newt gingrich

As Newt Gingrich ends his run for the White House, he shows us what real fiscal conservatives look like:

Newt Gingrich ends his White House dream today with his political committee facing a mountain of debts -- owing about $4 million to scores of businesses and campaign workers around the country who fear they will never get paid.

Campaign watchdogs said the size of Gingrich's debt is extraordinary -- and could have been avoided if the candidate and his team had been more disciplined.

"He was reckless in running up these bills, especially in the last month or so of the campaign when it was quite clear that Mitt Romney would be the nominee," said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the watchdog group Citizen Union.

This is common place among conservatives. We hear them preach about "living within your means" and "accepting personal responsibility", yet they never practice it. I'm sure as time goes on the excuses that Newt gives us will continue to amaze. His only real hope is for Mitt Romney to offer to pay off his debt in exchange for an endorsement or maybe sell back some of that stuff he bought at Tiffany's

Newt Gingrich says he will stay in the race all the way to the National Convention, but his finances might dictate otherwise:

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich might fail to appear on the Utah primary ballot after a check for the required filing fee bounced, according to media reports.

The check for $500 bounced on March 27, Utah state election director Mark Thomas told ABC News, which first reported the story.

"Our office immediately attempted to contact the campaign and the designated agent but no phone calls were returned,” said Thomas, according to ABC.

Personal responsibility anyone? If Newt can't manage the finances of his own campaign, how can we expect him to handle the finances of our nation? I got a feeling that's a question the Romney campaign will be asking.

The Republicans just love government telling people what they can and can't do:

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich have all told the group Morality in Media that they would enforce federal obscenity laws that prohibit the distribution of pornography.

Those laws, the anti-pornography group said, are being ignored by the current administration.

“Federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced,” Santorum told the group. “If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.”

Romney told the group it was “imperative that we cultivate the promotion of fundamental family values.”

I'm sorry, but shouldn't "family values" be a personal/family issue and not one of the United States government? Common sense would say so. But we are talking about the GOP, who believes that the government should control every aspect of our lives, while telling you that government is bad.

At least we are seeing the GOP candidates jumping further into the social conservative waters, where they will alienate the true Americans that believe in personal responsibility, including the ability of our citizens to make appropriate choices for themselves. This will do nothing but help Obama even more this fall.

Typical Republican BS:

As recently as last week, Newt Gingrich's communications director has been criticized by editors on Wikipedia for dozens of edits he has made and requested in defense of his candidate.

While some of the changes were minor, Joe DeSantis has removed or asked to remove factual references to Gingrich's three marriages as well as mentions of ethics charges brought against him while he served as speaker of the House. These efforts continued as recently as Monday.

Wikipedia records show DeSantis has made over 60 adjustments to entries in the online, publicly-edited encyclopedia to the biographical entry on Gingrich, the similar page on his wife, Callista, and a separate page on one of their books, Rediscovering Good in America.

Wikipedia is getting fed up with it too:

DeSantis has actively lobbied for changes to the articles since mid-December in a discussion forum called "Talk" on the site, and previously from May to June of last year, though his most recent direct edit to the site was in June of 2011.

Last Tuesday, DeSantis drew the ire of an editor on the site.

"I'll raise the question in the appropriate place, but I have to say this micro-managing by a Gingrich campaign director is a matter of concern to me even though you now are identifying yourself. Pointing out factual errors is one thing, but your input should not go beyond that, even here on Talk," the editor known as Tvoz, wrote on a page devoted discussing possible edits.

Maybe after Newt builds our moon base and sends people to inhabit it, he can then work on the mind erasing beam and wipe the memories of what a horrible person he really is from everyone. Just maybe...

With Mitt Romney enjoying a huge win in Florida last night it's time to look at the exit polls. The very first question is the one that pops out to me:

Mitt Romney has almost double the support from women as does Newt Gingrich. That's a rather large split and one that really spells problems for the Gingrich brand.

It can be safely assumed that Gingrich's past marriages and the nasty way in which they ended plays a big part in this outcome. That's what really hurts Newt's overall electability problem. If he somehow does get the nomination, Newt risks alienating an important part of the electorate because of his past indiscretions. In an election that is going to go down to the wire, that is a breaking point for the GOP.

