The establishment Republicans are out with the long knives against Newt Gingrich, calling him a raging egotist, unstable, a bad leader, unsuitable to be president, blah x 3...
As I've said before, no one who runs for president is without character flaws and baggage. Mitt Romney could double as Ward Cleaver or some other 1950s "Father Knows Best" type of dad. No one has accused him of being a philanderer or unstable. But he's been all over the map on his positions, and has at least two disturbing strikes against him: Romneycare and his past global warming position.
But Newt is, as Peggy Noonan observed in her most recent piece, "so rich and varied as a character, as geniuses often are, that he contains worlds, multitudes." Noonan goes on to describe Gingrich as a "human hand grenade."
Here are a few facts that I believe trump all of the baggage and personality flaws of Newt Gingrich: Under his leadership, the House Republicans proposed the bold and long overdue "Contract With America" which included such key planks as balancing the budget, reforming welfare, and granting the line item veto to the president, something all governors have but which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional for the president. The liberals at the time referred to this bold set of proposals as the "Contract On America." That inane moniker speaks for itself.
Bill Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice, but Gingrich and the Republicans kept pushing despite a Chicken Little assault from loony leftists about how the "mean-spirited" reform bill would throw poor people out on the streets and cause children to go hungry. (Those progressives sure are drama queens!) Finally, at the urging of his political advisor Dick Morris, Clinton signed a third welfare reform bill. It has proved to be highly successful.
Not only did the Clinton administration, with the help of a Republican Congress, balance the budget for the first time since Nixon was president, Uncle Sam even finished with a surplus several years in a row. Incredible to ponder in this era of $1.5 trillion ANNUAL deficits.
Too many of the Republicans criticizing Newt think they are doing their party and their country a good deed. But what they are actually accomplishing is providing plenty of sound bites and other juicy material for the Obama re-election campaign. Some of them probably are afflicted with the same massive egos they accuse Newt of having. Whatever it is they're thinking, they truly are playing the role of wolves in sheep's clothing. Newt is far from perfect, but he may well end up earning the nomination. With "friends" like his harsh GOP critics, who needs enemies?
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? — I thought I'd seen it all until I read this piece. How twisted can human beings be? It seems that the lure of "modeling" has ensnared far too many naive and gullible young women over the years. One must be cautious whenever responding to a "business opportunity" in this world full of dirt-bags.
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