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So. For all you who tell me it’s my duty to vote for Mitt Romney, should he win the GOP nomination, if only to unseat Obama

— I’m curious why you’d expect me to reward a candidate who, in every election cycle, uses his money and his surrogates and sycophants to level insidious attacks against his opponents — not on the substance of their ideas, but rather in an attempt to smear them personally and, frankly, to ruin them. (The tell came last evening when Romney suggested to Wolf Blitzer that, in fact, Gingrich had indeed used a certain phrase, making his attack valid even if the phrase was taken completely out of context, and he knew it to be out of context.)

Watching the “pragmatic” center-right electability-jackals go after Newt Gingrich the last couple days — in a concentrated, concerted, and organized way — suggests to me that the establishment sector of “our” movement has adopted the worst tactics of the left, which it will use, amazingly, only against those to their right.

That is, these “pragmatists” are willing to smear and demonize conservatives (while pretending to define contemporary conservatism, in that way moving it leftward), and yet they make it their mission to woo the moderates and independents with pleasing panders and populist pablum.

And for this they deserve my vote?

Sorry, but that’s how Obama made his political bones. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to support that kind of behavior just because those reveling in it wear flag lapel pins and check R on their voter registration forms.

In fact, I hope they fail.

140 Replies to “So. For all you who tell me it’s my duty to vote for Mitt Romney, should he win the GOP nomination, if only to unseat Obama”

  1. leigh says:

    I am not persuaded that it makes a difference any longer who is at the helm of the ship of state if it is just another pirate.

    Vote your conscience, Jeff.

  2. Ernst Schreiber says:

    They will. They may even fail in time.

  3. ThomasD says:

    and check R on their voter registration forms…

    Except, when they don’ in order to vote in Democrat primaries.

    http://www.punditpress.com/2012/01/surprise-romney-donated-to-democrats.html

  4. geoffb says:

    Found this today a bit that I’d not known since I never read Stephanoupolos. This battle for the nomination may end up, with the internet for information dissemination, having all the poisons that have lurked in the mud hatch out into the sunlight to be seen finally.

    Bob Dole, you will remember from George Stephanoupolos’s memoir of his time in Clinton’s White House, totally cut the legs out from under Newt Gingrich and House Republicans during the government shut down. According to the Democrats, they were within twenty-four hours of caving to the House Republicans’ demands, but Bob Dole surprised them all by caving first.

    Dole went on to lose to Bill Clinton and still hates Newt Gingrich for it because Gingrich was the face used to attack Dole — a man who would have been the hero in the fight had Dole not caved.

    And we’re supposed to hate Newt Gingrich because Bob Dole caved to the Democrats twenty-four hours before they were going to cave to Gingrich?

  5. Pablo says:

    Sorry, but that’s how Obama made his political bones. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to support that kind of behavior just because those reveling in it wear flag lapel pins and check R on their voter registration forms.

    Newt is doing the same goddamn thing. Screw them both. It’s Santorum, a brokered convention, or I’m not voting GOP at this point.

  6. happyfeet says:

    you don’t have to vote for Romney he’s made it clear he will brutally brutally ass-fuck any Republican what gets in his way

    even if he has to prop up that useless Bob Dole piece of shit to do it

  7. leigh says:

    Oh, Pablo. There is not going to be a brokered convention. The last brokered convention was Truman vs. Dewey.

    Put it out of your mind.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Dewey was a darkhorse?

  9. leigh says:

    Wiki sez:

    Before the era of presidential primary elections, political party conventions were routinely brokered. Adlai Stevenson (of the 1952 Democrat Party) and Thomas Dewey (of the 1948 Republican Party) were the most recent “brokered convention” presidential nominees. The last winning U.S. presidential nominee produced by a brokered convention was Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932.

  10. EBL says:

    I teased Newt over his space comments because his proposal was more pandering for space corridor votes in Florida than anything conservative. But they are not attacking Newt for when he did things that were un-conservative: Nancy Pelosi cuddling, endorsing Dede Scozzafava, denouncing Paul Ryan’s fiscal plan, etc. They don’t seem to have a problem with those things at all.

  11. McGehee says:

    I just hope Santorum sticks it out until early March so I can vote for someone who’s actually running.

  12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Then I guess I’m the one using brokered more specifically.

  13. Roug says:

    We’re going to see how conservative these bastards really are. The tea party conservatives aren’t blinking this time around.

    The establishment GOP could always afford to pander to the Democrats because they knew the rest of us sheep would fall in line again and again. Certainly the nincompoops the GOP put forward as our presidential candidates were just that, but at least they were our nincompoops.

    Not any more. We’ve seen the damage that milquetoast getalongs can produce when they govern. It makes me wonder what really is the basis behind all the attacks on conservatives this year by the establishment pukes. They say they are certain that we will lose a Mittless election, but I think they are being disingenuous.