Next we have another issue that the media doesn't seem to be paying attention too - the Tea Party influence.

62% of Romney voters somewhat oppose the Tea Party as compared to 17% of Newt's. This is one that really, really jumps out at me.

The Tea Party has made it clear they want to see Gingrich win the nomination, yet Romney won huge yesterday. It really shows that the influence of the Tea Party is in serious decline. This is also a trend we have been seeing more and more.

After the NBC debate Newt Gingrich blamed the media for not allowing the audience to cheer and even threatened to pull out of future debates that do the same. Now he's claiming that the cheering audience last night was stacked against him:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich rode a strong performance and crowd enthusiasm at a debate in South Carolina to victory in that state’s primary, but the crowds at two debates in Florida this week haven’t been as wild for Gingrich. Now his campaign is claiming that rival Mitt Romney’s campaign stacked the audience at Thursday’s debate with its supporters to shift the energy toward Romney, the Huffington Post reported.

“They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, a Gingrich adviser, told the Post.
But that’s not the case, according to both the Florida Republican Party and the Romney campaign. The party, which doled out 900 of the 1,200 tickets, says most of them went to “rank and file” Republicans.

“We did a very thorough job of getting them to the rank and file, vetting them to make sure they went to registered Republicans and then making sure they went out to people that were not knowingly affiliated” with the campaigns, Party spokesman Brian Hughes told the website.

But I guess in this case there could be some truth. The "rank and file" Republicans are the ones who are opposed to Newt winning the nomination. They are the ones currently out there blasting him in the news cycle 24/7. It's not the Democrats or the "liberal media", but Newt's own party that is against him. Newt has a serious problem and can't even logically blame his usual nemesis' for it.

This exchange happened in an interview on CNN with Nancy Pelosi:

John King, CNN: "You make your case there passionately for President Obama. But also understand that this is a tough reelection climate for any president, Democrat or Republican in this economy. Because of your history with Speaker Gingrich, what goes through your mind when you think of the possibility, which is more real today than it was a week or a month ago, that he would be the Republican nominee and that you could come back here next January or next February with a President Gingrich?"

Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "Let me just say this. That will never happen."

King: "Why?"

Pelosi: "He's not going to be President of the United States. That's not going to happen. Let me just make my prediction and stand by it, it isn't going to happen."

King: "Why are you so sure?"

Pelosi: "There is something I know. The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him that's their prerogative. I don't even think that's going to happen."

You can watch the video here.

What is it that Nancy is saying she "knows" that would cause someone to not be elected President or even nominated for their party? It must be pretty damn serious for this to happen.

The real troubling part is the secrecy involved. Given the number of Gingrich era Republicans out there blasting him, I can't believe that someone else wouldn't know this big "heads in the duffle bag" secret. It's also meant to lead to a lot of speculation of what it could be, if anything.

God knows I can't stand Newt Gingrich, but Pelosi is engaging in very dirty politics here. As Jonathan Turley puts it:

Since Newt's win in South Carolina this weekend and Florida only a week away the civil war in the GOP is really heating up. The battle is establishment verses base and it's really becoming fun to watch.

First off we have this from CNN:

Veteran Republican leadership aide Ron Bonjean said on the record what most of his colleagues would only tell CNN privately.

"Most people on Capitol Hill and in Washington are very nervous about a Gingrich candidacy," he said. "It sends a shiver down a lot of Republican spines."

"You can actually feel the nervousness from Republicans around town that Gingrich could actually bring the craziness back of his speakership from the 1990s. It's everywhere."

The establishment remembers what it was actually like having Newt Gingrich in charge. They hated it and don't want to see it return. That explains this from another establishment person, Bill Kristol:

I’ve got to think Monday night’s debate further swelled the groundswell of support for Mitch Daniels. The liveliest part of the debate was at the beginning, when Mitt went after Newt—and Republicans all over America watched with fascinated horror at the thought that these are the two GOP frontrunners. The only spectacle in American politics more off-putting than Newt Gingrich in self-righteous defense mode is Mitt Romney in self-righteous attack mode. I thought Mitt’s attacks were somewhat more dishonest than Newt’s defenses were disingenuous, but it was good to move on to the rest of the debate, where little further damage was done.