Shortly after Newt Gingrich delivered his now famous reply to John King in response to a question about his past marital life, the Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) wrote that the crowd, which rose to its feet in applause, wasn’t cheering Gingrich’s personal life so much as taking the opportunity to express its dislike for the media.
The standing ovation for Newt’s remarks were not an endorsement of his behavior — many conservatives are troubled by Gingrich’s past and character does matter to them, while other conservatives are remembering their own sins and falling back on what they know of mercy, for the time being. No, that ovation was an endorsement of Gingrich’s disdain for the mainstream media, which they share, and a declaration to that same media that their playbook is played-out.
But Rush Limbaugh warned against hoping that “the media” might feel the slightest possibility of remorse, because he believes that they are irrevocably on the other side of an uncrossable divide. He declared that King’s partisan behavior was now the way media figures made their bones; how they showed the capo di tutti capo that they would floss their teeth with a razor blade if it would advance the purposes of the One.
Limbaugh may be taking things too far. But who is on each side of the divide that he refers to? The audience’s resentment was probably directed toward what Charles Murray (the author of the Bell Curve) called the “new upper class” and what Angelo de Codevilla called the “ruling class”.
Both authors characterize the ‘ruling class’ in very similar ways. Charles Murray says, “we have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America.” Codevilla uses much the same language.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity.
Such a class system would require an institution of gatekeepers to determine whether an aspiring politician was ‘one of us’. That role has traditionally been fulfilled by the media. People like John King, in conclave with their friends, networks and social circles would routinely decide among themselves which aspiring candidate were worthy of the imprimatur. Gingrich, it has been decided — precisely by whom and by what basis? but that is another matter — is not going to be given the nod. On the contrary, he marked out for ‘the treatment’.
In former times a candidate would simply have accepted the judgment of the press and go cringingly on his way. That Gingrich did not and that the crowd cheered him on suggests that the media is beginning to lose, if it has not already lost, its legitimacy in that function. John King gave the command and the formerly servile did not obey. On the contrary, they rained a storm of vegetables on his head.
By itself Newt’s rebellion would have been insignificant had it not been set against the background of the global financial crisis, the bursting of the higher education bubble, the declining revenues of the press and rising unemployment. Taken in that context, it is not unreasonable to surmise that not just the media’s but the ‘ruling class’s’ legitimacy is increasingly under question.
The choice between Gingrich and Romney in these circumstances was described by a friend as the problem of the “ugly Shane”.
Gingrich is unattrative; a sinner. He might destroy the Republican Party. But he will throw a wrench in the works. Romney on the other hand, is perfect, married, immaculate, like the homesteader Joe Starrett. Unlike the Man with the Past, he won’t destroy the Republican party. But will he draw on Wilson?
Does the public want an ugly Shane or a handsome Joe Starrett?
While there are problems with the Shane metaphor it strikingly captures an essential aspect of the current political crisis. Barack Obama has been brought into town as old order’s Jack Wilson (the Jack Palance character) as an enforcer who will make sure that we complete the New Deal treatment. The question for the audience is now more than ever, who will stand up to Wilson?
In the movie the screenwriter solves the problem of Shane’s fundamental lawlessness by having him ride into the darkness at the end of his mission. But here the metaphor fails, because if Gingrich is elected President, he is less likely than Shane to ride off in such a romantic fashion. Perhaps both the Republican and the Democratic parties — the whole Washington establishment for that matter — has reached the end of the trail. The appeal of Gingrich is that he might somehow put an end to the system without continuing it in himself.
Very few have been able to put aside power once having gained it. Though Shane as an individual never lived, as a symbol he may never die; but only as he exists in all of the people — in the imagination of the homesteaders — and not in any self-appointed elite.
Shane: I came to get your offer, Ryker.
Ryker:I’m not dealing with you. Where’s Starrett?
Shane: You’re dealing with me, Ryker.
Ryker: I got no quarrel with you, Shane. You can walk out now and no hard feeling.
Shane: What’s your offer, Ryker?
Ryker: To you, not a thing.
Shane: That’s too bad. Too bad. You’ve lived too long. Your kind of days are over.
Ryker: My days? And yours, gunfighter?
Shane:The difference is I know it.
Who among the candidates will draw on Wilson, knowing that his day too, is over?
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To use some Straus and Howe 4th Turning thinking, the problem with Gingrich is that he’s a Boomer, and so a Prophet archtype who values himself too much to do the dirty work and then ride off the stage. We need a Nomad, a Washington who will take hammer and tongs to the New Elite (I call them the Neobility), break their rotten grip on society, and then go quietly back to whatever private life he can muster.
But a Prophet who will dismantle the Neobility is a functional second choice. He may overstay his welcome, but time cures that ill too.
“the problem with Gingrich is that he’s a Boomer” Generational Warfare! Romney’s rich! Class Warfare! Bachman’s a woman! Gender Warfare! Santorum: Geek Warfare! Ron Paul: er, Let’s Not Go There Warfare! Can’t we just stop the hate?
If one must choose a metaphor/character to describe Newt, I’d go with Churchill.
He’s overweight, kinda ugly, kinda ticked-off, quick-witted, and spontaneous. Also, of all the candidates so far, he seems most capable of actually changing the conversation.
Personally I’m tired of “Prom King Presidents” like Mitt, but here’s the real issue: At some point Newt will have to go beyond firing up the frustrated republican base, and start attracting a larger group of supporters.
Newt will never win over the genuine liberals, but if he can make a convincing case to the so-called “Reagan Democrats”, he may have a legitimate shot at winning.
It will take every ounce of sales-talent he’s got to convince the political center he’d make a good Pres.
And if I had to choose a metaphor to describe our ruling elite and the current political meltdown, it would be Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.
There are times the battle needs a General Bradley or an Eisenhower, or even a Montgomery. Then there are times that the battle needs a Patton or an Ariel Sharon.
Gingrich is the tough fighter we need now, notwithstanding all his many flaws. Can anyone imagine Romney answering Juan Williams or John King with the forcefulness of Newt? I can’t. Romney is too much Dudley Do-right and too much Casper Milquetoast to beat the incumbent.
Only someone who will challenge the underlying premises of the MSM and the Left has any chance to prevail.
And how do you think Romney, in the unlikely event that he were to win in November, would fare against the Senate Democrats? He would accommodate and compromise and then be out maneuvered, just like most of the Republicans in the past.
Nope. This time we need as tough and potentially devious a fighter as the ones we are facing. Newt is a highly flawed candidate. In any other year he would be gone. But this time we need someone, even if there is a thuggish and double dealing aspect to him. We need those assets this time.
It boggles my mind how many folks have decided that only Romney can beat Obama and win over the independents and moderates. I have yet to find a single soul, even among my Mormon friends, who is enthusiastic about Romney. This is not a time for someone who will campaign as though he is conducting a Board meeting.
I know that with Newt we are playing with fire and it could ultimately explode in our faces. But if defeating Obama is important, we have to play to win and not merely play cautiously and not-to-lose.
CINCINNATUS
He put down his plow, forsaked he the toil
As perilous hard times befell
And duty fair done he returned to the soil
To the farm that he loved oh so well
Perilous times are now with us today
Our walls under siege every side
By those who’d destroy us and lead us astray
From Washington where they reside
Our own Cincinnatus is now what we need
A fighter who won’t stand there mute
As lefty agendas so quickly proceed
A Shane-like gunslinger like Newt
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In former times a candidate would simply have accepted the judgment of the press and go cringingly on his way.
Piffle. Let’s not overwork the metaphor here.
In former times the press might have more discretion about bringing up issues, and would at least be evenly split around any given candidate. That’s the mainstream, bigtime, establishment press, the whole idea of the first amendment and the American tradition has been for a rude and intrusive press, and that doesn’t make them right, never has, in fact almost guarantees some of them will always be wrong.
Of course the audience wasn’t cheering Newt’s history, and to some extent were cheering him biting back on that issue, but more than that they were cheering that (wait for it) he was arguing that they should DISCUSS SUBSTANTAL ISSUES! Let’s give the audience that much credit.
As for leaving the stage, Newt is already 68 years old, and perforce will be giving up the kingship shortly after he serves for a few years, if not sooner. Not to overwork that metaphor either, it’s a leadership office but not actually a throne, y’know.
Since we seem to have come down to Mitt or Newt (neither person uses a real name), one must perforce choose betwixt the two far-less-than-perfect candidates.
It goes without saying that either will be better than Obama and the cabal of psycho-Leftists around him (they are worse than Obama). I trust neither on my personal number one issue, which is immigration. I think if any of them will truly slice the government down in size it could be Newt, if he chooses to take that path. That’s the thing about him: I can see him if elected decide that he’s going to truly make a mark and do so by massively downsizing government. Maybe. Or he’s just going to be really cozy in the White House and it will be the same old thing of cronies and interests getting greased. Only the names of the cronies will change.
Romney I feel will no matter what be a spending incrementalist. Which is to say, more or less useless. All incrementalists ever manage to do is slow down the train, they never reverse it, not even Reagan (oldsters like me will recall the media’s outrage at the Reagan deficits, measured in quaint sounding billions of dollars).
Gingrich is also all too likely to get caught up in some crazy Futurama ideas rather than deal with nuts and bolts. Romney is more likely to be a nuts and bolts guys.
And who can best beat Obama? I have no idea. Both Mitt and Newt will be assaulted 24×7 by the media the moment the winner is chosen (one hopes a lot of the ammunition is being spent now). Whoever gets the nod will have to step up the plate courageously, run a flawless campaign, be far more forceful about Obama than Presidential candidates usually are, and be ready to take shots and hit back five times as hard.
The whole thing is very depressing.
“Perhaps both the Republican and the Democratic parties — the whole Washington establishment for that matter — has reached the end of the trail.”
My analogy is imagine the Democrats propose jumping off a 20-story building. Anybody with half a brain knows that is a stupid idea. Instead of saying so, the traditional GOP response was to propose jumping off a 10-story building as a compromise and claim that was some kind of victory.
I’m tired of these kind of “victories”. I don’t particularly like Newt but I am tired of weasels who want to make nice with the media. Tell the truth, say what you really think or get lost. Whatever one thinks about NJ Gov Chris Christie, he does have a propensity for calling a lump of turd a lump of turd. One journolistic (sic) blowhard here recently called him a “bully.” If telling the truths like “the state’s broke” and telling teachers “if you can find a job to pay you more money than we can, take it” is being a bully, then I say “Bully on.”
At this dismal time in our nation’s history where we have allowed ourselves to be tricked, addicted and seduced by trillions in unpaid for TBTF/Nanny State schemes, we need someone who is tough enough to take on the all powerful edifice of the Codevilla’s Ruling Elite. This fight is not for the weak of heart. This will be a knock down drag out grudge match to the death. The Ruling Elite will not give up it’s power without an hellacious fight. We need one tough S.O.B. to lead the cause of liberty, justice and the Rule of Law. We may have found him in Newt Gringrich.
To second Batman’s words” in any other year he would be gone. But this time we need someone, even if there is a thuggish and double dealing aspect to him. We need those assets this time.”.
Our acquiescence to the dubious charms of the Nanny State has brought us to the brink of destruction where this election has become the fight for the soul of our nation and whether we will give up our liberty for the faux security of an ever growing, ever controlling Fascist/Corporatist Nanny State. Newt is on our side; that is for sure. Obama, and it appears Romney as well, are on the other.
“what Charles Murray (the author of the Bell Curve) called the “new upper class” and what Angelo de Codevilla called the “ruling class”.”
Or as I call them, the courtiers of the New Versailles.
…Newt was born in 1943. He isn’t a Boomer, by definition.
The significance of the Gingrich-King confrontation is that the ABC hit-piece on
Gingrich had the opposite of the intended effect. Gingrich won the primary. If this becomes a pattern, then the incentive structure of the MSM will have changed.
The case for Romney would be that persons — even persons as fiesty as Newt Gingrich — do not make revolutions. Events do. Therefore if change is coming it will come with Gingrich or Romney.
Some say that revolutions are as much about choosing what to preserve as choosing what to change. From that perspective a Romney might in fact play a more important revolutonary role than a Gingrich, assuming they ran to type. But who knows what types they truly represent deep in their hearts?
What seems clear is that many people know what they do not want. They do not want what Obama stands for, the premises he argues from and increasingly, the class or elite he seems to represent.
There is much more division on what should follow in his stead. To some extent, those who are bent on crashing the current system are willing to trust to luck. Anything but and so they are willing to roll the dice.
The Churchill analogy which Cellec raised is interesting also, though perhaps not for the obvious one. In that comparison, Romney would be Halifax to Newt’s Churchill — remember the comparisons are very inexact. Halifax, you will remember, was much more rational about Britain’s future course in May 1940.
Hitler was then offering a negotiated peace. Halifax believed, probably correctly on the available evidence, that Britain could never beat Hitler, and therefore the best course was to sue for some kind of peace.
Churchill wanted to fight on, even though it was really hopeless as matters stood. And hopeless it was had there been no Pearl Harbor, no Barbarossa. If they never happened, Churchill’s defiant gamble would not have succeeded and he would be remembered very differently today.
But the monumental spin of the wheel worked in Winston’s favor. He won against all odds and great part of his reputation rests on the fact that he had the audacity to lead the country beyond its reasonable limits. Historians would later remark that he humbugged Britain into victory; he deceived them into trying for more than they could hope for. William Manchester wrote:
But we see the glory only in hindsight. At the time, nothing was certain; and the choice between Halifax and Churchill was closer than it seems today. So which is it going to be for 2012? The reflective process of choice may turn out to be far more important than the act of selection itself.
Newt has personal power. That will trump all other considerations. Personal power is attractive to all sorts of demographics and very little will detract from the idea of a champion. Santorum may be the most purely trustworthy conservative but he’s lacking that one quality. Mittens has none of it except the money kind, which appeals to a completely elite demographic. Newt swept across all sorts of imagined boundaries because he carries himself with a sureness that the Right hasn’t seen since Reagan; one that resonates from a well-formed center of his being and thinking.