    They are threatening us with the same thing we are threatening them. They aren’t as worried about a conservative chasing away Democrat voters, but rather are threatening that they themselves will be chased away if a more conservative candidate is nominated to represent them on the ballot.

    Sucks to be them for a change.

  14. happyfeet says:

    McCain was never “our nincompoop” he was a cowardly slut cultivated by the New York Times and National Soros Radio

  15. leigh says:

    Sheep? As in sheeple? That’s a lazy, easy characterization.

    No labels, bitches.

  16. JHoward says:

    leigh for site moderator.

  17. leigh says:

    Awesome! Do I get a lapel pin?

  18. Pablo says:

    Oh, Pablo. There is not going to be a brokered convention. The last brokered convention was Truman vs. Dewey.

    Those are my acceptable options, leigh. Despite your apprehensions about the likelihood of it happening, it remains on the table. That said, I suspect I won’t be voting for a Republican for President, unless I write someone in.

  19. JHoward says:

    If you think it’ll be noticed.

  20. Bob Reed says:

    I understand what “wiki” says, but the last de facto “brokered” convention was in our lifetime, in 1980 when Reagan agreed to take big Bush as VP to bury the hatchet in the party-despite the bad blood between them and acrimonious rhetoric that went on during the primaries.

    Perhaps I’m using the term incorrectly, and maybe my memory is failing me, but there were several close, but inconclusive, floor votes before this deal was struck.

  21. EBL says:

    http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/romney-claims-that-gingrich-was-not.html Look at videos of what a strong supporter of Ronald Reagan that Mitt Romney was…

  22. Ernst Schreiber says:

    . It makes me wonder what really is the basis behind all the attacks on conservatives this year by the establishment pukes. They say they are certain that we will lose a Mittless election, but I think they are being disingenuous.

    They are threatening us with the same thing we are threatening them. They aren’t as worried about a conservative chasing away Democrat voters, but rather are threatening that they themselves will be chased away if a more conservative candidate is nominated to represent them on the ballot.

    One of two things is going on: The Limbaugh Theory is that the Establishment has persuaded itself that Obama is unbeatable, and so you’d better put up a pale imitation in order to minimize losses in the House and preserve your chances for a Senate takeover. (In fairness, they’re also looking at the Mitt organization as the one best able to fundraise and compete, so as not to get totally, completely and utterly overwhelmed by the billion dollar Obama machine.) We can debate the wisdom of giving the electorate a choice between a moderate who’s a phony and a Far Left ideologue pretend the middle is left of center.

    The other theory is what you suggest: Obama is the most vulnerable incumbent since Carter, and that got us Reagan. And we sure as hell don’t need another Reagan mucking with the game. So the Establishment is relying on us to be afraid of four more years of Obama to shove an establishment figure down our throats so we can resuffle the deck chairs and get back to the game, and the hobbits can go back to pounding sand.

  23. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Reagan had the votes to be the nominee Bob. Bush was about making sure the blue-blood Rockefeller non-Establishment didn’t stay home or vote for Carter.

  24. SGT Ted says:

    Well, There is no “suty” per se, but I am using the “Syphilitic Camel” standard for my vote this time. If one appears on the ballot opposed to Obama, I will vote for it.

  25. Bob Reed says:

    Yeah Ernst, I admit my memory may have been flawed. I’d have to look it up to refresh my little gray cells…

    I remember the primary was bare knuckle time, with voodoo economics and such.

  26. SGT Ted says:

    err “duty”. Damned fingers.

  27. geoffb says:

    The other day we were discussing the the attacks on Newt as being anti-Reagan especially the one about the summit. Ben Zeen (a pseudonym) came up with the oldest reference to the speech and noted that legwork would have to be done to get farther back as the Congressional Record only went back online to the 101st Congress. Well someone has done the legwork and here it is.

    Mr. Scheve, incensed at what he felt was a deliberate misrepresentation of his old boss by Abrams and the Romney forces, specifically of Gingrich’s long ago March 21, 1986 “Special Order” speech on the floor of the House, and aware “that most of his [Abrams’] comments had to have been selectively taken from the special order” — Scheve started digging. Since the Congressional Record for 1986 was difficult to obtain electronically, Scheve trekked to the George Mason Library to physically track down the March 21, 1986 edition of the Congressional Record. Locating it, copying and scanning, he was kind enough to send to me.

    So now I’ve read the Gingrich speech that is the source of all the hoopla. All seven, fine print pages worth of it exactly as it appeared in its original form.

    I can only say that what Elliott Abrams wrote in NRO about Newt Gingrich based on this long ago speech is not worthy of Elliott Abrams.

  28. Entropy says:

    Pablo, if you want Santorum to have a chance Gingrich needs to win in FL to keep this thing going.

