CONTENTS:
Takes credit where credit is not due
Defeated communism, balanced budget [not due to him!],
Ethics, Morality And Behaviors
Artful Dodging
Health Problem Factor
With Bill C. and taking credit for balanced budget
Bob Dole on the insults to Reagan and erraticness
His being oppositional
Comments Against Reagan
A clever deflecting defense
________________________________________________________________________________
"For every 1000 people with good ideas give me one who can implement."
Idea people do not make good executives. Just look at his record
________________________________________________________________________________
If Gingrich was responsible for what he claims to have caused and if I believed his explanation for his ethics violation and his past behavior was not an indication of his future behavior, then I would think he was the greatest. He is brilliant without a doubt. (Oh, and if I also ignored the qualifications needed to the The Chief Executive Officer of the United States.)
But I can't ignore that he is erratic, oppositional (see even his Reagan comments), undisciplined, inspirational in pie in the sky ideas, freequently impractical, doesn't work well with others, egotistical, and acts without proper consideration.
Yes, he probably would do a great job in the three Presidential debates, but that is only 3 debates, plus he is the easiest candidate to defeat with all his past baggage.
And the main problem is that he would not be a good President. Based on his claims, he should run for the position of God - or at least President Of The Moon.
CONCLUSION FROM THE EVIDENCE
Gingrich "twists" the facts, using artful fibbing and taking credit for things that are not due to him. If someone does not look deeper, they would believe, from his talking, that he was this incredible guy. Looking deeper, they would see the fibbing, the oppositionedness, how poorly he could work with people, erraticness, lack of discipline. He doesn't even compare to Romney's proven discipline and ability to work with others to get results. It is no contest.
Look deeper and consider the items below in coming to your conclusions.
“I worked with President Reagan to change things in Washington,” “we helped defeat the Soviet empire,” and “I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress” are typical claims by the former speaker of the House."
The claims are misleading at best. As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.
Even takes credit for Soviet defeat. “I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress”
Newt Gingrich better hope voters who lapped up his delicious hits on the "elite media" and liberals don't read the Drudge Report today.
Or the National Review. Or the American Spectator. Or Ann Coulter.
If they do, Gingrich comes off looking like a dangerous, anti-Reagan, Clintonian fraud.
TAKES CREDIT!
Gingrich tends to exaggerate, take credit for everything in the vicinity that he was even vaguely associated with, think grandiose ideas, be erratic and temperament and very vengeful and bitter. Not a good idea for a President.
The claims are misleading at best.
“I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress.” [Not! See below.]
I was responsible for balancing the budget for four years. [He wasn't there for 2 of them. It was the booming economy that raised tax revenues more than 20%, while spending continued upward on a normal curve. (See graph of revenues and spending and note that the spending curve continued up while there was a blip in the revenue during the internet bubble. Did he really improve the economy on his own, or was he a lucky beneficiary of something that happened on its own? And, interestingly enough, the national debt increased each of those years - accounting anomaly?]
ETHICS, MORALITY AND BEHAVIORS
He tends to skim the edge and alienate lots of his colleagues. He was reprimanded 392-28 for ethics violations, the only time ever for a Speaker. Read the script for this skit: Gingrich Ethics And Lobbying.
He is excellent at explaining things away. He is excellent at hiding facts and posturing. But we need to all look deeper than that - and not make the same mistakes as the Republicans made in the last Presidential election and several times in these primaries! (See also Why I Voted For Obama In 2008.)
He says he has repented from his moral slips in his relationships, so we have forgiven him. But hopefully we are not blinded to reality. With regard to this and to other areas where there are moral/ethical slips: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
ARTFUL DODGING
I did not lobby. I was paid ($300,000 a year) as a historian (oops, corrected to "consultant). It's ok to be a lobbyist or influence peddler or advisor on how to lobby and whom to go to, but it is the coverup, the artful dodging, the fibs, all to avoid the label. [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the primary causes of the bubble and the burst, yet he did not do what he could to prevent that.]
HEALTH PROBLEM FACTOR
I wonder also how soon he would die, given his excessive weight. Is his health good? And even if it is, excessive weight causes things to go wrong.
WITH BILL AND TAKING CREDIT FOR BALANCED BUDGET
"Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping...His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out."
BOB DOLE
Bob Dole issued a scathing statement Thursday in which he said "it is now time" to rally to stop Gingrich, blamed the former Speaker for losing House Republican seats in 1996, and warned that it could happen again, at all levels of government.
"I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich, but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late," Dole said. "If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him, and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway."
Dole added, "In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year."
HIS BEING OPPOSITIONAL
"Gingrich backers say that he is inspiring. What he mostly seems to inspire is opposition."