The case for Romney would be that persons — even persons as fiesty as Newt Gingrich — do not make revolutions. Events do. Therefore if change is coming it will come with Gingrich or Romney.
Or Obambus? So it doesn’t even matter who is elected? Kim Kardashian? Ooops, not old enough, darn it. Maybe we should leave the White House empty and reduce the carbon footprint and just let events transpire?
On the other hand, perhaps it needs a pebble to start a landslide, a grain of sand to irritate an oyster, someone to put his foot down, and that foot is Newt.
Dave, Not true. In generational theory, the generational boundary is ~3/4 years ahead of the defining event (in the US Boomer’s case 1945, the end of WWII). So Newt is a very early Boomer. Obama was born in 1961. By your definition (Boomer = 1946 thru 1964), he’s Boomer as well. Hardly…he’s nihilistic GenXer all the way…and hates anything Boomer with a passion.
Batman, Adm. Ernst King said your thought a little more pithly: “When things go bad, they always call for the sonsabitches.”
perhaps it needs a pebble to start a landslide, a grain of sand to irritate an oyster, someone to put his foot down
I believe you are one of those pebbles, as were the largely unknown members of the Tea Party, and as are perhaps all the commenters on this page. Newt is not making this one on his own. He is cashing a check written by many, many others. Individually they are nothing much, but taken altogether, they are what will give either Newt or Romney force. That’s not to say it doesn’t matter whether Romney or Gingrich or Obama are elected. It matters. But it matters less than we think.
Maybe more importantly, one ought to see Romney or Gingrich as trustees of a flame, but not the flame in itself. Ultimately the choice is going to be a reflection of national mood — whether to gamble or split the difference. But the controlling question is now being answered. Do people want a high risk, high return choice or are they are going for a less variable bet and hope that he will do the right thing on the day.
John Adams caught the interplay between great men and great movements. Neither was completely divorced from the other.
(emphasis mine)
…Newt was born 6-17-43. Go ahead and play The Red Queen, Soviet. I’ll stick with the facts.
Newt should articulate how exactly the MSM will cover and try to influence the 2012 election. It would be easy-anyone here could do it. He should also forecast the slings and arrows that will be employed by the RINO conservative media-Will, Hume and the rest of the “cocktail party conservatives.”
He either wins and takes down the jackals like Amanpour, Gregory, Matthews, Sawyer, the AP, et al., or loses but seriously hastens their demise. These media and ruling class clowns have brought this country to near disaster and are ripe for the taking-never more so and maybe more than they will ever be. Let’s drive that final stake into them and remove a huge obstacle to repairing and restoring this country.
What Newt should have said, “Have you no shame Sir?”
John Adams caught the interplay between great men and great movements. Neither was completely divorced from the other.
A classic debate in the study of history.
I’ve wondered about it at times over the years and have somewhat increased my belief in the individual factors. C.S. Lewis treats this in Perelandra and elsewhere, of course, even Tolkien’s Frodo was the one “meant” for the task, and if he did not find a way, nobody would. Not that he had any great or unique virtues, it’s still more mysterious than that. And of course, ol’ Brutus, and he was an honorable man:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
In Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Lewis repeatedly emphasizes the ever-greater sacrifices that must be made, if individuals don’t step up to take the opportunities, to do the tasks, that come to them. So yes, we can all be droplets, but someone has to take the big plunge, ride the wave, cry cowabunga! Newt in board shorts taking the tube, broh.
–
JoA @ 16: Regarding personal power, or style if you would, let’s choose theme songs for the candidates’ campaigns (or have they already?). Newt’s theme is a populist slaying of the dragon, or perhaps:
Stand, in the end, you’ll still be you
One that’s done all the things you set out to do
Stand, there’s a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you’re goin’ anywhere
Stand for the things you know are right
It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight
Stand, all the things you want are real
You have you to complete and there is no deal
Stand, stand, stand
(Everybody, yeah)
Stand, stand, stand
Stand, you’ve been sitting much too long
There’s a permanent crease in your right and wrong
Stand, there’s a midget standing tall
And a giant beside him about to fall
Stand, stand, stand
Stand, stand, stand
Stand, they will try to make you crawl
And they know what you’re sayin’ makes sense at all
Stand, don’t you know that you are free
Well, at least in your mind if you want to be
Everybody
Stand, stand
Stand
-
Maybe that’s too much for Newt, but can you imagine it for a moment, for Mitt? What exactly is Mitt’s theme, we’re all scrod?
–
ps – anyone seen the edit widget recently? I haven’t. anyway, gotta go, 49′rs Giants starting.
“It will take every ounce of sales-talent he’s got to convince the political center he’d make a good Pres.”
When I was stationed in D.C., I enjoyed going to the many museums. You could always find a better class of Ho in a museum. One of the things I learned about art was that one of the means of determining “true art” was by the different interpretations given by different viewers.
I bring this up because I think you are mistaken as to the meaning of the art at this moment.
Berry is in deep sh!t. Unemployment numbers just took their post minimum wage increase dive. All those burger flippers and super sizers are now in the unemployment line.
Non of them will be getting jobs on a pipeline anytime soon . The ripple effect of that rock in the pond hasn’t been felt yet.
Berry is engulfed by a flock of black swans. Eventually, one will land on his pond. Then another. And another. By the time the entire flock lands, it will no longer be his pond.
Obama will be running against Obama. The (R) candidate will be running against Obama’s record. Obama’s chances are as dismal as his record.
So all the GOP candidate needs to do is convince voters he is still breathing and not Obama.
That is why all the nutters came out of the woodwork this cycle. Unless you are a flack for the (D)’s, anyone with the slightest experience in politics recognises that teh won is the most vulnerable incumbent in the history of American politics. The worst numbers in the history of polling. By June, July, the writing on the wall will be to big for even the most die hard (D) to ignore. By then an empty cereal box will be 10 points ahead of Obama. The flock of black swans will still be wheeling around Obama’s head.
THIS WILL GET UGLY BEFORE IT”S OVER.
..Newt is an SOB and a gut shooter, but he’s our SOB. If the Reptilians pick him it’s because Romney is a wimp and Newt will go after Barry like a rattlesnake in a rabbit hutch. Even if Newt loses, he’ll pull the knickers off of Obama and leave him bleeding and naked. Gingrinch will do that even if it costs him the election, because that’s what he does best. He will enjoy every minute of it.
Who but America could have made a Newt Gingrich (BTW “Newt” IS a real name, the short version of Newton, wheras “Mitt” stretched in similar manner becomes Mittens. At any rate therfore, Mitt is not even a real name, like the figure who wears it)? Not Europe, though they need a Newton intensely! Not Canada, who puts up in reaction to America a kind of faux free enterpriser, which is really still not much more than nobless oblige. Not Britain, though I can imagine them looking on, once they got to know him, in a kind of friendly envy saying, “Who but America?” this brilliant creature, this “Gingrich” who is capable of enriching his country. Stealing it back from the Chinese. Plowing ahead with intimidation so that Iran has to recognize that THEY are not the superpower in the driver’s seat! This creature with that one gift of spirit so rare yet so needed to repair what Obama has done and that virtue is “gumption.” Gumption of a man so versed in free enterprise, in that Jack Kempian supply-side that he has become its very personification. If free enterprise is the only true justification for capitalism, then the choice is obvious for America to become herself – and not a European model of socialism, nor a George Mittens III model of Monopoly. Free Enterprise is what we should wish for; I might wisely borrow just enough to start at shop at a local shopping centre that I can imagine, IMAGINE it being quite successful, if Free Enterprise is allowed to do its thing, neither squelched by “social democracy” and not given a leg to stand on by some “Monopoly in Mittens.” Newt is the army brat that conceived new ways of making money fairly while yet a teen, by imagine, industry, and sheer enthusiasm – a cornucopia of ideas nothing short of genius. A prodigy, perhaps not unlike Bill Clinton. Sticking by the rules is an annoyance to the young (an mature!) geniusses! But unlike Clinton, Newt, clearly convinces by the brilliance of the ideas themselves in their proper setting of Free Enterprise, not by how he looks in the mirror! Newt Like many mentioned above, and so unlike Clinton (and no doubt Mitt), is capable of saying, “No!” No to Achmedinejad! No to the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in America! No to myopic and self-righteous environmentalists blocking a project scaresly without rival in being FOR the interests of the USA! Putting Newt in charge may just work – may just be “the thing” required, audaciously like putting Joe Kennedy in charge of the SEC because he knew the ropes and valued his career and reputation more than just the money he had milked like Mittens out of the system. This is a challenge for America to really come of age – for enough of us to say “No!” to mere hollywood images of our leaders and those we value and cherish the most, like would Lincoln have made it in todays world? He was uglier than Newt by far! His light came entirely from within. In that respect, I don’t see Romney bringing really anything from within because there is no “within” in him! But Newt I can imagine his enthusiasm for a project worthy of us, to recover our soul, our history, which is, after all, his first love, even more than his wives…
Gingrich is definitely a smart chameleon. Is that why his nickname is “Newt”? Maybe events will cause the chameleon to assume the persona that represents the Country Class (as Codevilla calls those who oppose the Ruling Class).
Codevilla lists some presumptions of the Ruling Class – denying the legitimacy of its opponents; obvious frauds like ethanol mandates and pretending that taxes can control climate change; claiming superior intellect and morality – and concludes that the Country Class must break down the Ruling Class’s presumptions.
Gingrich has started to do just that, but so far only as a response to personal attacks. Win or lose, Gingrich can only be useful as a tool of the Country Class. I don’t think it’s the time for an heroic and mighty American leader. I think it’s the time for the disillusioned Country Class to lead themselves. The Country Class may be able to use smart chameleon Gingrich as their initial tool for breaking down the presumptions of the Ruling Class.
That’s as far as it goes with Gingrich – no Churchill he. At best he can be just a tool of the Country Class. To use the Shane analogy – Shane was just a temporary tool of the homesteader class.
Whether Gingrich flames out in the nomination process, or in a Presidential Election, or in the Office of President may not be the point. If there is any point at all to Gingrich it is to serve as a temporary tool of the Country Class in their long effort to prevail over the Ruling Class. One election cycle cannot break 50 years of developing bad habits where now people accept what has been done to them simply because it has been done.
How far Gingrich can go in serving the Country Class will be determined by happenstance. Events will roll him like dice and we’ll see how often he comes up with a winning face.
Chanan —
Paragraphs… they don’t bite!
26. Chanan Magdalen
So that’s where “Newt” comes from. Didn’t know that.
A GOP Candidate’s Bitter Ex-Wife Receives More Coverage Than a Video of Obama Dining with Terrorist-Supporters
By Lauri B. Regan
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/a_gop_candidates_bitter_ex-wife_receives_more_coverage_than_a_video_of_obama_dining_with_terrorist_s.html
Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll know who you are
http://davidmweinberg.com/2012/01/21/tell-me-who-your-friends-are%E2%80%A6/
ss @ 27: How far Gingrich can go in serving the Country Class will be determined by happenstance. Events will roll him like dice and we’ll see how often he comes up with a winning face.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, unless it’s the excellent question of, what happens if he wins? And a good question that is. I’m not impressed with his knowledge of the economic situation. Things are not now the way they’ve been, and I don’t know that a 68yo Newt really knows the way forward, or can lead a team or assemble a team etc. Really, do any of us who have an inkling of where things are today, have any significant hope for any Republican coming into office and *fixing* things in any big way? Just about as easy to go nihilist, give it to Obambus for another four years and let it all hang out. Give it to LuapNor and guarantee the disaster on our own terms.
Into these calculations comes the Frack of Power, enough hydrocarbons worldwide to save us all from ourselves for a generation, if maroons like Obambus will simply stand aside – not that he’s going to block their exploitation in Europe, China, Israel, anywhere but here, and even used up everywhere but here, they are a godsend.
So, is the next president, if he is not a total maroon like this one, going to step into an automatic win, or is there something wrong with this fracking outlook and things are as grim going forward as they’ve seemed for a while? Nor will fracking oil stop Iran from building nukes.
OTOH, news today that Honda is going to build the new (hybrid) NSX here in the states, since we’re the biggest market for it anyway. Someone else is going to start assembling tvs in the US again. The price of labor in China has been going up 20% a year, and in maybe just a few more years, we may be at that mythical inflection point where their huge cost advantage is muted, mooted, whatever. Could that happen by 2016? Mebbe. Nice to be on top when that happens, and you can claim credit for it.
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oh lookie, the edit widget, at last!
W. quoted Manchester citing Berlin who: saw him as a leader who imposed his “imagination and his will upon his countrymen,” idealizing them “with such intensity that in the end they approached his ideal and began to see themselves as he saw them.” In doing so he “transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armour.”
I would submit that that is the pure Essence of Leadership. Of course Winnie was a close call, electorally as well as militarily. But that is when leadership is most vitally needed, when the question is in grievous doubt and the consequences of failure fatally dire.
Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
“Obama’s chances are as dismal as his record.” You misunderestimate how much Obama can tear down Newt, and how much (financial dealings) dirt is yet to come out about the Newtster, and how much fraud the Democrats can engage in to pad their totals.
All BCers agree Obama cannot run on his own pathetic economic record, but that’s a far cry from saying Newt is the guy to win Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan — the true pivot point of this race, since I do expect Florida to go red short of massive fraud in Miami.
This is a guy who couldn’t even manage 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot in his home state of Virginia. This is a guy whom, Bryan Preston’s spinning aside, gets less turnout at events in deeply pro-military and perhaps pro-MIC South Carolina than the hated Ron Paul (if you want a candidate the bipartisan ruling class hates hates hates and goes out of its way to ignore or discredit, look no further than the Doctor, who may have been robbed in Iowa where 5-7 counties coinciding with large universities simply failed to deliver verified results). Ho hum, nothing to see there folks, move on.