    Of course Santorum still won’t have much of a chance. And of course, Gingrich probably isn’t going to win FL.

    In some ways, I hope I am very very right about Romney because I think this whole debacle, along with Mittens running on nothing at all, while he Obama to position himself to his right with rank bullshit and Romney applauds his decency for it, it might actually put Libertarians in play this time around.

  29. Entropy says:

    As to what Roug says….

    Really, it would be helpful to testing that theory if we actually had a conservative to chase them away… and not just Newt Gingrich.

    Certainly there are some NotNewts just as there are NotRomneys. Can’t really blaim them. I’m just NotRomney, if for no other reason than to do something crazy, to rock the boat, and to break the intertia of the GOP who’s running the guy who’s turn it is again.

    In many ways this whole primary is Romney’s fault. The bigwigs settled on a Romney run before the primary even started, other options stayed out of the race to clear the path for him, whom the establishment would throw full support behind. Everybody else had books to sell.

    That’s why I supported Perry originally as a good compromise candidate. Certainly a lot of people in the establishment hated him, but uniformly as a bloc… they would have accepted him. There’d be some sniping, but they wouldn’t go nuclear on him like they are on Gingrich, or would on Cain or Bachmann or Paul or Johnson. Santorum, I honestly don’t know.

    If Gingrich pulled this off, we’ll be greeted to a few months of Karl Rove on TV lamenting how unelectable and crazy he is.

  30. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Actually goeff, we’re talking about two different parts of the same Abrams piece. Ben Zeen ran down the oldest reference to the 1985 quote. Messrs. Scheve and Lord have run down the 3/21/1986 quote. We still don’t know what Gingrich was talking about sometime in 1985, but it’s almost assuredly as misrepresented as the 3/21/86 quote.

  31. sdferr says:

    We just had a radio report that Santorum says he’s leaving the state, that he’d prefer to be at home Saturday doing his taxes than campaigning here in a race that’s been reduced to two candidates (I assume he intends the media’s elimination of him from coverage).

  32. geoffb says:

    Damn, I’d seen that as ’85 somehow.

  33. geoff, see this in your link?

    Said Newt:

    All too often the news media itself is grotesquely uncritical and grotesquely willing to use Soviet language to explain Soviet behavior. Possibly it reached its epitome when ABC News put on a paid Soviet propagandist following the President of the United States.

    Heh.

  34. sdferr says:

    “a paid Soviet propagandist”

    I remember bellowing at the tv everytime I saw that stooge. Vladimir Posner, I think his name was.

  35. leigh says:

    But was that really his name, sdferr?

  36. geoffb says:

    I emailed Mr. Lords asking if he or his source had tracked down that 1985 quote yet. Linked to all the things we found the other night. So we shall see.

  37. leigh says:

    That was an excellent article. I enjoyed reading it and hope Mr. Lords answers you.

  38. Pablo says:

    (I assume he intends the media’s elimination of him from coverage).

    That and he doesn’t have the cash to compete on the teevee in several expensive markets.

  39. sdferr says:

    “We just had a radio report that Santorum says he’s leaving the state, that he’d prefer to be at home Saturday doing his taxes than campaigning here in a race that’s been reduced to two candidates (I assume he intends the media’s elimination of him from coverage).”

    This report has been changed at the 1:30pm news reading: now they say, Santorum says he is going home to get his tax filings to fulfill the demands he produce them (Home, because that’s where they are!) and he will return to the state within a day or as soon as he can. This time too, they had a sound bite of Santorum speaking, whereas in the earlier report, there was none.

  40. deadrody says:

    Why ?!!?!? Because a second term for Obama is infinitely worse for this country than a Romney Presidency. And I mean that from a number of perspectives.

    If you want to argue in favor of the “burn it down” viewpoint, by all means, make that argument.

    You are not going to get any points from me for moral posturing over the evils of Romney and his crowd. Again, Obama is infinitely worse.

    Nobody is “rewarding” Romney here. They are punishing the Marxist in Chief, Obama.

  41. deadrody says:

    I certainly hope all you patriots enjoy what you’ll get when you stay home and let Obama win. And every single other person to the right of Obama will see it that way. Please don’t be delusional.

    Come on, stop hedging. Tell us all about how the “burn it down” strategy is going to work. Tell us.

  42. Jeff G. says:

    I certainly hope all you patriots enjoy what you’ll get when you stay home and let Obama win. And every single other person to the right of Obama will see it that way. Please don’t be delusional.

    Come on, stop hedging. Tell us all about how the “burn it down” strategy is going to work. Tell us.

    It works this way: if we want the GOP establishment to stop feeding us candidates we don’t want and who don’t represent our interests or ideology, we stop voting for the candidates we don’t want and who don’t represent our interests or ideology that they insist on feeding us.