National Review
Tom DeLay, a top deputy to Gingrich during the Republican revolution of the mid-1990s, joined the chorus of other conservative members breaking their silence about Gingrich's erratic leadership style. In a radio interview with KTRH, DeLay said: "He's not really a conservative. I mean, he'll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined."
"There's just so much risk on so many levels," the official continued. "Everyone's thinking, 'It could really happen.' He could win the presidency if there's a way to win with 45 percent - a second recession or a third-party candidate. The immediate worry is him winning the nomination and losing the election, tanking candidates down-ballot. In a worst-case scenario, you could see unified Democratic governance, and we'd be back where we were in '09 and '10. It's insane."
COMMENTS ON REAGAN BY GINGRICH
"The president of the United States cannot discipline himself to use the correct language.” In Afghanistan, Reagan’s policy was marked by “impotence [and] incompetence.” Thus Gingrich concluded as he surveyed five years of Reagan in power that “we have been losing the struggle with the Soviet empire.” Reagan did not know what he was doing, and “it is precisely at the vision and strategy levels that the Soviet empire today is superior to the free world.”
Summary article with a number of Gingrich quotes, to judge for yourself: Insults
Comments on the floor of the house
The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986.
This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986.
Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.”
Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.”
Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”
Gingrich scorned Reagan’s speeches, which moved a party and then a nation, because “the president of the United States cannot discipline himself to use the correct language.” In Afghanistan, Reagan’s policy was marked by “impotence [and] incompetence.”
Thus Gingrich concluded as he surveyed five years of Reagan in power that “we have been losing the struggle with the Soviet empire.” Reagan did not know what he was doing, and “it is precisely at the vision and strategy levels that the Soviet empire today is superior to the free world.” Source
A CLEVER, DEFLECTING DEFENSE
The point is not who is more of a Reaganite, but whether Newt is representing himself accurrately - and he is not. "Newt doesn't really address the specs of the charge that he insulted Reagan, instead relying on broad generalities."
Here it is:
HANNITY: The latest charge is that you insulted Ronald Regan.
GINGRICH: [Tilts head back; laughs] Let's look at that period. Governor Romney was against Ronald Reagan.
Governor Romney said in the 1994 Senate race he was opposed to going back to the Reagan-Bush policies. Governor Romney was giving money to Democrats and voting for the most liberal Democrat in the 1992 presidential race.
[False. He voted in the Democratic primary for the candidate least likely to win, in order to help the eventual nominee have better chances. A fairly common strategy. Paul Tsongas. he backed George Bush in the general election
"Raiding consists of voters of one party crossing over and voting in the primary of another party, effectively allowing a party to help choose its opposition's candidate. The theory is that opposing party members vote for the weakest candidate of the opposite party in order to give their own party the advantage in the general election. He never voted for a Democrat when there was a Republican choice. Never. And it does not matter what he did many years ago. It is only where he is right now!]
For them to come back and try to fabricate -- I mean ask Michael Reagan, who was there. Ask Tony Dolan who for eight years was Ronald Reagan's chief speechwriter. Ask people who were, for example, the national security adviser -- Bud McFarlane, who for five years worked with me.
This is the kind of fundamentally dishonest campaign. Governor Romney cannot defend his record, he can't defend his past, he can't defend what he's done, and so his goal is to somehow throw enough mud at me, [Skillful general accusations, as per Saul Alinsky.] and I think it's all going to wash off because the American people are smart enough.
I first met Ronald Reagan 1974, I campaigned with him in 1980, I helped him for 8 years while he was president. I made a movie about him, I've written a book about him.
To suggest that Governor Romney is more Reagan-like than I am, is an act of total fantasy.
SOME INTERESTING QUOTES:
These are not necessarily "right", but do show something to think about and consider and look at.
Yes, of all the complaints we have against the media, our main beef with them is that reporters are making it hard to attract decent adulterers to become candidates.
Newt continued to roar, "In fact, that CNN would choose to begin a debate with this tawdry question . . . I can think of nothing more despicable!"
My 13-year-old daughter turned and said, "Well, I can think of one thing more despicable. . . . it's not as bad to ask the question as it is to actually be the one breaking marriage vows."
It's impossible to use the word "fair" and "Gingrich" in the same sentence...
Fair?? You're talking about an narcissistic ideologue whose only interest is self-promotion. Everyone who ever worked with this guy is cringing at the unlikely possibility that he could wind up with his finger on the Nuclear Arsenal of the USA.
Was it fair to go on a multi-million dollar witch hunt and drag the country through an Impeachment when he was shacking up with his aide? Now he says his personal life is out of bounds for discussion?
Is this article a joke? Fair or State Fair? There are apparently no rules of conduct. The bottom line here (this is not a pun) is that Gingrich make Clinton look like an Alter Boy. As for Romney, there is little or no help. He is from a long line of women oppressors so don't even ask the question.