While I certainly would vote for Charlie Sheen over Obama, let’s not drink our own Red State koolaid and pretend that there aren’t vast swathes of this country that are gonna vote to keep the stash coming, even when there is no stash.
And even in the debates where Republicans believe Newt can destroy Obama, there are hidden weaknesses that could be exposed. For example Newt could accuse Obama of kowtowing to the Evil Empire Russkies, and Obama would simply reply, “Would you prefer I have not kept our troops supplied in Afghanistan via Russia?” Even the Fox News crowd tends to be blind to its own vulnerabilities and to how sick the American people are of all these wars — hence the useful service Ron Paul has performed by pointing the future of the GOP as a conservatarian, less interventionist, decentralizing party. Unless of course you are so blind as to think the GOP can rely on the geezer vote and all young people and particularly those who serve in the military should just be dismissed and sneered at as whiners.
Obama of course is just as much a deployer of American military and even intelligence operatives as Dubya, but he gets a pass for it due to his skin color, party affiliation and ‘leading from behind’ and creating the fiction that Europeans overthrew the Duck of Death when that was U.S.-led from start to finish.
Fortunately for Newt, 90% of voters are going to vote on the economy first and last, so they won’t pay attention to his pro-amnesty thoughts, weird globalist musings with the Tofflers, or the likelihood that he’ll attack Iran if Obama doesn’t do it for him. It will be about the economy first and last. And Newt saying he’d fire Bernanke and consider a gold standard has helped, not hurt him. Even the PJMers like Preston and Roger Simon now that the hated Ronulans have been beaten back seem willing to admit this in the cold light of day.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/01/20/south-carolina-report-3-the-ron-paul-perplex/
http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/22/coulter-with-newt-gingrich-you-throw-out-the-baby-and-keep-the-bath-water-video/
Coulter: You throw out the baby and keep the bathwater with Newt Gingrich
31. Josh
I’m saying that Newt is a shape-shifter and outside forces and random events will determine what shape he assumes. With luck he’ll be able to shape-shift into a useful form and stay in that useful persona just as long events keep him there. How far that will take him is anybody’s guess.
I think that Churchill was a fully formed, stiff spined, courageous, intensely patriotic oddball. A time came that specifically needed him and he was magnificent. Same with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Based on seeing Newt from far away and not actually knowing him, he doesn’t seem to be a fully formed person. Even if Newt actually becomes President – I think that outside forces will cause him to shape-shift and eventually to assume a form/persona that won’t be useful any more.
Newt is a living crap shoot. Maybe that’s what the time requires and he’ll win big. Maybe he’ll wreck while hot-dogging, like an Italian cruise ship.
Of course I could be completely wrong but happily BC is about expressing thoughts and opinions, not being all seeing.
Stevesmith…
In as much as the cruise ship should’ve been under the direct control of a harbor pilot…
How is it that the PILOT is not mentioned by the media — at all?
FYI, merchant captains do NOT sail that last few miles into a port — a LOCAL pilot is always sent out who is totally up to speed on harbor mouth conditions.
You’ll see references to this practice even in river-boat days — Mark Twain and all.
——
Dave…
In ‘Generations’ the authors EXPLICITLY state that Boomers date from 1943. Period. They invented the term. They set the time period.
I would consider the Wan a Boomer, too. It’s just that he’s a red diaper Boomer.
—–
Newt has SO MUCH DIRTY LAUNDRY that the MSM (D) will have a field day.
He went from rags to centimillionaire status PURELY by way of K-Street and log rolling.
Herman Cain WAS the man — until the opfor discovered that his wife had weak nerves.
Like L3, I suspect that the election is being decided here and now — not in November.
So basically if people are voting for Newt, they’re doing it in spite of their religious beliefs (think Pat Buchanan’s line about their being plenty of rejoicing when the whore repents and comes back to the church but we shouldn’t put her in charge of the choir), in spite of their better judgement about his ego, and with little enthusiasm, at least when compared to the people who show up for Paul. The Romney SC rally on TV looked like ‘more cheer in a graveyard’ to quote Gimli’s line from The Two Towers.
I agree with Confederate H that the burden of proof has ever been on the ‘MIC pays for itself’ crowd here to prove that it really does — that defending Saudi Arabia and the like long-term has served U.S. interests. Since we all know the chances of the U.S. military just going poof (even if the country is in a state of economic collapse and entitlements implode) are nil. Hell, judging by the NDAA the elites want the military to be ready to act against the People if or when the SHTF.
Could we just settle for military bases in ten or twenty countries instead of 110? As Rand Paul says, could we just be less interventionist if we cannot be non-interventionist? And could we put more troops on our border right opposite Ciudad Juarez where the war zone is instead of in the Hindu Kush?
When and if Newt goes down in flames, Rand Paul will be waiting in 2016 with a donor list that’s already raised tens of millions. As Subotai says, if we still have elections by then.
SteveSmith, I am not sure where you get Newt as a Chameleon serving the Country Class as you call it. Not much evidence to support that. Newt has taken a few misdirected ideology odysseys, in search of solutions to our problems, that is for sure. But he has always championed the Constitution in a basically conservative direction.
The profile of your typical Country Class servant is a finger in the wind moderate who is for sale to the highest bidder, with the flimsiest set of ideals you ever saw. Kinda like Romney,
For better of worse, Newt is a man of ideas. His ideas have run afoul of the Country Club Republican Establishment in the past, and that’s why he got hammered with his ethics violations. The Establishment hates Newt because he won’t always play ball their way, and that’s why he got so many of the old Crony Pubs agin him.
In addition, Newt has called for the breaking up of the TBTF; an unpardonable sin among you Country Class set.
#26 Chanan Magdalen,
I won’t argue your points on America, but as for Canada, if you really think Stephen Harper was elected in reaction to America’s choices, if you really think he is “…a kind of faux free enterpriser, which is really still not much more than nobless oblige”, you are sorely mistaken.
I would suggest that you read a bit about Western Alienation, the Reform Party in Canada, Harper’s important role in it, and how it shaped our modern politics. The reason why I suggest such is because it contains important lessons that may benefit American conservatives.
I hate to say it Wretchard, but the choice of Newt or Mitt is basically irrelevant. Whoever the Republican candidate will be, he cannot alter the fundamental facts of demography and the electoral college. Obama needs only 270 electoral college votes to win. He can obtain that by winning 20 states with the necessary large populations and corresponding large numbers of electoral college votes. States such as CA, NY, IL and others which are overwhelmingly democratic and will remain so.
Obama can count on the votes of the 30-40% of the population in those states who are dependent upon government handouts or receive government benefits such as welfare, affirmative action, etc. Obama can count on the media to report favorably on anything he does and demonize the republican as someone who will let the old and poor starve. Democrats always cheat in national elections and always get away with it, and that alone guarantees IL and other states as well will be his. The dismal state of the economy does not matter when Obama can simply write off 30 states. Foreign policy will not matter either as Obama can and will practice appeasement to campaign on the “tide of war receding” under his watch.
I do not write this happily. I think 5 more years of Obama will be utterly disastrous for the USA and the West in general, but I see no way to avoid it.
I am originally from SC, born and raised there, and I think they stood up and cheered for Newt Gingrich because South Carolinians do not like being pushed around by some outside entity – and they saw that happening to Newt. In NY and CA they allow themselves to be pushed around if it is by the In crowd. In Illinois they allow themelves to be pushed around if the pushers were sent by the right people and if they get a piece of the action.
The new Boeing plant situation is fresh in the minds of the people in SC as a great example.
Interestingly enough, Newt’s lowest percentages, 32%-33% came from the two laregst urban areas in the State. And Herman Cain still got 1%-2%.
I plan to vote for Newt in the Florida Primary – as I have since Perry went downhill and Cain dropped out.
Newt is simply the only one with true vision. All the others to some degree or another have the right inclinations; they lean the right way, either based on dislikes (like Ron Paul) or on management skills (like Romney) and to some extent on ideology (like Santorum). But Newt Gingrich is the only one who sees what the spirit of the USA is like and understands its potential. You can see it in his novels, among other places.
I am hoping that Newt’s strength in the primaries drags everybody to the right, as a minimum. And the ONE thing we do NOT need is the “sprit of compromise” that the press mouths on about so often. Compromise got us where we are today.
At least Newt can think on his feet. Somewhat refreshingly, he is not afraid to speak his mind which has and will continue to get him into some feather ruffling trouble. I figure he picked up one or two liberals after his X’s claim of the open marriage request true or not. The liberal media/press desperately needs to be busted down a few notches but they will be gunning hard for him within rebut proof formats.
I am not in Newt’s camp yet but Mitt reminds me way too much of McCain and his unwillingness to draw attention to the troubling aspects of Obama.
Romney is not perfect as the MSM will eventually go digging after the racism of the earlier circa 1970 Mormons and in which Romney was present. If Romney is smart, he’ll contrast it as being nothing to the racism at Obama’s church. In the losing battle the MSM will ensure he may actually open people’s eyes to the racial bigotry of the sitting President and why black American’s generally get a pass saying the most amazing things – the very things in fact that they cry loudest against.
“Doublethink” or plain stupidity – take your pick.
cellec @ 3 said:
“If one must choose a metaphor/character to describe Newt, I’d go with Churchill. He’s overweight, kinda ugly, kinda ticked-off, quick-witted, and spontaneous. Also, of all the candidates so far, he seems most capable of actually changing the conversation.”
I agree with this analysis.
stevesmith @ 34 said:
“I think that Churchill was a fully formed, stiff spined, courageous, intensely patriotic oddball.”
Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty put forward the idea of a naval attack on the Dardanelles that ultimately lead to the catastrophic Gallipoli Campaign. A disaster of that magnitude would normally have terminated a military/political leader’s career. Fortunately, Churchill was given a another chance and as Prime Minister lead England to victory in WW-II. In my opinion, Churchill’s mixed history of success and failure adds rather than detracts to the argument that Gingrich might by the American analogue to Churchill.
dlsada @ 21 said:
“Newt should articulate how exactly the MSM will cover and try to influence the 2012 election. … He either wins and takes down the jackals like Amanpour, Gregory, Matthews, Sawyer, the AP, et al., or loses but seriously hastens their demise. These media and ruling class clowns have brought this country to near disaster and are ripe for the taking-never more so and maybe more than they will ever be. Let’s drive that final stake into them and remove a huge obstacle to repairing and restoring this country.”
I strongly agree with dlsada’s comment. The MSM stage managed Obama election. One can argue that the MSM did this because they’re controlled by moonbats and socialists and/or because they thought getting Obama elected would be “entertaining”. Whatever the reason, they used their influence to get someone elected who was utterly incompetent to serve as president during a time of extreme national peril due to economic collapse and Islamic fascism. The MSM’s behavior was utterly irresponsible and they need to have their guts ripped out. I hope Gingrich can arrange this should he be elected president.
Saile Furman @ 42 said:
“Romney is not perfect as the MSM will eventually go digging after the racism of the earlier circa 1970 Mormons and in which Romney was present..”
I’m certain that Romney has lots of “history” and closeted skeletons that the MSM can use against him during the general election. The MSM want Obama to win the general election. The best way to do that is to orchestrate the nomination of a Republican opponent with some deeply hidden booby trap that can be detonated as an “October Surprise”. Gingrich has LOTS of issues but they’re all in plain view. Those issues have no traction as October Surprises. Also the “Mormon Thing” is a stick that the MSM can beat on Romney’s head ad nauseum. The Mormon Church is the second most ridiculous mainstream religion (Scientology takes first place). During September through November, it is guaranteed that the MSM will run detailed documentaries providing proof positive that Mormonism is a seriously screwed up religion and anyone who is a part of that religion is suspect and untrustworthy. It will be a campaign directed against the Mormon Church and not Romney but the intent will be to get Obama reelected.
Newt Gingrich is also a “french” speaker, he passed his youth in France, like Romney, hmm, didn’t Newt launched a video of Romney speaking french, ment to ruin his credibility as a Republican candidate?
http://www.levif.be/info/belga-politique/usa-newt-gingrich-reconnait-avoir-parle-francais-il-y-a-fort-longtemps/article-4000032996109.htm#
Marie, all the neocons including their corpulent overlord Richard Perle love France but love bashing the French on Fox News even more. It’s for the rubes you see. Hell, if the neocons actually spent any time in Moscow they’d probably end up loving the place like Steve Forbes, Bruce Willis, and Sly Stallone.
37. Unsk
“Country Class” is the term that Angelo Codevilla uses to describe those voters who feel that no political party represents their interests. The tea party is a big part of the Country Class. Codevilla thinks that the Democratic and Republican Parties between them satisfy only one third of the electorate. The other two thirds vote for the two big parties but don’t support them. He estimates that only 25% of those who vote Republican actually support the Republican Party. I think he calls them the Country Class because they represent and support their country, America and do not support the Ruling Class.
As to Gingrich being a smart chameleon. He is very smart but changeable. His contract with America was brilliant and captured the feeling of the electorate at that time. But I don’t think he stuck with it and he let it mutate into something else as the political climate changed. When that other kind of climate change was in the ascendant he apparently made a joint statement with Nancy Pelosi supporting it. Now, climate change is used and dirty he’s not so sure. Sometimes he seems to be for capitalism, sometimes maybe not. Sometimes he supports socialist Banks (Fannie and Freddie), sometimes he doesn’t.
But he is very smart and can fight hard for his cause of the day.
35. blert
Yes, you are right about pilots. In my Province the Pacific Pilotage Authority, which oversees the coastal waters of B.C., requires that all large vessels within three kilometres of shoreline take on a pilot to help manoeuvre the vessel through the area’s extensive inside waterways and intricate passages. That rule means cruise ships require two pilots with one on the bridge at all times.
Not all jurisdictions around the world require pilots as often as we do in N. America. What are the rules in Italy?
Anyway, that’s my comment #4.