    Moreover, we don’t tell them up front that, in the end and no matter what, we’ll vote for whomever they feed us. Or chances are they’ll feed us whomever they want, knowing as they do — because we’ve told them up front — that in the end and no matter what, we’ll vote their way.

    That’s not a healthy relationship. And I’m nobody’s bitch.

  43. Jeff G. says:

    You are not going to get any points from me for moral posturing over the evils of Romney and his crowd. Again, Obama is infinitely worse.

    And you won’t get any points from me for giving your vote away so cheaply, guaranteeing that next go round, we’ll be fed the same diet of crap establishment candidates we’re always fed.

    By the way: I’d say giving the guy your vote so that he can take over as leader of the free world is rewarding him. No matter how you want to rationalize it to yourself — which won’t matter a bit to him either way once he gets what he wants.

  44. SarahW says:

    I say Yea to the gentleman from Colorado or wherever the Australia Day you are living now.

  45. happyfeet says:

    when you stay home and let Obama win

    The only reason I would want Wall Street Romney to win is it would be better for my 401k. But you know what cost of living should go down a lot as America becomes an increasingly squalid third world food slut nation.

    It’s time to start factoring that in.

  46. happyfeet says:

    oops that was supposed to say squalid third world food stamp slut nation

  47. happyfeet says:

    I’m home sick today i think I caught what Mr. sdferr got

    cough cough cough

  48. sdferr says:

    Mine own cough, the cough which is mine, the cough I have which is my very own, has reached the “productive” stage, finally, and the mild fever gone milder. Still can’t taste any food though.

  49. happyfeet says:

    i went for puerto rican last night got lots of leftovers all saturated with garlic…

  50. newrouter says:

    As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque re-writing of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

    But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on.

    link

  51. sdferr says:

    heh, good temper!

  52. happyfeet says:

    slutty Ann Coulter gave poor ugly face for radio Matt Drudge a blowjob for to get him to run that hit simple as that

  53. sdferr says:

    Mitt Romney has taught me to loath Mitt Romney. He has no one to blame but himself.

  54. happyfeet says:

    yes Mitt Romney I tried to resolve to vote for him if he won the nomination but he wore me down

  55. jdw says:

    Will I cast vote for Mitt Romney next November? Well, luckily I’m in a Red State where my vote isn’t necessary to assure the rewarding of our 11 electoral votes to not-O!. But that’s a cop-out, and unworthy of my serious consideration.

    Depends largely on who is the VP nominee. McCain would not have gotten near as many popular votes as he did, if not for his choice. If Romney chooses Rubio or Rand Paul, then I’ll definitely pull the lever for them, and hope Romney wins and slips on a banana peel.

    Oh, and OT but this is the highest-resolution photo of this here mudball were riding about the cosmos ever assembled; an 8K by 8K monster (64 megapixels), just released by NASA. Go ahead; click and test your browser!

  56. geoffb says:

    Gauntlet, trimmed in lace, thrown down.

  57. sdferr says:

    geoffb’s link

  58. geoffb says:

    Thank you!

  59. John Bradley says:

    Saw some talk somewhere to the effect of “now, now, let’s not go calling Coulter, Christie, Krauthammer, NRO, et al a bunch of filthy RINOs — they’re just convinced that the worstest thing that could happen is for BO to be re-elected, and as such they’ve placed ‘electability’ as the highest virtue. And if the thing that gets elected is a useless squish, and they take a great hit to their ConservoPoint score, well, that’s a sacrifice they’re willing to take… because they care so very much!

    Somehow, the Estabilishment GOP reasoning always seems to boil down to “it’s vitally important that we appeal to the Moderates. F*ck the cons, what are they going to do, vote for a Dem?”

    Yet, as I recall from 2008, the answer is “no: they’ll sit on their ass and not vote for anyone”. (I pretty sure I remember some analysis to the fact that, if Rs had voted in the 2008 general in the same numbers they voted in 2004, McCain would have won. The rejection by the base lost that election.)

    So: ‘we’ (present company excepted) will abandon our Scary Principles in a base attempt to attract the Moderates, who are apparently skittish as deer — first hint of a conservative thought and they fly off in a random direction and crash through a plate glass window.

    But by doing so, ‘we’ run the risk of pissing off, or at least depressing the hell out of, the R base, who may or may not decide to suck it up and vote for this year’s edition of Mr. Moderate J. Squishypants.

    I posit that winning the Moderate vote isn’t very useful, even if successfully done.

    They’re unreliable, but more critically, they’re a dead end. Since they (by definition) don’t really follow politics or even care about it one way or the other, they’re not going to do any work for the party. They’re not going to spend much, if any, energy convincing the remaining undecided to vote Team R. There’s no “multiplier effect”.

