It was his response to them:
Voters who once supported Gingrich but have now turned away from him say that his hot-tempered response to the ads, rather than the ads themselves, simply turned them off. “He’s got a temper,” said one Tea Party member at a Nashua coffeehouse Saturday morning. “I don’t want a guy with a temper with his finger on the button.” Other voters said Gingrich’s ill-tempered complaints about the ads distracted them from the former speaker’s message about jobs, the economy, and American renewal.
In South Carolina, Gingrich’s decision to call Romney a liar did not sit well with many Republicans, including those who don’t support Romney. “I think people saw him calling Romney a liar as just un-presidential,” says one well-connected South Carolina political figure. “It just looked unpresidential.”
Life is ten percent about what happens to you, and ninety percent about how you respond to it.
Ya, Newts endearing quality in the debates was to focus on Obama and not attack the other candidates. Looks like he fell for the medias trap after ignoring it for so long.
You mean the Byron York who writes for NRO? That Byron York? From NRO, the ones who are being so even-handed and fair in their criticisms of Newt? Or was it the NRO that wrote the, IMO, feverish, vitriolic, personal, unsigned hit piece against Newt a couple of weeks ago?
IMHO, the idea that Newt’s response was the problem will not be borne out in the results in the southern states.
I saw one of the Romney ads from Iowa and it had four untruths or untrue distortions in, I would say, less than 30 seconds. One of Romney’s ads got four Pinocchios from The WAPO. Maybe that’s the ad I saw. It’s one thing to criticize the other guy’s record. That’s fair game. It’s another to distort the meaning of the guy’s record so that you are telling a lie or leading people to conclude a lie.
I knew that every claim in the ad I saw was a distortion or an untruth, and I didn’t have to do any research. I already knew, and I could have explained easily to any reasonable person why the claims were wrong. There is no way Romney or his consultants didn’t know that the ad, at least the one I saw, was full of untruths and distortion. No way.
But here is the larger point. This election is not just about defeating Obama. Defeating Obama is just the beginning.
The Left has distorted the structure and functioning of our government. This is the deeper meaning I believe is related to this post here, by Rand Simberg.
Is Obama just ignoring or despising the Constitution? Or is he trying to dismantle the constitution so it won’t work anymore?
The Left are banking on their hope that we won’t be able to put the constitution back in place, that things have gone too far, that the DNA of our governmental template is too contaminated or disrupted to be restored. A slow coup d’etat against the American people. The Left is banking on their hope that the government is now too complex, and too many people are receiving payoffs and payments of one kind or another to object to anything the government does. The Left hopes that they can, as InstaPundit is quoting these days, “turn us all into beggars, because beggars are easier to please.”
It is not enough to elect someone who will be a regular “Republican” president. No one in the race but Newt has the required breadth of understanding. No one in the race but Newt has the required dynamic proposals, that will activate the intelligence of the American People. THAT is the reason to support Newt. THAT is the reason to watch Newt’s speeches and find out the plans for the New American Revolution (my words, poetic license, Newt’s not saying that AFAIK).
To the extent that a person hasn’t watched Newt’s speeches that explain the strategy, Newt’s proposals are probably not clear. It is essential to become informed.
Newt is trying to help focus the genius and energy of the American people to actively bring power home to local communities under the 10th Amendment, require continuous improvement in the bureaucracies, make regulations fair and predictable, find the sweet spot on the Laffer curve for ideal LOW TAX RATES and HGH TAX REVENUES.
Newt is proposing that we create, nationally, (can we say audacity, boys and girls?) the kind of feedback communications loop found in Quality Improvement systems — here, Lean Six Sigma — to make it possible for the American people to give feedback to the government about the effects — and unintended effects — of laws. How in the world can that be done? No one knows! But we’re going to try!
Newt is proposing transparency for government using the new technologies — all spending reported online, unless it involves national security; committee meetings on C-SPAN, and more.
Newt is proposing an OPTIONAL flat tax for all taxpayers, and OPTIONAL private Social Security accounts for young people if they want them (which is what OPTIONAL means, of course), while protecting Social Security payments for anyone older, or anyone of any age who wants to stay on the program as it is. These private accounts are OWNED by the taxpayer and are INHERITED the taxpayer’s family, and start building up from the very first job of a teenager. Think about compound interest for 50 or 60 years. And no required retirement date. (These private accounts are an option in Chile and in Chile they now have so much wealth and savings that the Chilean people are allowed to invest some of their private PERSONAL PROPERTY social security savings outside of Chile.)
These proposals are OPTIONAL because Newt thinks it is better to let people decide. (This is the meaning of the “right wing social engineering” line – he was asked if Republicans should force through unpopular plans as Obama had forced through Obamacare.)
But wait, there’s more. All the White House czars gone the first day, by Executive Order. Newt is hoping to repeal Obamacare the first day — perhaps by asking Congress to stay in session after they are sworn in and to pass the legislation to repeal of Obamacare, and then Newt will sign the repeal his first day in office after he has been sworn in. Then they will start to tackle the problems with healthcare so that healthcare stays patient & doctor centered, instead of putting the federal government in charge of what we buy and whether we can get certain procedures, and whether 70-year olds ought to have surgery (!), et cetera.
I am hoping that soon there will be a place to go and see the speeches in which Newt describes his proposals. For right now, if you are interested, go to YouTube, search for “STRONG AMERICA NOW,” which is about Lean Six Sigma, shrinking government and growing citizenry.
You mean the Byron York who writes for NRO? That Byron York?
No, it is the Byron York who writes for the DC Examiner. As far as I know, there is no Byron York who writes for NRO. Not that it really matters where he writes, since this is just an ad hominem argument.
Oh, and one more thing. Peace to all beings.
This is the post by Rand Simberg to which I was referring above: “So Let it Be Written.” About Obama’s contempt for the U.S. Constitution. http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=39579
And, BTW, as I re-read my comment above, I haven’t got more than a small fraction of Newt’s proposals — I didn’t even mention the plans to make the United States the best place to do business in the world, zero capital gains tax, no more death tax, all designed to bring manufacturing back, the 100% expensing so that U.S. manufacturers have the best, most up-to-date equipment in the world, the plans to provide a way to control the border and deport some illegal aliens, while providing a path to LEGALITY, not citizenship, unless they go home and apply at the end of the line (although they can come back and live here legally while they wait, because, since they would be here legally, they could leave and come back legally), and making it easier to get a visa to come to the United States to visit, as a tourist, as a student, to do business. And believe it or not, there is so much more.
It will be relatively easy to restart the economy if we use the methods Reagan used. It’s the new, untried, because as yet not even conceptualized or designed, methods for creating local control that are the most exciting and ultimately the most important.
Because with transparency in government spending, a flat tax, so less lobbyists to do and less for politicians to funnel to their cronies, and with less of a perpetual slush fund phenomenon in Washington, we will get a DIFFERENT KIND OF PERSON who wants to go to Washington.
We will get someone who is not trying to get rich at the expense of the other Americans, or who wants to tell everyone what to do and what to buy, or wants to get rich through insider trading or sweetheart deals or bribes, or whatever they do now to get rich.
So that’s why the long comment above. It’s such a big deal.
Peace to all beings!