Who among the candidates will draw on Wilson, knowing that his day too, is over?
………….
There’s less Wilson there than meets the eye…
Europe has been the template of the democratic agenda. That is, Europe is what the liberals compare themselves too. They want to match the European project. Most writers you read in the NY Times attend the davos conferences… Davos gives them their talking points. A big reason for the next decade of republican majorities all over is the profound embarrassment of liberals by the government debts they have run up…but as the opening speech at Davos points out–its not just the debts.
The opening lines from the DAVOS conference in Switzerland where the UBER liberals get their marching orders “We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.
“Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/davos-elites-seek-reforms-outdated-capitalism-225121095.html
For many, many years it has been obvious but unstated that those in power who should have been opposed to the so-called Progressive agenda have engaged in a continuing policy of preemptive surrender and retreat. And why not? Its a lot more lucrative to tolerate and participate in big government than small government. All of the politicians seem to do well under such an agenda. You may not be a millionaire when you go there, but the odds are you will be afterwards. And the bigger the government is the higher the payout is for “serving” as a member of it.
Gingrich’s true crime is that he is a traitor to his class and the political country club. Good for him. And to Hell with people whose only interest is victory for the Republican party. Its all about what individual representatives do and believe–the political party label is immaterial. A Joseph Stalin is a Joseph Stalin regardless of the political party he is affiliated with. The idea that you would support somebody based upon a mere label is the kind of excuse for thinking that got us into the mess we are now.
One of the major reasons Obama won the presidency was the anti-war movement. Remember that? For eight years we endured those jackals, on the streets, in Congress comparing our soldiers to Nazis, etc. Then, mission accomplished, they disappeared. In this episode with ABC News bringing out Marianne Gingrich to tear down Newt before the SC primary, we have more of the same. The strategy is to employ outrage and shame not for moral purpose but for political purpose. It is one with Alynski’s admonition to hold the enemy by his own high standards. Having moved beyond good and evil, the left is guided by a will to power, and it will with great relish use public mores and personal moralities on scale to achieve its ends.
I’d like to see it played out via game theory. Take one actor and place him a game where his moves are constrained by his moral sensitivities and put him at odds against another willing to use those constraints to his own advantage. Then see who wins most often. Which strategy wins out over iterations? The closest thing that comes to mind is the bi-annual national spectacle that is CBS’ _Survivor_. That’s the original reality show in which stranded castaways vote each other out of the tribe until there’s a sole survivor. The format favors the villains. Hundreds have come to play vowing to get through without a lie, without the skullduggery and backstabs, but only one has ever succeeded (Ethan Zohn).
I wonder if the voters of South Carolina have made a savvy game-theory move. The smartest way to defeat the tactic of the moral exploiter is to ignore him. Disarm him of that weapon. Yes, it is well and good to play the game the honorable way and never to compromise one’s morals. To be very sure one’s always in the right the wisest course of action does seem to turn the other cheek and simply not fight back, to be aloof from the game. This is politics, like _Survivor_, a game of power where losses do come with a cost.
With times as they are, can anyone afford such a course tho? I do hope that, come the general campaign when Obama’s forces are caterwauling as they will in high dudgeon about all the unforgivable failings, lapses, and myopias of whoever the opposing nominee will be, that rest of the nation follows the voters of South Carolina during this primary – that they will not be tripped out by the moral exploiters!
Here are some scenes from the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away (2000)
Tom Hanks discusses his future with Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-365iujWk8
Wilson Dooms Tom Hanks (Hanks first attempts to make fire fail)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPSRW45Obv0&feature=related
Tom Hanks makes fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS7Og1zvdy8
Tom Hanks says goodbye to Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaxjEpar91g&feature=related
Here’s a humorous tribute to Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDSion_tqW4&feature=related
My favorite Jack Palance line, “Day ain’t over yet.”
Newt may not be Winston Churchill, for one thing Gingrich never served in uniform, but he might want to be, and he sure would get the son of Jenny the American’s and honorary US citizen in his own right’s bust back.
35. Blert, a pilot captain would indeed be employed to take an ocean going vessel of any size into a port (hence the Norfolk newspaper, the “Virginian-Pilot”). That would be true of a carefully planned sailing. However, I think the story I have read is that the captain of this ship decided to “buzz” the island to put on a show for the locals and to impress a former captain of that vessel. This was a joy-ride, a stunt, not coming into port to unload cargo, or passengers. The ship was sailing on the “wrong” side of the island, hence the encounter with the rock.
Interesting, “You can tell a lot about a man by who his friends are.” I would also add his allies. I’ve noticed the Jerry Pournelle thinks well of Newt and that Rick Perry has endorsed him, said that he is going to campaign for him and “directed his campaign staff to aid Gingrich.”
His enemies seem to be those well entrenched into the ruling class, Ronulans, and those who revel in believing in all the mud that has been thrown at Newt over the years.
Also, I was born in 1945 and while I could be called a “boomer” I really haven’t had much use for what the ruling class calls a “boomer”. In fact I pretty much resent those who stereotype whole generations over the actions of what amounts to only partial samples of those generations. We weren’t all at Woodstock, many of us were fighting in strange places, working hard and dirty jobs and a great many of us really, really despise the ruling class, and Democrats.
Dear wretchard,
For years, decades really, I have wondered why Republican presidential candidates in the post-Reagan era have all been cut from the same cloth as Bush Sr. It is only now, with the Gingrich candidacy, that I have come to some understanding of what propels go-along-to-get-along types to the GOP presidential nomination and other high stations: truly conservative self-starters, like Reagan himself, pose a threat to all those with a vested interest in the Republican status quo. They are the enemy within.
It is only because of the long debate season and the opportunity it has given the clever, articulate, and very human Gingrich to communicate directly with the Republican rank and file that this season’s Bush clone doesn’t have a lock on the nomination. It is just this skill, the ability to speak directly to the voters, which allowed Reagan to advance to the White House and may well propel Gingrich to the same position. The power of the GOP Brahmins, quite thankfully, is not absolute.
It was at first striking, but now deeply troubling, to witness Republican leaders, in both government and the media, become increasingly unhinged by the building strength of the Gingrich candidacy. There is a part of me that always understood that George Will was a milquetoast conservative and not one to be counted on. What was not expected was how many in the conservative punditocracy, including some of my favorite bloggers, have a visceral dislike of Newt, the traitor to country club conservatism. And I thought it was only BHO and the liberal elite who view the Republican rank and file as The Great Unwashed.
Yours truly,
ThOR
Viktor:
What’s your position on the Russian intervention in Georgia? I’m curious.
There can be no doubt that either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich would be an immense improvement over Obama.
Those selling Romney seem to be saying that in order not to scare off the independents they have to tell them that he’s different than Obama but not “that” different. In other words they seem to be saying as Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men “You can’t handle the truth!!”
Gingrich, it increasingly seems, is not selling Gingrich but is instead selling a vision and shouting to the American people “You CAN handle the truth!!!” He is not choosing his words so carefully so as not to offend anyone but rather taking delight in offending those who lack the capacity for vision.
He is, in essence, selling America to Americans. What can be better than that?
“Where there is no vision the people perish”
None of the current Republican candidates can win against Obama, so we might as well go with a guy that’s going to go down swinging. That’s either Newt or Ron Paul.
If Romney gets the nomination, we know how this ends: it’s Dole and McCain all over again. Like them, Romney will try to take “the high road” (i.e. surrender his balls to the media as soon as he gets the nomination), resulting in an easy win for Obama.
Again, Gingrich or Paul will get stomped if either one is nominated, but at least the election will give them enough public exposure to spark off some much needed debate in this country. Because ultimately, I don’t think the American people have realized yet how badly the ship is listing. As much as I hate to say it, four more years of Obama, and the resulting damage done to the country, may have to happen before people wake up and realize what dire straits we’re in.
“I think 5 more years of Obama will be utterly disastrous for the USA and the West in general, but I see no way to avoid it.”
I don’t think teh won has a snowballs chance in ‘ell of re-election. No incumbent has ever had such bad poll numbers as he has. Poll numbers do not translate into EV’s, so lets get to counting.
First the winner needs 270. 107 EV’s are off limits to the Obomination because he won’t be on the ballot. So out of 341 EV’s, Obama needs 270 or 79%.
Now lets look at you big 20 theory;
http://www.270towin.com/
An interactive map so everybody (even Shane) can play along.
First lets subtract the 10 where Obama won’t be on the ballot;
http://www.wnd.com/2011/01/255965/
pinched
“There is Arizona’s HB2544, Connecticut’s SB391, Georgia’s HB37, Indiana’s SB114, Maine’s LD34, Missouri’s HB283, Montana’s HB205, Nebraska’s LB654, Oklahoma’s SB91, SB384 and SB540, and Texas; HB295 and HB529.”
The URL list’s 107 but that is with the ’08 EV numbers. It is 112 with the 2012 numbers.
Click to red(R) the South, except Florida, and the Virginias. Red for the Mountain west (Montana, Dakotas and Wyo.
Now blue for the bicoastals, except Virginia, Floida.
My map has (D) 129, (R) 182. That is 311, which means 127 EV’s left. Or so.
Obama needs 141 of those 127 EV’s to win. Do you see the problem?
This will not be your normal election. The Pundits that think it will be are going to get burned. Crumbs in the bottom of the toaster burned.
I think wretchard got the wrong western. It is not Shane but the Unforgiven and we conservatives are the cutup whores and we are tired of taking it anymore so we have invited Will Munny to town to take on Little Barry the bad bully sheriff.
Those whores in Unforgiven are the perfect metaphor for the middle classes who have been used and abused and denigrated for their very productivity but still treated as the private property of their betters. Well they are tired of it now and just want a very rough justice and need a man without too much of a conscience to do the job.
I like Newt but with this one proviso.
I agree with Coulter that Newt’s idea of moving citizenship issues to the county level such that country officials can decide who does and who does not get to stay in the country–will lead to the crack up the USA in a couple generations.
There’s good reason why this chore is the sovereign’s job.
Give this job to the locals and one country will be nicaragua ONLY. Another will Mexican ONLY. Some will be Chinese ONLY. Another county will be American ONLY. Another county will be Hatian ONLY. Some counties will throw out all the illegals. Some counties will attract illegals from the rest of the USA and abroad–mostly from the same country. They’ll become gateway counties.
If Obama is a Manchurian-like candidate who “broke” some unspoken red line in the political system, then the game matrix becomes interesting indeed. A Gingrich victory would be a break-back and transform the 2012 contest into a zero-sum game. Thus, a Gingrich nomination would force a liberal cabal, assuming it exists, into an existential situation. They must cheat, lie, do whatever is necessary to avoid losing in 2012 because the price of losing may be criminal investigation and prosecution. It is win or jail.
But on the other hand, a Romney nomination need not alarm them so much. Perhaps the signal Romney is really sending with his tone is that “if I win I will take power but will not prosecute my political foes. Hence, you can afford to lose to me because I will keep your secret and pull my punches for the sake of national unity. We can still save the old consensus. You might have to pay a price, but it will be one you can afford.”
It is also possible that Romney is playing a deeper game. He may fully understand that coming on like gangbusters, as Newt is doing, will force the hard core Left into whatever action they must take to escape liability. And therefore he is advancing under a screen of disinformation to prevent the Left from destroying the political process in the course of a panic.
But then his softly-softly approach may be a strategem. For all the Left knows a President Romney may be far more confrontational than he pretends to be. Only a fool telegraphs his punches and Romney is no fool. So there is no reason for him to tip his hand, unless of course, it is necessity to match Newt’s fire with fire.
But Newt is no fool either and may be playing a deeper game than Romney. By attacking Obama vigorously he is forcing Romney to the right, destroying Mitt’s product differentiation. If Mitt moves far enough in that direction, the Left will essentially be forced into assuming it must fight for its life whoever wins. They will be forced to treat either as equivalent threats. That will force the Left to commit to a risky course of action sooner rather than later. They will lose the hedge option and unmask sooner than they would like.
But at all events, if contradictions are sufficiently heightened, there won’t be a possibility of returning even to the semblance of normalcy. The conflicts will be too far out in the open to keep the Third American Republic, as it is sometimes called, from terminal transition to something else.
This process has been in train for some time. I suspect historians will conclude that the first breach was the election of Obama; he broke the system. The Left got greedy and went for it. The second and matching counter-breach will have been the nomination of either Gingrich or an amped-up Romney. This is the counterattack the Left thought the conservatives never had the guts to mount, and now it is here.
Like the compromises which preceded the Civil War, there will be attempts to patch it up and put it all together again, but I think the momentum is towards a new equilibrium. Its outlines are still unknown. All one can be sure of is that it won’t be the old equilibrium.
One final point: events in the United States are mirroring and perhaps leading trends in the world at large. Europe is in a similar, but not quite identical crisis. The old order is fading, but the new order has not yet emerged. As to the question of who is best suited to lead the conservative side on, my guess is that both Romney and Gingrich are both too smart to be entirely transparent. There are cards which are still face down on the table and we have yet see what they are until they get turned over.