    By contrast, when you appeal to the base (see “Reagan”), a good chunk of the 40% of the country that is partisan R may get so excited by the possibility that they go out there and, of their own accord, try to win over the moderates. The GOP doesn’t have to do anything at that point, just get out of the way… and stop shitting on the heads of their own voters. Which will, obviously, never happen.

    I think the GOP actually does want to win this election, despite all evidence to the contrary, but only on their own terms. Last thing they want is a bunch of TP people getting all uppity and attempting to take over the reins of power. The Establishment (which doesn’t exist!) would rather lose with a Romney than take any chance at a victory with Newt, Santorum, or any of those other base-friendly candidates they’ve already eliminated.

  60. Pablo says:

    Will I cast vote for Mitt Romney next November? Well, luckily I’m in a Red State where my vote isn’t necessary to assure the rewarding of our 11 electoral votes to not-O!. But that’s a cop-out, and unworthy of my serious consideration.

    On the other end of the scale, I find myself in the bluest state in the union, so I can afford to be nonchalant about taking an impudent yet principled stand.

  61. sdferr says:

    Jan. 23, last Monday:

    RUSH: Now, I’m reticent to give advice what Santorum could do. Look… (sigh) Jeez, you put me in a tight spot. You asked and I feel I have to answer.

    CALLER: I’ve been dreaming of who would be your favorite because I know that I would follow you.

    RUSH: All right.

    CALLER: I would follow you to hell and back. (giggles)

    RUSH: Here’s what I would do: I would stop talking about myself. I’d stop saying, “I did this,” and, “I did that,” and “This is what I did, and those guys aren’t this, and those guys aren’t that.” I’d just start articulating conservatism. I would just make it the fundamental premise of every message of mine. Now you gotta mention the other guys at some point. If you want to highlight the fact that they’re not conservative, fine, but I wouldn’t make that the primary. You can portray yourself as the only genuine conservative by actually doing it, not saying it. It’s probably a fine line here. Santorum is who he is. That’s why I’m reticent to give people advice ’cause people are going to be who they are. And he’s got his people telling him the best way to go about this.

  62. newrouter says:

    on hannity: rick says he is in for the long term.

  63. Jeff G. says:

    Gauntlet, trimmed in lace, thrown down.

    Link not working.

  64. newrouter says:

    rich lowry probably has really good creases ax brooks

  65. leigh says:

    Jeff, it’s in sdferr’s #59.

  66. McGehee says:

    57. jdw posted on 1/27 @ 5:38 pm

    I reasoned long ago that any GOP nominee who needs my one vote to secure Georgia’s electoral votes is in bigger trouble than I could help him with.

    As for the running mate, McCain fooled me with that one last time. Ain’t going to happen a second time.

  67. Ernst Schreiber says:

    re: Lace Gauntlet Challenge:

    Somebody needs to produce the entire transcript of the 3/21/86 special order so we can see who is misrepresenting what about whom.

  68. sdferr says:

    I haven’t seen a link — though I haven’t specifically looked for one either — Ernst, but Levin seemed to think it’s fairly widely available while he was challenging NRO to put the damned thing up so people could look.

  69. Ernst Schreiber says:

    You’d think if NRO wouldn’t put it up, Mr. Lord would.

    Probably with curt “Read it be damned, Mr. Lowry.” But that’s just a guess.

  70. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The main thing to remember is that if, in an effort to curry favor with Massachussets voters, Mitt Romney hadn’t specifically and deliberately distanced himself from Reagan, he wouldn’t now have to discredit the “True Reagan Conservative” bona fides of his primary opponents.

  71. motionview says:

    I don’t have Charles Murray’s book yet but I have been working on something IRL that is reinforced by his work. Here’s a visualization made up from whole cloth on the work ethic/baby mamma/Uncle Sugar/education issue.

  72. sdferr says:

    I went to look in Lord’s piece today, just now, and no link. Which, yep, I agree, it ought to be there.

  73. sdferr says:

    I ain’t getting that Murray thinger to load up motionview, but gotta say, the guy with the buggyout eyes is creeeepy.

  74. motionview says:

    Sorry about that sdferr I don’t know why, it works for me but my posting it may be the cause of that. Here, let me describe the visualization….hey wait a minute.

  75. motionview says:

    After Newt internalizes the Murray book and if he ever gives a speech at the NAACP convention, I believe that bug-eyed guy would represent the general audience response.

  76. Ernst Schreiber says:

    no link

    That’s because so far somebody’s only taken the trouble to track down a copy of the relevant Congressional Record, photocopy the special order in question, scan it, and (I assume) email it to Jeffrey Lord.

    So the question is, will somebody have the guts to format for the web and post it to their website and brave the almost certain wrath of the copyright police? Who among us has the testicular fortitude to risk having their IP siezed, flung to the ground and beaten like Rodney King?

  77. sdferr says:

    It could be my crotchety old computer too, motionview. the bugger just seized up on me a couple of minutes ago (and I lost a half hour of transcription work in the process, goddamnit — thwapping self upside head: hit save! fool!).

