t support Newt anyway, or they’ll be wasting time preaching to voters who’ve already considered and accepted Newt’s ‘baggage’, and who neither listen to nor trust the MSM.
We have only two realistic choices, Newt or Romney (since Perry isn’t ready for the office yet and is a better VP for now)
Romney has flaws a plenty; a political record not that unlike Obamas, a used care-salesman look and tone leaves no one truly trusting him, a complete inability to admit fault or errors and apparently he is too afraid or unprepared to be asked tough questions based off his dodging interviews and whining when asked about his record. He is the ideal candidate for Obama to run against; which is why Dems and the Lib Media has been trying to get us to learn to love him since day one. With Mitt, we might (in a best case) be able to get about 30-35% of Conservatives and Moderates truly excited to vote for him – and that’s probably a max.
On the other hand, Newt will admit fault, wants nothing more then to debate and is begging for tough questions. He has baggage, but we already know most all of it and he also has no problem going right back after the media themselves. He’s already gotten some of the toughest to pass bills we have seen in our lifetimes passed, and he will back up the changes he proposes with actual historical reference points proving the authority.
In the end, much like McCain, Romney loses because absolutely no one is excited about him, where Newt has a good chance of making Obama look like a bumbling fool in a debate while actually giving the people ideas and plans people will rally behind.
Baggage, smaggage. Who doesn’t have baggage?
As for Romney’s affect, I like ‘the Stepford Candidate’. He is tightly programmed and packaged, can’t sound spontaneous even when he is, and comes off like an animated Sears mannikin.
And, as we have learned, Newt hits hard, especially when counterpunching. Those hits will take a toll on Obama.
He is the only candidate able and inclined to wage a really vigorous, hard-hitting campaign, the kind that will be needed to defeat Obama.
Yeah, it was nice of Newt to prove my point only hours after I made it. This Pelosi episode is hysterical…
And I think that’s the real beauty of Newt; his preference to answer in a “duh, why the F* cant you figure this crud out on your own?” manor when faced with pure stupidity. Best not to acknowledge it like its serious, and instead just put it straight in its place.
Take, for instance, the Paul “We dealt with it rather well with Timothy McVeigh” thing with the simple, “WTF are you talking about” like reply of “Timothy McVeigh succeeded. That’s the whole point.”
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1. Will Pelosi release the “material”, or will it be leaked with a “No comment wink wink” from Pelosi? The latter may be more damaging because Pelosi can implicitly endorse lies about Gingrich without doing so explicitly.
This kind of dirty trick worked with Cain, so why won’t they try it again?
2. Gingrich’s elation over his Christmas present is premature. He may need a stronger response to Pelosi than citing House rules. He is correct on the merits but might be portrayed as taking refuge in a technicality.
3. Invocation of House rules would more appropriately be made by a senior Republican Representative, even Boehner.
(If Pelosi releases confidential proceedings of the ethics committee, I would fully support expelling her via a party-line vote no matter how much the Left squeals.)
Newt’s defining characteristic and fatal flaw is the he morphs into whoever he has to be to convince whatever audience he is speaking to that he not only agrees with them but that he is the smartest guy in the room.
Republicans and “conservatives” suffer the same tunnel vision that the liberals suffer in seeing only what they want to see and hanging out in echo chambers of their choice. That works in Newt’s favor because by choice, most of us only see the Newt that talks to audiences in our echo chambers.
Newt is beholden to Newt and only to Newt. He is an accident looking for someplace to happen. It is a mathematical certainty that it will happen but it may come too late when Republican voters have already committed to holding their noses only to discover what a mistake they made.
Since we have yet to cast a single vote, I am holding out hope that the polls are as wrong this year as they were in 2008 when at a similar juncture Juan McCain was leading me by only 5%. Factoring in the margin of error, we were in a statistical tie. Otherwise, I will again vote “none of the above” as I did in 2008. I have principles I stick to, especially the Pasadena Phil Rule: I don’t vote for Democrats or liberals, especially when they run as Republicans.
A “None of the above” vote is a vote for Obama. Do you like him better than Gingrich, or Romney, or any other Republican?
Principles are great, but they must be tempered by reality. There are lots of Republicans I would prefer to the current candidates, but they’re not running. So, I will choose from those that are running. And, regardless of who is the nominee, I will voter for him or her over Obama.
If Obama is reelected, our country is doomed. Will that make you feel good about your vote for “none of the above”?
I’m in the ABO camp. And if that’s Newt, fine by me, couldn’t stand the man in the 1990s. I voted for Clinton both times, but the Newt very well may the man who doesn’t give a damn about these elietist media types, and that appeals to me.
And I listen to him, not the professional idiot pundits, some off what he says makes sense, some doesn’t, but all it is a hell of a lot better than that idiot currently in the White House.
I read on another PUMA blog, “Newt’s an SOB, but at least he’s our SOB”. Sums it up for me.
I’m not anti-romney, but he needs to up his game, most indpendents like me want that fraud Obama evicted next nomvember, and whoever can make the best argument that they can beat him gets my vote. And oh yea, the whole Romney buildup, wait until if he gets the republican nomination, every “main”stream media outlet will pounce on him, just like they did on “maverick” Mccain the day after he won the nomination, remember the NYT front page unsubstaniated story about the affair with a lobbysist?? I finally understand how this game is played by the liberals, and I’m a former liberal saying this.
ABO.ABO.
I am very conservative and have been for a very long time. I am also firmly in the ABO camp. Seems to me our camp is getting pretty big. Good!!