“Churchill’s mixed history of success and failure adds rather than detracts to the argument that Gingrich might by the American analogue to Churchill”
Defeat into victory…
It’s interesting that Gingrich has actually written a review of General Slim’s ‘Defeat into Victory’.
http://www.amazon.com/Defeat-Into-Victory-Battling-1942-1945/dp/0815410220
(NG’s comment is at the foot of the second page)
http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Change-Chalmers-Johnson/dp/0804711453 Still relevant. The interesting thing about the S C vote is the early reports of turnout. One reporter lists a 33% increase over 2008. If true, the pundittos who have been turning blue since the 2010 turnout may be able to inhale again. All our talk is against the background of the state legislature and governor office gains in 2010. I don’t think many of them are going back, and several more may turn over. Count the Senate seats vulnerable, and the number of House Dem Grand Poobahs who are quitting. Sometimes browsing through here is the “cultural” equivalent of sneaking an hour at the Berkeley “Barb”, the D C “Quicksilver Times”, or I F Stone’s Weekly back in the day. There is something rumbling along, gathering momentum. It may be stopped, but the price will no longer be some cheap bread and circuses. Big changes can’t happen before the “hearts and minds” of enough people have already changed toward accepting, and most importantly, sacrificing to implement them. A Conservative “counterculture” is growing. These folks, one story has it, actually were allowed to play at the Occupy Congress doings recently http://www.madisonrising.com/lyrics.php In the 1964 debacle, the establishment was able to deploy a couple dozen deputy assistant underlings each day to attack the Republican. That was a huge problem. Who will be the counterforce to the O’s apparatchiks this time? Comments 10, 19, 22, 52, 58 : YES ! Can Newt seize this back from the 60′s Left :
The hour of your redemption is here. Your patriots have demonstrated an unswerving and resolute devotion to the principles of freedom that challenges the best that is written on the pages of human history. I now call upon your supreme effort that the enemy may know from the temper of an aroused and outraged people within that he has a force there to contend with no less violent than is the force committed from without.
Rally to me. Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on. As the lines of battle roll forward to bring you within the zone of operations, rise and strike. Strike at every favorable opportunity. For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! In the name of your sacred dead, strike! Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of divine God points the way. Follow in His Name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory!
Douglas MacArthur Finally, [ insert recycled 60's clenched fist stencil here ] Resist, now more than ever ! NO Harry, NO Nancy, NO bailouts, NO bowing, NObama ! Hope and WORK for massive change in 2012. GBUSA
31. Josh asked: “…. or is there something wrong with this fracking outlook and things are as grim going forward as they’ve seemed for a while?”
Since you asked, the answer is… yeah… something is very wrong, and the “something wrong” is that a fracking outlook that sees vast quantities of inexpensive gas happens to be a complete illusion. A myth. Like Santa Claus.
Fracked gas will be real, of course, and that will be good. But it will be very expensive. We are currently in a gas price bubble, created by companies establishing their reserve base. When the bubble bursts, we shall acquaint ourselves with grim reality, once again.
After a century, are we now entering the post-Progressive era? I feel that the Rep. candidate can still manage the transition peacefully, but the facts need to be put out now. Comment 60 is on track, this situation is like the wilderness of mirrors. But there are similarities to “Ender’s Game” too, Newt may be the guy to freeze and then annihilate the left. Somehow, conservatives have to set up a plan to achieve at least agenda neutrality in the campaign, and a massive presence in Nov. to prevent fraud in the vote. So many things are tipping in favor of the US. If we elect a real president, we can be looking at huge expansion in energy alone. US manufacturing costs are becoming competitive again. With budgetary restraint, and entitlement reform, we can have economic success. Foreign affairs may get a lot worse before they get better. In re # 60, Romney’s Citadel speech sets a strong standard, and this campaign can serve to nail the candidates down on the actual details. A little determination will be a big start toward the reset of foreign perceptions. Of course, there will prolly be some who will have to be shown the “or else”. If this turns out to be a generational chaotic year, the incumbent will have much more power to influence events and poll numbers. And if the hostage rescue mission had succeeded, Carter would have won. Voters moved to RR mostly in the last week, despite the staggering misery index. GBUSA
W @60:
“But then his softly-softly approach may be a strategem. For all the Left knows a President Romney may be far more confrontational than he pretends to be. Only a fool telegraphs his punches and Romney is no fool. So there is no reason for him to tip his hand, unless of course, it is necessity to match Newt’s fire with fire.”
If this is the game that Romney’s been playing all along, the guy must be pretty brilliant. However, why have we not seen even a glimmer of this brilliance along the campaign trail, from 2007 to present? I have a hard time believing that he’s going to suddenly bust out with some ingenious campaigning strategies that will win him the office, nor do I believe that if he somehow does pull off a miracle and beats Obama that he’ll do anything transformative in office.
And I disagree; Romney has PLENTY of reason to tip his hat right now if he really is planning some sort of brilliant stealth campaign. I’m pretty damned conservative and 100% opposed to what Obama stands for, and yet, I’m not convinced by Romney. Clearly, I’m not the only one who feels that way, based on the results out of Iowa and SC. If he’s going to have any chance of getting the Republican nomination, let alone my vote for president, he needs to start convincing me and a lot others pronto that he’s the guy for the job.
“They must cheat, lie, do whatever is necessary to avoid losing in 2012 because the price of losing may be criminal investigation and prosecution. It is win or jail.”
I know of people planning to vote for Obama in 2012, because they hate him and everything he stands for. They figure that the Left will go to such excesses in the election, and then Obama will be so bad for the country that this will ensure blood will run in the streets – and that it will almost all run in the Left’s gutters. This idea holds that people will not be dancing in the streets and saying they no longer have to worry about mortgage payments and gas money or cashing their welfare checks because they will either be dead or in hiding.
“By attacking Obama vigorously he is forcing Romney to the right, destroying Mitt’s product differentiation.”
Yes, my point exactly. In previous elections I have gotten the impression that Newt merely wanted to play in the process for that very reason – to help drive the debate to the Right. At a minimum he has had a lot of practice.
“I suspect historians will conclude that the first breach was the election of Obama; he broke the system.”
I would say it was Bill Clinton. Everyone assumed that he would be brought to heel by the political process. In reality the Democrats, long bereft of principle, seized Clinton’s lack of principles as an end in itself and did not reform Clinton but became more like him, rather than vice versa. Clinton reinvented the Big Lie, was the first to use the Continuous Campaign, introduced foreign financial contributions into the US political process, and I think the first to set deliberate time bombs such as the CRA, some environmental legislation, and Reinventing Government.
GRUP #62:
Note that the election was on a Saturday – I do not recall that before – and one that had bad weather in SC as well. The turnout was remarkable.
To second Stoi’s take, i know a couple of die hard Obama supporters- first time around. One held a fundraiser for Obama and the other went to the Inauguration. Both now talk of voting Republican.
Things are slowly falling apart. Everyone knows it. And everyone -even the Dems – know Buraq Insane hasn’t even tried to fix the economy. As long as Newt runs a credible, reasonable campaign, he will win in a landslide.
Regarding the Newt/Churchill thing; What I like is the attitude, the willingness to return fire, and not in a whiny, poor-me sort of way, but in the manner of a boxer confidently stepping into the ring. One of my favorite Churchill quotes says it all;
“I like a man who grins when he fights.”
Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)
Newt grins when he fights, Mittens looks like he is telling his Mommy about the bully that took his lunch money, Paul (for all of his good points) looks and sounds like a looney old man.
A few thoughts: First, the John King moment was a softball, and the stunning thing is that Newt had the presence, intelligence, and audacity to hit it out of the park while pretty much nobody other than Sarah has even been swinging at pitches at the national level. But the key is that there are so many softballs out there.
Clarification is a big part of the growth of awareness, and if Newt simply serves that purpose he will probably change the political and cultural landscape permanently.
Listen to Newt talk about the erosion of religious freedom, the bigotry of the left and targeting by the PTB and POTUS of the vast, quintessentially effective system that has for eons provided for the poor and infirm, the Catholic Church. Wait til he gets into DOMA, the DOJ, Obama’s Marxist proclivities, the fact that Democrats are richer than Republicans, the century long failure of liberal policies, the degeneration of culture at the hands of the liberals. He can have a one-man feeding frenzy if he wants and, depending on his audience, he’ll get a standing ovation every time.
And I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned here Newt’s conversion. You don’t just walk into the Catholic church like a Congregational one. There is a pretty good chance that he move he made a couple of years ago was a product of true growth, growth of a nature that, at his age, would be expected to render him less susceptible to worldly influences. Which would mean he is more capable of and interested in fighting the fight most of us want him to engage in.
As for the dirt on him, I think that 20 years of political dirt, most of it famously associated with Democrats, as well as the abject viciousness of the treatment of conservatives, back again to Sarah, will serve him well. It makes him look like he’s got a lot in common with other street fighters. And I just don’t think people care that much anymore about the narcissistic vulnerabilities of politicians what with the desensitization of that issue by slick Willy et. al.
Plus people resonate to redemption stories like nothing else, and unless he’s been doing something fishy in the past couple years, he’ll be able to play that card as well: “Look folks, I’m the one who made mistakes, learned from them, and grew up so that I now know what’s really important.”
Whether I’m right about such things and whether they will matter electorally, there is little doubt that something is happening here, and we don’t know what it is. But we do know it’s something.
“But on the other hand, a Romney nomination need not alarm them so much.”
That is because Mitt has a Looooong history of making sure the crooks got probation.
All 3 Speakers of the House during his administration were charged with corruption and other crimes. Only one went to jail.
All the crooks in the Olympic scandal copped a plea.
So it’s a reasonable assumption that Soros’s punishment for manipulating the market in October to crash it and get teh won elected will be 30 days probation and a 5,000 $US fine. If the 10 to 15 million victims pool their money, they might be able to afford a cup of coffee but not at Starbucks.
The reason I’m a Palinista is that Sara will throw those Bath-tards in Jail and hide the key in her décolletage.
I’m hoping Newt picks her as his running mate. He is about 4,2 million years old. Or so. Can’t live forever and POTUS is a stressful job. Berry already looks like a dandelion on steroids. Anyway, Newt keels over in 2014, Sara is POTUS until 2020 when Rubio takes up the mantel.
“Paul (for all of his good points) looks and sounds like a looney old man.”
That is because he IS a looony old man. He is not acting. WYSIWYG.
Some of his ideas are sound but others are silly enough to discount the sound ones.
Bei mir bist du Shane…
Today’s numbers show Obama at 45% and Romney at 43%. Matched against Gingrich, the president leads 48% to 39%. Romney trails by nine among women while Gingrich trails by twelve. Among men, Romney has a slight advantage over the president while Gingrich is down six.
– Rasmussen Reports
Newt Gingrich’s big, slobbering mutual love affair with the elite media
Newt Gingrich hates the media, right? He unloaded on John King at the Charleston debate for raising this issue of his ex-wife’s allegations, blasting the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media”. In Myrtle Beach, he slapped Juan Williams down for asking a race-based question.
And the media despises Newt, right? He’s so sarcastic and condescending towards us, brands us as elite liberals and uses us to whip up the Republican base.
Actually, wrong and wrong.
Gingrich loves the press. In some respects we are, as John McCain famously noted, his “base”. He craves the media. I’ve never seen a man so happy as Gingrich was when he ambled into the spin room in Myrtle Beach last Monday night and about 200 of us swarmed around him hanging on his every word.
Newt Gingrich in the Myrtle Beach spin room
Romney would have rather been anywhere else in the world than that in the middle of that heaving, sweaty scrum. But Newt was in pure heaven. He loves the game.
And it’s mutual. The press laps up all things Newt. Like him, we thrive on chaos. He’s a walking quote machine. You never know what he’ll say next and he can’t resist answering a question or engaging with a reporter. Just as every Romney event seems basically the same, every Gingrich event is different.
Bob Dole once quipped that the most dangerous place to be in Washington was between a camera and Senator Chuck Schumer. The same could be said of Gingrich. You ask him a question, he’ll invariably turn on his heels and advance towards you.
In debates, Gingrich has repeatedly cited the New York Times and has referred to a conversation he had had with Joe Klein.
Until this race got underway, Gingrich was a Fox News contributer – a colleague of Williams, whose question was a pivotal moment and triggered the Gingrich surge that led to his South Carolina primary victory. At the end of the Charleston debate, Gingrich warmly thanked CNN and afterwards he spoke cordially with King.
This morning, Gingrich appeared on CNN for an interview with Candy Crowley (though he did boycott ABC News). I’m told that on Friday night his event onboard the USS Yorktown was held below decks rather than on the upper deck because of a request by CNN.
Gingrich knows how the media works. At that USS Yorktown event, Gingrich asked a group of Boy Scouts onto the stage in part because they were sitting on the “buffer” (the raised stand for photographers and cameramen) and impeding the press – a gesture that the press appreciated and that meant we got our pictures.
As Politico’s Ginger Gibson reports, Gingrich is very pally with the reporters who travel with him, calling on them by name and praising their good humour. He wished NBC’s Alex Moe a happy birthday at a press conference. That evening, he appeared at her birthday dinner with a glass of wine in his hand.
By contrast, Romney very rarely engages with reporters – which makes a lot of sense in terms of message discipline but can lead to frustration within the media and accusations of being a programmed “Romneybot”. Strangely enough, in this respect he is a little like Barack Obama, who in the 2008 campaign hardly ever yukked it up with reporters in the way Gingrich does.
The joke among reporters in South Carolina was that Gingrich should make Juan Williams and John King campaign co-chairs or at least treat them to a slap-up dinner somewhere as they had been key factors in his victory. Equally, Fox News and CNN have been clearly delighted with the publicity from the electric debate moments when he rounded on their questioners.
In South Carolina, it was an open secret that the press were rooting for Gingrich, not out of bias or any belief that he would be a weaker candidate against Obama but simply because the press wants a good story and a knock-down, drag-out battle for the GOP nomination to cover.
Let’s face it, Gingrich loves the “destructive, vicious, negative” news media. He knows how to play the game. And the press loves him for it.
The Gingrich media credential for last night that proclaimed “I’m a REPORTER with Newt” had it about right.
#50-Blast:
Yep, Newt would get the bust back. In fact, I’d bet the Brits would make it one of their first official gifts to the new president. (I’m amazed at how deeply this one action from Barry still rankles.)
The discussion of Newt-as-Churchill has been interesting. Churchill’s return to politics after the Dardenelles debacle was characterized by Harold Bellman: “He started at scratch in the popularity stakes. This was not an apology. It was a challenge. Those who came to curse remained to cheer.”
If Newt can channel his inner Churchill and rediscover his Reagan-esque roots, there might be some promise there.
Or, as Churchill said, “Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
The MSM would have us believe that they and Gingrich are having one big old circle jerk.