  78. bh says:

    To what degree do y’all actually support Newt and to what degree do y’all want to deny Florida from Romney?

    I suppose a second question involves whether or not y’all (sorry, brain lesion, I must now use y’all exclusively) see an endgame here that involves Santorum winning or is it only to deny Romney the win?

    To lay my cards on the table, I view Newt much as I view Romney. I don’t see a win available to us here unless it involves Santorum. Ehhh, I suppose I view Newt beating Romney as somewhat worthwhile — a super meh win — but mainly it’ll just a funny anecdote we’ll tell our kids in the wasteland. To use the pw metaphor we scream off the cliff at 100 with Obama, 90 with Romney, and 85 with Newt.

  79. motionview says:

    I am supporting Santorum. I support Romney, Gingrich, or Paul when they are being attacked for bad reasons or in bad form. Obama I don’t like.

  80. bh says:

    Or, another way, how is Newt not the very definition of losing more slowly?

    This is a guy who constantly undercuts us from the left the last few years. Nancy on the couch with global warming (and taking that as granted with the Gore debate) “right wing social engineering” against necessary entitlement reform, underhanded attacks on the capital of capitalism, and who knows what he’ll do tomorrow when he thinks it’s in his best interest.

    Where is the win here?

  81. bh says:

    Agnostics for Santorum for me, mv.

    He’s had my vote for awhile now.

  82. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I haven’t read the Murray essay yet, but just looking at that graphic on marriage rates, I’d say that’s an argument for taking social issues seriously —they have economic as well as social consequences. (But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?)

    Also, Murray’s book, if the essay is anything to go by, is the latest in a growing genre.

  83. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Oh, I’m sure Newt could get us down to around 70.

    The he’d see the “Moonbase, exit now” sign and floor it.

  84. happyfeet says:

    Newt is a whore but Wall Street Romney is an entitled whore, which is one of the very worst kind.

    I like the plain vanilla whore better.

  85. happyfeet says:

    plus Newt is a tacky slut magnet – that’ll go a long way towards disabusing people of this whole presidents-is-respectable bullshit

  86. sdferr says:

    I can almost persuade myself that if elected, Newt might just prove to be philosophically coopt*[-ible(?)]*[-able(?)]*, if the proper Tea Party operators get to him. Whereas, Romney couldn’t possibly be, on account of his hollow soul.

    With Santorum, it wouldn’t be necessary to co-opt him, as his ideas are generally more compatible with a recovery in the ordinary sense of the term, though, not to say speedy in that direction.

  87. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I think Santorum could win in a two man race. But that entirely depends on the schism between Romney and Gingrich supporters becoming irreparable.

    It would also help if both men became permantly mired with around 30% of the GOP vote.

    If I was in FL, and I wasn’t sold on either Romney or Gingrich (or even Santorum for that matter), I’d vote for Santorum just to keep this thing going.

    Of course, I’m not in FL, and I’m partial to Santorum, now that Bachman and Cain are out.

  88. Ernst Schreiber says:

    [H]ow is Newt not the very definition of losing more slowly?

    This is a guy who constantly undercuts us from the left the last few years. Nancy on the couch with global warming (and taking that as granted with the Gore debate) “right wing social engineering” against necessary entitlement reform, underhanded attacks on the capital of capitalism, and who knows what he’ll do tomorrow when he thinks it’s in his best interest.

    Where is the win here?

    Newt’s a leader in search of followers. My guess is that he’ll stick with whatever following is willing to be lead by him. But he’s going to have to be reminded of it constantly.

  89. motionview says:

    The Murray work provides a nice underpinning for a counter to the class war/envy/OWS campaign that is Obama 2012. Barack Obama and the Progs would have you believe that it is the 1% versus everyone else, and that everything bad that happens is due to greed by the 1%. The reality is that poor people make poor decisions, and their kids make worse decisions, and their grand-kids even worse decisions, to the point that many of those grand-kids are just not employable. By anyone but government that is. The rich have been getting richer because their top priority is making sure their children are educated.

    School choice for every American child is one necessary step.

  90. bh says:

    Newt’s favorite politician of the previous century was FDR. Because he got stuff done. Which is another way of saying that I’d almost take Romney’s lack of a soul. Better a soulless drone than an active big thinker of big projects.

    Actually, no, I don’t want either of them. With either of them we should just plant gardens, buy guns, or see if we can get residency in Hong Kong or New Zealand.

  91. sdferr says:

    I read Newt as an enthusiast, which, isn’t entirely the best sort to have as a leader (Oh, look! Shiny!), but then isn’t utterly incompatible with leadership altogether, and can (and has, in Newt’s case) prove useful on occasion. The trick for the polity is to guide Newt’s enthusiasm into the correct channel at the correct time. Which might mean something like having to sacrifice some goals in order to achieve other more important ones.

  92. bh says:

    I do take #88 and #90 under consideration. Yeah, maybe he’s better than Romney. Maybe.

    He also has it within him to be much, much worse. I suppose we can view gaining the Senate as insurance against his variability. Probably our only real goal regardless.

  93. Ernst Schreiber says:

    >Newt’s favorite politician of the previous century was FDR.

    Another way of reading that is to think of Clinton and Obama and their admiration for Reagan.

    Damn I wish I could be like that guy and do to his party what he did to our party.

    And sdferr is right: never been a fox that knows all the little things Newt knows.

  94. bh says:

    Which might mean something like having to sacrifice some goals in order to achieve other more important ones.

    Again, I hear this. I could buy this from an accountant like Daniels. But, we’re talking about Newt. He’s as likely to sacrifice Medicare reform to achieve zero gravity sex as anything else.

    Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Tell me I’m wrong though.

  95. sdferr says:

    I don’t know about Newt’s favor of FDR, but do wonder whether the historian in him isn’t drawn simply by the wealth of material there, the grand struggles in economics, the even grander War years and global horse-trading that went on. I’ve not read a single book of Newt’s (can’t imagine it, even), but doubt his mentions of FDR have anything to do with political philosophy.

  96. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Probably our only real goal regardless.

    I don’t know how we gain the Senate without also gaining the White House.
    But what the hell? I’m still trying to figure out how we flipped the House without flipping the Senate.

  97. sdferr says:

    What I was thinking bh, is that Newt is amenable to persuasion: so, someone (I don’t know who, exactly) lays out the various hierarchical scenarios of national interest, and in the process, includes in some more or less harmless bits and pieces from among Newt’s idiosyncratic enthusiasms, so that he gets this or that bauble in exchange for the nation getting this or that critical element of reform.

  98. bh says:

    I don’t know about Newt’s favor of FDR […]

    Listen to this and tell me it doesn’t disgust you, sdferr.

  99. bh says:

    This is not someone I can cheer on. I think it’s good to defend him from bullshit attacks because that’s a virtue in itself but I can go no further.

    He is the definition of losing more slowly.

  100. geoffb says:

    Rush said that the 1986 speech ran 7 pages of fine print. I had hopes that he might have put it up but suspect the copyright issues are the bug. That said how can a government publication like The Congressional Record have any copyright issue? It would seem by definition to be in the public domain.

  101. bh says:

    Yes, he is amenable to persuasion, sdferr.

    Now wonder who he’s listening to. He wouldn’t say much of what he says if that was us.

  102. sdferr says:

    Yes, it does disgust me, but then, historians in general disgust me, so that wouldn’t be a surprise. But this, I maintain, is what they do.

  103. Ernst Schreiber says:

    historians in general disgust me

    Hey now!

  104. B. Moe says:

    The only thing I like about Newt is he would be highly entertaining.

    If I am going to hell I would at least enjoy the ride.

  105. sdferr says:

    “Now wonder who he’s listening to.”

    I guess I’m thinking of strategist types like Paul Nitze, Hermann Kahn, Wohlstetter or those other dudes (memory fails at the moment), but serious think tankers who’re bent to the Tea Party view if such can be found (Codevilla?!), who can lay out the sweep and include in enough of the candy to bring Newt along: maybe even make him think he thought it up.

  106. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It won’t be as entertaining once we get to the general. Unless he wins. Then it’s going to be a laugh-riot.

    Emphasis on the riot.

  107. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Does Newt really listen to anybody besides Newt (and Maybe Callista)?

  108. sdferr says:

    Mind you, I’m only attempting to make this case in the event of a “worst-next-to-worst-next-to-worst” case scenario, not to suggest that I’d expect actually good outcomes achieved with relative ease. There won’t be, if Newt’s the president. But middling to temporizing are possible.

  109. bh says:

    But middling to temporizing are possible.

    Santorum! (No, seriously. That’s the furthest reach of my theoretical optimism now.)

  110. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Is it just me, or has NRO taken down the Lowery post on Lord’s AmSpec blog post? I can’t get the text of the post to load, either by itself or on the main page.

  111. sdferr says:

    Same here Ernst. Nothing but title.

  112. sdferr says:

    Though, the comments are still reachable.

  113. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That Murray essay motionview linked is quite good.

    We’re killing ourselves with liberal compassion.

  114. bh says:

    Re-linking that motionview link to the Murray essay because I missed it originally and here we are down here in the thread.

  115. sdferr says:

    Men, for good or ill, are still beasts, and their beastliness will reemerge quite soon, we can expect.

  116. geoffb says:

    I still have the Lowry piece in my cache. If anyone wants the text I’ll either post it in a comment or email it.

  117. sdferr says:

    “We’re killing ourselves with liberal compassion.”