@cellec #3: “Newt will never win over the genuine liberals, but if he can make a convincing case to the so-called “Reagan Democrats”, he may have a legitimate shot at winning.”
I think he can if he hammers on issues like Keystone XL and Obamacare. Obama won the support of moderates last time by convincing them he’s moderate too. They will only believe it this time if they haven’t been paying attention.
#39 – BattleofthePyramids
“Obama needs only 270 electoral college votes to win. He can obtain that by winning 20 states with the necessary large populations and corresponding large numbers of electoral college votes.”
Easier said than done. Name these 20 states that you expect to provide Obama his 270 votes… You’ll find that a number of the 20 largest states are not very likely to be won by Obama. In fact he will need a number of swings states in which he is currently under water. He may win, but if Republicans UNITE, we have an excellent shot at making him a one term president
Wretchard’s post at 61 was very insightful. If you have not read it already, I suggest that you do so. Again I’m reminded that it borders on arrogance to presume that I can improve upon Wretchard’s insight. A wiser approach maybe to read Wretchard and keep my mouth shut.
Anyway, I lack that wisdom. Wretchard’s comment concerning the issues prior to the Civil War are interesting. The incompetent James Buchanan was America’s last chance to avoid civil war. One has the feeling that Obama is a modern day Buchanan in more ways than merely being incompetent. I hope Gingrich proves to be a Churchill and not a Lincoln.
64. ScenarioA
31. Josh asked: “…. or is there something wrong with this fracking outlook and things are as grim going forward as they’ve seemed for a while?”
Since you asked, the answer is… yeah…
………….
disagree. Natural gas prices are way down because there is an immense amount of supply and more supply soon to come online. There are new fields opening up in Northern louisiana, northwestern colorado, Kansas & Missouri. higher oil prices is causing more oil fracking. Its likely that they’ll discover that all the old played out oil fields in the USA will still yield a considerable amount of oil because of the new fracking techniques allow oil drillers to access the other 50% of the the oil that’s left in the ground when the field was played out using traditional methods.
What’s happening currently in the oil patch is as significant as the spindletop discoveries in texas in 1903. And the Arab oil embargoes of the 1973 & 1979.
61. wretchard
They must cheat, lie, do whatever is necessary to avoid losing in 2012 because the price of losing may be criminal investigation and prosecution. It is win or jail.
……
imho these were the terms of the 2008 election.
not so much this time.
Charles @ 80,
Fracking appears to be effective for producing natural gas from old oil fields and shale deposits but I’m skeptical that fracking will produce significant petroleum. Most of America’s petroleum fields have already gone through all sorts of secondary extraction processes including steam injection. Natural gas is an excellent energy source for producing electrical power from fixed power plants but we still need high energy density power in the form of gasoline and diesel. That can come from synthetic petroleum produced from coal combined with natural gas. We should be setting up a synthetic petroleum industry as a crash program but that won’t happen until after Obama goes away. Finally, I see fracking as a “topping off” process that provides only a short term solution. For a long term solution we need to avoid the distractions of so called “green energy” and go fully nuclear. Again, this does not happen until after Obama goes away (so many “good things” won’t happen until after Obama goes away).
The Big Lie here is the “moderates” — those people who are supposed to vote Dem one time, Rep the next. Only problem is they don’t exist.
Go and look up the votes cast in Presidential elections since Watergate. Not the percentages, the actual votes cast. The Democrat vote count has climbed steadily at about the rate of population growth; voting Democrat might as well be biologically determined. In contrast, the Republican vote has fluctuated wildly. When the candidate was a Reagan, lots of people voted Rep. When the candidate was a McCain, those people chose not to vote at all.
The Contingent Voter — that is who the Republican candidate has to win. And they are not wishy-washy moderates.
New Rasmussan poll putting newt at 41 vs 32 for Romney in florida
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/florida/2012_florida_republican_primary
Hello,Fellow Babies,
I’m reluctant to compare livings persons to past heros, and that is at least partly because I have lost the confidence in myself that I truly can fathom personalities, and see the true person beneath their personal facade. And if I can’t do that in in personal relationships, how does one do this from afar? This inability to pierce the facade, In it’s most galling form, occurs when we place important resources, our lives, and our trust in someone in an important leadership position. I could speak at length about my attitude about President Lobotomy, but at least, I don’t feel the disappointment and sorrow I would feel had I voted for him. But obama is not in the least reluctant to compare himself to to past Presidents… ¿! But… he compares himself favorably with Lincoln !?! Has anyone gone along with this moronic display besides the sycophant media?
It is among the sincerest of my hopes that cellec is right in remarking some characteristics that Newt shares with Churchill. We need… our country desperately needs a leader with Churchill’s character, intelligence, flair, incredibly persuasive and moving speeches, grasp of history and politics… and the balls to follow a path that guaranteed the destruction of his political career.
Most Belmontians know Churchill lost office after 1929, but he stayed in the public mind with his books and letters to the newspapers; throughout the late thirties he was among the few public voices determinedly and constantly critical of Hitler. Churchill was, “the voice in the wilderness” urging his countrymen to rearm and resist Hitler. Despite the fact that Churchill was prominent among the critics of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, and because Churchill had ascended to an informal, leadership role among those calling for rearmament, he was reappointed the First Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, the civilian head of the Navy, and directly responsible to Neville Chamberlain as a minister within the hierarchy of Chamberlain’s cabinet.
Churchill could see that Chamberlain was determined to continue in his course, but Churchill’s grasp of politics, history, and his assessment of Hitler left him with no doubt that “appeasement” would not work. It was soon apparent to Churchill that Chamberlain had brought him into his cabinet to shut off his criticisms because Chamberlain was barely moving toward rearmament.
Churchill and FDR began a secret correspondence about the impending war and war preparations after September 1939. The Empire was under attack in Europe, Africa. and it’s Asian ports, Burma and India were disrupted by mutiny and strikes, Ireland was disrupted with divided loyalties, and the British Navy was trying to wage war on the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. To this point the Axis Powers had not suffered a single, loss of significance in any battle, and Churchill was motivated by the fear that the country he loved was in desperate need of allies, munitions, and supplies.
But what Belmontians may not know — Historians have concluded that the letters never amounted to a conspiracy, but consider the probable consequences had they become public knowledge… FDR might have suffered a loss in the next election, or vastly eroded political support for his plans because it had been a Presidential campaign promise that he would not send Americans to fight in a European war.
***But Churchill’s position was extremely risky***
He had been a tireless critic of Chamberlain, and he was now a leading government minister bound by law and personal oath to Chamberlain’s policies. Secret letters to the leader of a foreign country in time of war?! Churchill’s detractors would not have forgiven his long-standing opposition to Chamberlain’s government policies, and any discussion of Britain’s war preparations would have been treated as prime facie evidence of treason. Churchill would certainly have been immediately stripped of his rank, and if he was convicted of treason, “hanging” was a very real threat; and if he had somehow escaped the rope, he would certainly be imprisoned for life. Churchill risked everything to urge FDR to help the Empire. We need a leader with that kind of integrity, resolve, fortitude, and determination.
Gingrich’s greatest enemy is the morality of Republicans. It is a sad truth that one observes that Democrats tolerate all manner of cheats, thieves, liars, and thugs in their party — as long as they espouse, uphold and promote the Democrat agenda. Republicans, however, are so determined to assert their moral integrity, and show that they can be “open-minded” that they can barely work together; and at the faintest hint that a Republican member acted in any way to violate unwritten, trivial and quirky, arbitrary and capricious PC rules, his fellow Republicans will immediately repudiate his actions and call for his resignation. We grass roots Republicans absolutely must vote for conservatives that will stand up to the media and Democrats. It just cannot be a surprise that liberals will not scruple to sink to any low-class effort to attack Republicans on any issue. And frankly, I’m damn tired of Republicans that are so wrapped in their personal, hollier-than-thou determination to commit suicide rather than fight with the Democrats; candidates must know that we are way past compromising with Democrats. If this has to be a nasty campaign, so be it.
I can only hope the that cellec has had a true insight into Gingrich. Socialist / Communist views have nearly succeeded in crippling American, and we need a leader that will resist media efforts to marginalize his ideas and polices. Gingrich has had to deal with his disappointments, and I trust that his inner trials as well as the enthusiastic efforts of the media to demonize him at every opportunity have served to harden him to the unending criticisms of the Left. I’m hoping, I’m praying that crucible of political attacks, media slurs and innuendo have burned away the dross leaving a man — able to articulate his vision, new ideas, new solutions, a man able to fight to see his ideas shaped into policy, a fighter that understands the process, and will not be stopped by an unkind word from a Democrat.
And, maybe, a Leader who knows that he may well be living his Last Hurrah may be determined to “go for broke” and push a conservative, Republican agenda into law.
82. Eggplant
The oil natural gas thing could be squared if the congress took up T Boone Picken’s plan to shift all short haul trucks and buses to natural gas. That would take off 30% of the demand for oil out of the market. I’m reading reports that that’s already happening (but not in a big way)because the prices difference between natural gas and diesel/gasoline at the pump is now so great.
http://www.shifttocng.com/cng-for-fleets/case-studies
http://www.shifttocng.com/vehicles/heavy-duty
How much new oil will the fracking create? Its still early in that game. But I have read oil industry insiders say that Ohio has 25 billion barrels in recoverable (by fracking) liquid fuels; Bakkan has 24 billion barrels in recoverable (by fracking)liquid fuels
We’ll see.
I agree that other sources of energy need to be found. I’m reading more and more that thorium nuclear power plants are the way to go as they will eventually cut the cost of electricity to 1/10th that of electricity produced by the lowest cost coal plants. (electricity that cheap would open up the shale oil in the green river basin of western wyoming for insitu electrical cooking. The oil supplies locked up in shale there are bigger than saudi arabia’s at its prime.)
I’m not buying any of the carbon dioxide arguments anymore. What I do buy is that the best/fastest/surest way to increase the health and wealth of everyone everywhere and make a successful 21st century for the whole planet– is to collapse the cost of energy (& water.)
There is <a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/19/bankrupt-solyndra-caught-destroying-brand-new-parts/"an article from THE CBS SAN FRANCISCO AFFILIATE dated 19 January revealing that bankrupt SOLYNDRA has its employees DESTROYING TWO MILLION DOLLARS WORTHof high-tech components, with the permission of their Bankruptcy Trustee. They are justifying this with the logic that there’s a substantial cost in properly storing these components. They aren’t bothering to offer them for sale, not even on Craig’s List.
Of course, Obama and his bootlicks have no objection to this; it is absolutely consistent with the “Cash for Clunkers” abortion that required auto dealerships to destroy rather than tune up vehicles that were operable and which could have been serviced to provide reliable transportation for decades. That program further required the dealerships to provide, guarantee, or extend discounted financing to the people bringing these cars in for early scrapping. The whole scam was done FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN TO ARTIFICIALLY INFLATE THE SALES FOR THE NEWLY NATIONALIZED GM AND CHRYSLER COMPANIES, wrested from the private sector and handed as a bribe to the unions in return for their support to Obama.
This crap convinces me that this country will not even remotely begin to recover from the SCOURING now being imposed on us by the incumbent Marxist administration, their spittle-licking appointees, the self-serving leadership of BOTH major political parties, and their sycophant knee-pad-clad admirers in the MSM, until they’re all clamped in handcuffs and installed behind concertina wire and steel bars.
After their procedurally impeccable arrest, prosecution and conviction for their crimes.
There aren’t enough swear words…
p.s. In the fifteen minutes since I “googled” the article and copy-pasted the URL, the article has been archived, but it’s still available in the KCBS archives. I found it after this latest Solyndra atrocity was mentioned by Rush Limbaugh today.
@Wretchard #61: “For all the Left knows a President Romney may be far more confrontational than he pretends to be. Only a fool telegraphs his punches and Romney is no fool.”
A decade ago I lived in Mormon-dominated Southeast Idaho. A Mormon coworker at the time told me that there is some sort of prophecy or expectation among Mormons there that near the end of time America will face an existential crisis and be saved by Mormons in high public office. If Romney sees himself in any such role then he must be in deep cover indeed given his pro-choice stance in Massachusetts. Or maybe he’s not so much Mormon as “Mormon,” like Pelosi is not Catholic but “Catholic.”
Wretchard 61,
This is all about colors and banners.
The Left/Liberal in America defines itself very much in the way Canadians do.
Canadians feel morally superior to Americans by being “Not Americans.”
American Leftists/Liberals feel morally superior to American Conservatives by being “Not-Conservative.”
Conservatives, OTOH, define themselves by a whole host of values. Values that the Left goes out of its way to demonize and degrade to affirm their identity as “Not-Conservatives.”
What the political rise of the Tea Party means is that conservatives want, more than anything else (and will vote for one, as SC showed) is a political candidate that affirms their values in the public square and systematically punches the condescension, and airs of moral superiority, of the mouth of the Left early and often.
The Bi-coastal media/political elites, primarily of Codevilla’s “Ruling Class,” thus being fundamentally a Left/Elite, just does not get this, or understand the meaning of, the Tea Party’s “I’m Angry as Hell and I am not going to take it anymore!”
This includes political pros like Micheal Barone.
Barone is showing his “DC insider” slip here in these passages evaluating that what Gingrich is up too. Barone shows that he does not understand the whole gestalt of the EFF-YOU CANDIDATE in the current election cycle for what Codevilla calls calls the “Country Class.”