    Hayward, quoting Muggeridge on that theme:

    Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes; ours has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of own intellectual elite. It has carefully nurtured its own barbarians—all reared on the best Dr. Spock lines, sent to progressive schools and colleges, fitted with contraceptives or fed birth pills at puberty; mixing D.H. Lawrence with their Coca-Cola, and imbibing the headier stuff (Marcuse, Chairman Mao, Malcolm X) in evening libations of hot chocolate. Not Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks; not Nazism, which perished along with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism, which was left hanging upside down, along with Mussolini and his mistress, from a lamp-post—none of these, history will record, was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism. A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish.

  118. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That’s a great quote. You gotta source (he said mock-suspiciously)?

  119. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I still have the Lowry piece in my cache

    Whatever you do geoff, don’t lose it. I’m curious to see what it compares to the revision, whenever it’s posted.

  120. geoffb says:

    Hmmm, the Lowry piece had/has this supposed link to the text of the Gingrich speech, http://www.http.com//www.scribd.com/bshapiro708/d/79599982-March-21-1986-Freedom-s-Future-The-Free-World-and-the-Soviet-Empire

    Which now leads to a blank page titled “Topic Related Search” at scribd.

  121. sdferr says:

    Hayward has been running a sort of series. This was the first, titled “The Great Liberal Death Wish”, though the follow-ons took a new title from Burnham’s book, “Suicide of the West”, I, II, III

  122. sdferr says:

    I can’t decide between a nice yellow cake or brownies. Anyone want to make the call?

  123. sdferr says:

    It’s funny, I lived in Murray’s DC superzip and worked in Fishtown.

  124. Ernst Schreiber says:

    tibi gratia sdferr.

    I’d go with brownies, but I like chocolate almost as much as whisky and stogies.

  125. geoffb says:

    Go moderate. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

  126. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That piece is I think in that google reader shit format that my seven year old browser inside my six year old OS on my ten year old eMac and using the same dial-up ISP I’ve had for fourteen years loads everything except the fricken text itself. Go Figure. #OccupyAppleStore

  127. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Go moderate.

    squish

  128. bh says:

    I take that to mean you’re not watching my dubstep youtube links then, Ernst.

    I vote for brownies with chocolate frosting while drinking coffee or a nice oatmeal stout, sdferr.

  129. sdferr says:

    I’m kinda leaning brownies a little, on account of haven’t made ’em in awhile, whereas variants of yellow cake (one pound, one chiffon) a couple of time in the last month. So, brownies it is.

  130. Ernst Schreiber says:

    good chatting with you fellows

    time to occupybed

  131. sdferr says:

    For some reason thinking of Fishtown put me in mind of a Polish sausage maker we used to go visit in Port Richmond back in the day. Kielbasi the likes of which I haven’t had since.

  132. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Yeah, I don’t even have the choice of waiting 3 hrs for mpegs to load anymore. I’m no longer supported. Google’s way of treating me like one of Gingrich’s exes.

  133. geoffb says:

    Downloads as a pdf file from scribd. 177kb.

  134. Curmudgeon says:

    Wait. Is this the same Newt Gingrich who was pushing the Man Made Global Warming Hoax with Nancy Peelouse, and attacking Mitt about Bain Capital in a Michael Mooreish disgusting fashion? And the same Newt who went after Mitt about immigration, in a disgusting Hispandering fashion? Really?

    I’m not happy with Mitt the RINO, but Newt has so many more skeletons in his closet that the Demunists will release for maximum impact.

    At this point, I wish Rick Santorum all the luck in the world.

  135. SarahW says:

    To your questions, in order Yes, no and no, respectively.

    Yes the rat bastard fell in on the AGW bandwagon; he’s hopped off since.

    The “attack on capitalism” wasn’t. It was framed that way of course so unless you cared what he said himself, that would have been one’s takeaway. He actually gave a spirited defense of capitalism, even the tear down and break up and “necessary bankruptcy” parts. His accusation, (no presented for the truth of it, just the gist of it) was that Romney per Bain looted government prop-up money in bad faith, meaning to leave the company a spider-sucked husk on purpose. He said that might be wrong.

    To the third, nope. He said Mitt was full of it really. Mitts plan will end up in the dust bin like all others that came before it (via coroporate payoffs and pressure to keep a low paid immigrant labor pool.) Whearas Perry could only choke out a stammering “heartless” Newt said point a point b point c point d and heartless the least of them though heart is generally though of as a good thing. He convinced me anyway, that he’ll actually have a GATE.
    Mitt will get nothing. Again.

  136. leigh says:

    Newt is polling ahead of Mitt in the last poll I read tonight, but still within the margin of error. Santorum third, and Uncle Ron last.

  137. Jeff G. says:

    A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish.Flat Stomach Exercises

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