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/where-does-republican-campaign-go-here/328221
But in the process he embraced causes and took on issues which may not prove sustainable in the Republican contest or the general election. He agreed with Ron Paul on “fiat money” and the Federal Reserve; he made several efforts to go after Ron Paul supporters, which could end him up in hot water later. He presented the general election as a contest between the values of Saul Alinsky and the Founding Fathers. He made generous reference to the Founders, the Declaration and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers as well. He made an interesting point about the “anti-religious bigotry of the elites” and attacked a recent decision by a federal judge in San Antonio who, he said, threatened to put a school superintendent in jail if students said they were praying, saying a benediction or mentioning God. Sounds like a dumb decision—the First Amendment bars a federal establishment of religion and then guarantees the free exercise thereof—but is this really a national issue of prime importance, or just one dumb judge sounding off? He said that no American president should bow to a Saudi king (not a bad general election point) and harshly criticized Barack Obama’s decision, criticized by the mild-mannered economics writer Robert Samuelson as “insane,” to disapprove the Keystone XL pipeline. “Obama is so weak he makes Carter look strong,” Gingrich said, close to the end of his remarks.
and
Gingrich has long argued that Republicans should emphasize issues on which 70% of Americans are on their side, but he has not always been astute about which issues on which his positions command such support. His victory in South Carolina was a victory not only over Romney and Santorum and Paul, but also over the news media, and signaled (more than I thought at the time) by the standing ovations he received from the audiences in the Fox News and CNN debates from questions by Juan Williams and John King (although neither is personally hated by Republican voters in the same way many others in what we call mainstream media are). In the 1992 campaign cycle Robert McDowell, then a Washington lawyer and now a Federal Communications Commissioner, distributed bumper stickers reading, “Annoy the media—vote for Bush.” At the time I thought was as strong an argument for reelecting Bush as any the Bush campaign was advancing. But it wasn’t enough, to say the least. Gingrich seems to me to have won the South Carolina primary, and by a handsome majority, on an “annoy the media” platform. But is that enough to win the nomination, or the presidency? And does taking on peripheral issues like anti-religious bigotry and fiat money, however cogent the intellectual arguments therefor, get him closer to the first goal or the second? I wonder.
Unlike France, where there is a whole “EFF-YOU” Elites political party — the Le Penn party — to vote for. You only get individual candidates to do this in the USA. Ron Paul has played that role in American politics, inside the Republican Presidential Primaries, for the last few Presidential election cycles.
Ross Perot did that as an independent before Ron Paul.
Gingrich now sees that voter as his biggest short term primary voter growth opportunity for Florida, now that Santorm said he was staying in.
It might even work, as in, think of General Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States, with the Federal Reserve in the Populist villain role.
Barone, like the rest of D.C., has no clue idea how grass roots unpopular the Federal Reserve has become. Financial Talk Radio has been all over the insider games and general cluelessness of the Fed like white on rice since 2007 (They are the least offensive radio for me in the Morning drive so I pretty much have absorbed those messages by osmosis.) Those media sources are speaking directly to both the Tea Party and the Eff-You voters.
Gingrich is addressing, and showing deference for, the issues, fears & hopes of both groups with his talks about the Federal Reserve and fiat money.
Point in fact, Gingrich has been the only candidate to systematically engage the Tea Party on their terms, affirming their values, issues, and fears while punching the Ruling Class in the mouth early and often.
That is why Gingrich won S.C. and is now ahead in Florida.
And Barone is as clueless about what Gingrich has been doing as the Romney campaign.
Mic check
Eggplant #82:
A couple of years ago I did a study for KSC on the hazards associated with composite pressure vessels and ended up gathering a lot of data on Compressed Natural Gas as a vehicle fuel. Basically, it’s an excellent idea for vehicles that travel either well defined routes or are local – in other words can rely on a few well defined fueling stations. CNG tanks contain far less fuel than an equivalent sized volume of gasoline, so they need to be tanked up more often, all other things being equal. But you can even buy a refueling pressurizer that lets you gas up using your own home’s natural gas line.
It may be hard to believe, but the hazard associated with such high pressure natural gas onboard vehicles is demonstrably less than that that of gasoline – under normal circumstances. But have someone damage the CNG tank and that is no longer the case. The flamability of the contents is almost a non-issue – a 3600 psi tank of air that is compromised is just about as hazardous. When the tank reaches the end of its service life it needs to be replaced. And unfortunately you can buy used CNG tanks on ebay. Being a CNG tank inspector and maintainer is probably a growth industry any way you look at it.
CNG as a vehicle fuel is a good idea and needs nothing to encourage it except for companies to just do it.
In terms of energy, 1 bbl of oil is roughly equivalent to 6 mcf (thousand cubic feet) This relationship allows you to compare costs.
If you could use natural gas in a vehicle at current prices, your equivalent cost would be about 50 cents a gallon, with a resource that has 100 years of domestic supply. Okay, account for the infrastructure needed, let the providers involved have a 100% profit margin. We still would only be paying $1.00 per gallon for the rest of our lives.
And for Eggplant – if you wonder whether hydraulic fracturing can produce significant oil discoveries, you need to read this article. (everyone should, really)
The man who bought North Dakota; about the Bakken, which is turning out to be bigger than Prudhoe Bay, and which is changing America’s domestic energy production outlook massively.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-man-who-bought-north-dakota-01192012.html
Looking back at the South Carolina debate, I’m thinking this might be a closer analogy of Newt’s relationship to the Media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ff46b58Hk
80. Charles @80, you disagreed with my response to Josh at 64. You said:
(1) ” Natural gas prices are way down because there is an immense amount of supply and more supply soon to come online.”
Exactly. As I noted in 64 prices are in a bubble at the present time because of this immense amount of supply. However, this bubble will not be sustained.
(2) ” higher oil prices is causing more oil fracking. Its likely that they’ll discover that all the old played out oil fields in the USA will still yield a considerable amount of oil because of the new fracking techniques allow oil drillers to access the other 50% of the oil that’s left in the ground when the field was played out using traditional methods.”
As old oil wells decline, it has been the standard practice to inject energy into the field to maintain production with a number of methods. Fracking is one such method, well known in the industry for decades. Maintaining production in old wells will, hopefully, allow us to continue to keep oil imports at or below half of our consumption for some years to come. All to the good, but far short providing a credible basis for the extreme optimism of the fracking fan club.
Re: Charles #86:
Conversion of vehicles to CNG / LNG is not necessary. Run a Fischer – Tropsch conversion of natural gas to synthetic diesel and use diesel as your primary vehicular fuel. We have a century’s worth of fuel infrastructure in place that can handle diesel. There a LOT of vehicles out there that also use diesel. Likely to be the most economic path.
And if you can do synthetic diesel, you can also do synthetic gasoline. Your feedstock need not be limited to natural gas. It can also include coal, which we have in abundance. Cheers -
“”We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual,”
I was reminded when reading this excerpt from ‘Davos’ that the word business has become derogatory. It should read – more government as usual.
“We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual,” the 73-year-old said, adding that “capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us.” Klaus Schwab
And we saved Europe from what?
@ Wretchard #61:
It is also possible that Romney is playing a deeper game. He may fully understand that coming on like gangbusters, as Newt is doing, will force the hard core Left into whatever action they must take to escape liability. And therefore he is advancing under a screen of disinformation to prevent the Left from destroying the political process in the course of a panic.
Interesting. You can learn much about Willard “Mitt” Romney by watching this short video from 2002 in which he passionately, convincingly, defends his mother. Surely, he’d never throw his mother under a bus, right? Keep in mind that he’s 56 years old here, a mature political candidate, speaking with conviction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w9pquznG4
A deeper game, Wretchard? When the screen of disinformation runs this thick, who can tell what game is being played?
WWS@92
Please note that there is rarely ever any opportunity to make 100% profit. In your CNG example, doubling the cost produces a 50% profit margin, tripling 75%, quadrupling 80%, etc. Unless the good is free and costs nothing to sell, 100% profit is impossible.
94. ScenarioA
80. Charles @80, you disagreed with my response to Josh at 64. You said:
(1) ” Natural gas prices are way down because there is an immense amount of supply and more supply soon to come online.”
Exactly. As I noted in 64 prices are in a bubble at the present time because of this immense amount of supply. However, this bubble will not be sustained.
**********************
Gents:
There is an outfit in Louisiana that formed originally to import LNG, then went flop when the gas boom occurred. Now they’ve gotten more financing and are converting to export with signed contracts for something like $58 billion. In today’s WSJ.
Rough men for the fight and honest men for leadership. Newt is fine for the fight but he will destroy us if he takes the head of the line. Newt-sightedness is a moral disease that afflicts under schooled conservatives. The liberal education agenda is bearing fruit in today’s stupid Republicans. Remember Maverick McCain. He at least had hero in his adulterous backstabbing past. But he was a disaster in 2008 and Newt appears to be our double down disaster for 2012. Men and women who acknowledge their support for him will never again have my respect.
Forgotten in all of this is that Newt had a Pathfinder in front guiding him in to the target all marked out for him. Her name? Sarah Palin. She showed that you could stand up to the media and the base would applaud. She showed that you got take the wood to Obama and the base would roar in approval. Newt took note and followed her lead. There is a reason that he has carefully courted her support, and has stated that he would love to have her in his Administration should he win. He knows the Palin Army is out there watching and waiting for their leader to tell them where to go. She gave the signal in SC and Newt’s victory margin grew because of it. He even acknowledges that her nod in his direction gave him a boost in donations and volunteers. Palin is the Queen of the Republican Party to the dismay of her critics and enemies. Whom she annoints will be the nominee. Right now it appears for the moment that her man is Newt. Never happen, but a Gingrich/Palin ticket in November would be loads of fun just for the seizures the Left and Republican establishment would go through.
Why Newt will be one hell of a candidate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UKUulVyeEo
“Men and women who acknowledge their support for him will never again have my respect.”
I never sought yours. You are a hack.
101. Tarnsman
Excellent analysis. Makes sense to me.
VDH’s current column mentioned the desire to create a composite GOP candidate out of the ones available. That expresses my desire completely. I worry about different things with each candidate. I worry Romney won’t rock the boat enough. I worry Gingrich will rock it but then not know what to do when water starts sloshing over the gun’ls. And I worry the Paul will greatly desire to rock the boat but not actually know how to operate the levers of the Executive Branch to do it. Each candidate has a perceived flaw in dismantling the new class system: Romney’s desire to do it, Paul’s ability to do it, and Gingrich’s skill to carry it through effectively.
The MSM and the Dems have a strong vested interest in hindering any resolution of the GOP race and drawing it out as long as possible. One way they will obviously try to do that is attempt to scramble the voter’s signals in each primary, to make a Gingrich defeat sound like a rejection of his personality, or a Romney defeat a rejection of his wealth. Neither of course is a factor for any significant number of voters, not even the Obamanauts (e.g. Leftists don’t despise Romney because of his wealth, but because he is a Republican). GOP voters don’t care either. But the MSM would like to snow people into thinking so.
“Men and women who acknowledge their support for him will never again have my respect.”
Oh well, easy come easy go. I’nm a conservative, NOT a Republican. I cherish your respect about as much as I desire a genital rash. Mitt Romney is a prime example of everything that is wrong with American Politics.
The GOP Establishment, by their unwarranted and viscous attacks on the rest of the candidates, has reduced the field to Mitt, Newt and Rick. Mitt cannot win. Either the nomination or the general election. He is trying to buy them, in one last explosion of Zaller politics. As the WWW grows, the value of the Media declines.
The future is interactive and full of people like me that talk back to people like you.
What ya gonna do about it?
Once upon a time in a land called America there was a rabid right-wing man often referred to as “Ronald Ray-Gun,” a radical whom, if elected, would lead us into nuclear war with the USSR. The wisdom of the chattering classes insisted that there was no way such an individual could ever be elected to be President. He could never get the votes of the middle of the political spectrum.
Of course, the pronouncements of the Pompous Wise were wrong. But Hell, according to the Pompous Wise they never can be wrong–just misunderstood–its a definitional thing. All evidence to the contrary is to be dispatched down the memory hole with extreme prejudice.
The political class, both Democrats and Republicans, have the basis of their power dependent upon the status quo and they will do most anything in their power to preserve it. Lord knows the worst thing that could happen to the political country club is to allow peasants to join or people with the wrong attitudes to remain.
Newt has the wrong attitude, and Sarah Palin is a peasant. May they both prosper politically. Its time the Country Club needs to be desegregated, although bulldozing it might be a more attractive option.
94. ScenarioA
All to the good, but far short providing a credible basis for the extreme optimism of the fracking fan club.
…………
read a couple of the posts around yours–including the
95. agimarc
Conversion of vehicles to CNG / LNG is not necessary. Run a Fischer – Tropsch conversion of natural gas to synthetic diesel
Then consider this:
92. wws
The man who bought North Dakota; about the Bakken, which is turning out to be bigger than Prudhoe Bay, and which is changing America’s domestic energy production outlook massively.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-man-who-bought-north-dakota-01192012.html
At the end of the article the guy who developed the Bakken had this to say.
As others report on lease prices and projects in Oklahoma and Wyoming, Hamm occasionally wonders aloud where the next big find will be. “The San Joaquin basin,” he muses, referring to central California. “Huge, huge amount of oil there.”
How much?
The numbers are staggering.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/01/eia-estimates-california-monterey-to.html
c @ 107: jesus fracking christ
I’m very nearly offended by this, it will bail out our crazed socialist system for a generation. Well why not, it has supported the salafists for the last century, could hardly be worse than that.
This has been a good “finger-on-the-pulse” comment section! Has anyone else felt that Newt works the press as well as JFK and RR? For those in search of Caesar’s wife : construction workers and active troops and athletes all get dirty. Those working to build for us, fighting to defend us, achieve excellence in sporting endeavors, will end up covered with some of the environment in which they work. Why should politicians be any different? Given the sewage in the political system for 47 years, just me, I would wonder about the activity and commitment of a crew foreman, a front line sergeant, or a quarterback who was still squeaky clean after a life of effort. Yes, we need the dreamers, the engineers, the accountants, and the historians. But right now we need a rational and nimble fighter. We need someone who will hoist the left on its own petard, who will boldly battle them from the lofty theoretical heights to the sewers of innuendo, from the empty plains of entitlement to the teeming metro masses waiting for an axe through the regulatory knots. Every day, every way, make them attempt to prove the sun rises in the east, make them prove the humanity of their policies and assumptions about regular folks. The nomenklatura has achieved its position through two generations of regular folks being too busy with their lives to challenge every iota of the false assumptions, lies, violence, and corruption intrinsic to the Progressive system. The transition to a post-Progressive society will not be easy, but it can be peaceful. We need an in-your-face fighter for the WH, and we all need to step up and call out the bullies and liars. If conservatives do not let the opponent set the agenda, victory is likely. # 83 – good point ! I am waiting to see some analyses of the increase in S C turnout over 2008. If these are new voters, or crossover Dems., things could go well for Reps. in the general. Obama may be susceptible in a revolution by those with crushed rising expectations from 2008. One big question is if there is enough time to educate a lost generation with enough basic info to be able to understand the issues and participate fully in the elections. That will be just as much our neighborhood responsibility as Newt/Mitt’s. That Mitt pro-choice video is fascinating. Any readers who work as trial lawyers , or expert jury selection consultants, or “body language” psychologists, police or private detectives, job interviewers, etc., have any thoughts on the candidates performances so far? Hope and wok for massive change in 2012. GBUSA
Tarnsman @101 I think has the background and particulars correct in the new Newt resurrection. Ironic that the new Jacksonian revolution will come from the Republican side of the aisle, but I suppose that is America in a nutshell. We have always been a revolutionary country and our “conversatives” are hardly that, viewed against conservatism in Western Europe.
Tcobb @106. “and Sarah Palin is a peasant” No…she is not. America doesn’t have peasants (well, we didn’t for a long time). Maybe we can damn the whole political class, and I’m usually of a mind to do just that. But none of us live in “Upper Irredentisia” (as opposed to “Lower Irredentisia” where life is all rainbows and unicorns).
What gets me about Ron Paul is that he ALREADY IS in a position to expose the bad players in finance…
He has Frank’s old chairmanship.
Crickets….
wretchard @ 61:
But on the other hand, a Romney nomination need not alarm them so much. [...]
It is also possible that Romney is playing a deeper game. [...]
You’re giving Romney way to much credit. The man has lifelong aspiration to office written all over him. However your essay did remind me of a wonderful scene:
Man in Black: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.
Vizzini: But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Man in Black: You’ve made your decision then?
Me: Yes, I have. I’m stumping for Newt.
108. Josh
I’m very nearly offended by this, it will bail out our crazed socialist system for a generation. Well why not, it has supported the salafists for the last century, could hardly be worse than that.
………………
Yeah that’s the downside of this.
Oil floats the boat of all kinds of bad actors & not just the salafits. The communists of Venezuela and Russia. Heck even the Brazilian socialists have all the economic sins covered by oil money.
Its also been petro dollars going overseas that has sapped the US economy since the 1970′s.
The shame is that few in the USA will recognize the relationship between prosperity and being an energy exporter.
I would even argue that the reason for the decline of Britian after the turn of the 20th century is that they moved from a coal based economy–of which they had plenty–to an oil based economy–of which they had none.
Their economy was briefly recapitalized in the 1990′s by the north sea oil. And then went into decline again as the north sea oil waned.
Its reported that there are some huge shale gas deposits in Britain. So somewhere out there — their economy will be recapitalized.
Having said all that, its likely that the US economy will not feel the full effects of energy independence (which includes stuff like balanced budgets and funded pensions) for another 10-15 years. That leaves plenty of time for a liberal roast.
Newt looks a lot like my grandfather and reminds me of his brothers. Charm, wit, conviviality, strong moral compass with cheerful indiscretions. Politics. Debate. Blarney. It’s all there. They were lovers and fighters, and they hated to lose.
I’d play Gin with them when I was young. They played for the win. I was in second grade, underfoot on winter weekends; I had to learn the game, master holding ten cards, and figure out how to beat them. They still played to win.
Eventually I began winning too, decisively, catching them with boatloads of cards unmatched…they’d throw the hand down and exclaim with mixed horror, protest, pride, glee, that I had cheated!
Anyway…Newt. He reminds me of Irish guys from South Boston. Which is really weird.
109. GRUP
I’ve just got one word for you; are you listening? . . .
”Paragraphs”
Off topic but amusing, refer to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/its-climate-change-stupid_b_1222718.html
The moonbat who wrote this article was deeply offended that the Republican candidates ignored the paramount issue of anthropogenic global warming, i.e. the elephant in the room. From the moonbat’s perspective, arguing about the economy, national defense, taxation, etc. was a silly waste of time since we are all doomed to fry due to global warming. I hope most of Obama’s supporters are of a similar opinion and invest all of their political capital educating us about our impending doom. Focusing on this chimera should insure crushing defeat for Obama in November.
#110. dPercy
When I referred to Sarah Palin as a peasant that was not an insult, it was meant to differentiate her from the mincing little tin gods who believe they are the new American (and world) aristocracy.
Charles @ 107 quoted:
““The San Joaquin basin,” he muses, referring to central California. “Huge, huge amount of oil there.” How much? The numbers are staggering.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. People have known about those California oil field prior to when my grandparents were born (beginning of the 20th century). Also fracking is an old technology. The standard snappy comeback is the evil anti-development people have prevented access to this.
Sorry, the supposed dollar values are too big. If there was really billions of dollars of wealth there, the anti-development people would have been bought off decades ago (greed always trumps idealism).
My reading of this is someone is telling a yarn to get some sucker to stake oil exploration in those old depleted petroleum fields, i.e. some sly character is offering the Brooklyn Bridge for a bargain price.
118. Eggplant
That thing about California was published in a geology journal.
109. GRUP: Dude, paragraphs are free.
2) Gingrich/Palin – sign me up!
3) OT, but here is Charles Murray on why America is going down the toilet even if you ignore the fiscal folly: http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/poverty/the-new-american-divide/
118. Eggplant
Sorry, the supposed dollar values are too big.
……….
You might be right. Beats me.
Except that the people closest to the oil patch keep saying the actual numbers are much much higher than currently anticipated. If you don’t believe the leader of the Baakan’s drilling venture mentioned above. If you don’t believe his take on San Joaquin basin in California–how about Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon’s assertion that there are 25 billion barrels of oil & oil equivalents in eastern ohio. Is he exagerating too?
http://marcellusdrilling.com/2011/08/chesapeake-energy-ceo-aubrey-mcclendon-talks-to-jim-cramer-about-the-utica-shale-in-eastern-ohio/
Same thing happened with natural gas 4-5 years ago. The anticipated reserves were much much lower–then something happened. Over a two year period the estimates just exploded.
Why the big change?
You’re right that all the oil deposits have been known forever. And that pieces of the current technology have been used for decades –like horizontal drilling, and fracking.
So what’s different now?
Two things as far as I can tell.
One is the confluence of several technologies including the well known horizontal drilling and fracking–but there’s also some others that are less well known like the ability to map & interpret underground formations with much more granularity–so fewer wells need be drilled. As well, some innovations have come up recently that will result in the cost of the wells themselves to fall dramatically.
The second major major thing is high oil prices. Fracking oil is profitable at $60@ barrel. 10 years ago that put all of these reserves out of reach. But now with now with oil at $100@ barrel–huge but difficult and expensive reserves can now be tapped–where they could not be touched in the past.
And they can be hugely profitable.
For the Saudi’s now. $100@ barrel is the new normal. That’s what they need to pay their pampered bureaucrats and everyone else in the kingdom.
That means US oil drillers can drill with a whole lot of confidence that oil prices will remain high for some time. The Saudis cannot bring huge amounts of oil on the market to kill the price of oil (like they did back in the early 80′s to kill alternative energy projects and alternate drilling projects like the oil shale projects of the green river basin western wyoming.)
Oh yeah, its also my opinion that cheap oil back in the early 80 fueled the big economic expansion of that period –as much or more than reagan’s tax cuts deregulation & deficit spending
Stoicheon re: genital rashes
I am sure you have experienced many. The image nimbly jumps out of your keyboard. Newt appeals to people who can’t tell fake from real, evangelicals who love good preaching but don’t know sincerity, rednecks who think that pro wrestling is real fighting, and perverts who think that porn is real sex.
Having captured the lead–newt now does the vision thing.
……………………..
Newt Gingrich’s Space Speech — Will it Be Workable as Well as Visionary?
Mark Whittington – Mon Jan 23, 2:06 pm ET
COMMENTARY | According to the Space Politics blog, Newt Gingrich plans to make a space policy speech on Florida’s space coast probably Wednesday. He said it would be “in the John F. Kennedy tradition rather than the current bureaucracy.”
Gingrich has been a fierce critic of what he calls the NASA bureaucracy, according to Fox News, and an advocate for outside-the-box thinking like using prize competitions, according to Space Politics. It has been rare for candidates running for president to make speeches wholly devoted to space issues. Considering that Gingrich is now the front runner for the Republic nomination, this could be a history changer.
It will be interesting to see if Gingrich can lay out a compelling vision for America in space that not only incorporates some of the more interesting ideas such as space prizes and leveraging the commercial sector (in the right way) but which can be bought in by the various political players that control space policy. As a former speaker of the House, Gingrich has to be keenly aware of what it will take to propose and execute a change of direction and get Congress to go along.
Gingrich’s invocation of JFK is interesting as it suggests the space program’s heroic past, which involved doing a big project, the Apollo program to land a man on the moon. One does not know if the invocation is just thematic or whether he has come around to the idea that NASA, with its bureaucracy obviously shaken up and reformed, has a major role in his new vision that goes beyond being a pay master for prize competitions and commercial companies feeding on government subsidies. Gingrich the historian must remember the examples of Prince Henry the Navigator and Lewis and Clark as well as Apollo. There should be a place for great expeditions to the moon and beyond as part of a larger process to make America a space faring country.
One thing is for certain. A President Gingrich will not regard space as just a box to check off, like both Presidents Bush, or as something to pander and lie about, like President Obama. Space will be a passionate issue for him near the top of the national agenda, as part of making America great again. If his speech presents a plan that is visionary and workable, Gingrich may just change history.
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120123/sc_ac/10871591_newt_gingrichs_space_speech__will_it_be_workable_as_well_as_visionary
Lower 48 shale gas plays (there are quite a few)
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/united_states-shale_plays-2011.pdf
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71613.html
good luck with a hypocrit, that also studdied in New Orealans where his father was chairman of romance languages
is there anymore authentic left in the US?
107 Charles.
1. Liquid synfuels via Fischer-Tropsch is a well established technology. When the gas bubble bursts, gas feedstock will cost more than coal, but the gas-based FT process should be cheaper. Synfuels from either feedstock will be more expensive than near term oil on the international markets, so I see this as a longer term option.
2. The Businessweek article is a lot of handwaving propaganda, a fair amount of it misleading. I’ve seen this trend on this topic in other Bloomburg publications recently. One would never guess from the article that the Bakken was first drilled in 1952 and that horizontal drilling has been going on the in the Bakken for a couple of decades. However, despite what I perceive as deliberate intent to mislead in that particular article, I think there are good reasons to be optimistic about the Bakken. Hamm, in particular, has introduced drilling innovations which give him some real credibility.
3. As you say, “staggering numbers abound” Indeed they do, but the question is which, if any, of the claims about those numbers might have some relationship to the reality of achieving (a) significant production rates (b) at competitive prices.
108. Josh
responding to c @ 107 you said: “I’m very nearly offended by this, it will bail out our crazed socialist system for a generation.”
If THAT is your main concern, you can relax. Fracked oil, like fracked gas, will be expensive. In the forseeable future the realities of retaining a competitive economy will drive us to continue to import huge quantities of cheap conventional oil and gas from the salafists, among others.
Re Churchill and Halifax — read Lukacs’s masterful Five Days in London: May, 1940, which takes you into the privy council fight in No. 10 Downing Street, where Churchill faced that very decision: should he surrender to Hitler for the sake of saving the lives of his people?
It was a much closer-run thing than we knew: to quote the great Duke of Wellington (re Waterloo), “it was the closest-run thing you ever saw in your life.”
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Days-London-May-1940/dp/0300084668
I recommend to you the First Pages option of the Peek Inside. (And Lukasc is a fine writer as well.)
This election is about whether we continue to allow the Ruling Class to plunder,rape, steal and generally wreak havoc on these United States, or do we fight to regain our freedoms and our economic might.
Romney has always been and continues to be a member of the Ruling Class and will do anything to maintain their power. To my way of thinking, Romney and his ilk have been the forward guard of the Progressives behind enemy lines who are only operating as Republicans to cause dissension and disarray among conservatives and to soften up the cause of the right and just for debilitating attacks from the Left and Progressives. Romney and his ilk have never pushed any conservative cause- they have only belittled conservative ideas and made excuses why the ways of Reagan cannot be followed. So when one sees on this blog a snide, disgusting, wholly unsubstantiated comment like the one from Aloysiusmiller one can only surmise we have just another attack from the Progressive Left who want to destroy all that is good about America.
Just to put in my $0.02:
Cheap oil is not the way to growth, or the way to freedom, or the way to anything else at all. Cheap energy is.
I find it deeply, deeply suspicious that all of the ways to cheap energy (and BTW, all of them lead to less CO2 production as well) are being ignored. Wave power, Polywell and/or focus fusion, SPS, OTEC, oil-bearing blue-green algae, cellulosic ethanol, thorium fission… Whereas the completely useless wind power, ground solar and sugar-fermented and corn ethanol, to say nothing of tokamak fusion, are having billions spent on them.
IMHO this is an unholy alliance of watermelons and entrenched interests in the conventional, mostly oil, energy industry and also quite a few sovereign nations whose entire income depends on oil – the more expensive the better. If you were on the board of Exxon, wouldn’t you want to block alternative energy development?
If you have cheap energy, then you can have cheap automotive fuel.
Perhaps the signal Romney is really sending with his tone is that “if I win I will take power but will not prosecute my political foes. Hence, you can afford to lose to me…
Musing on this some more, I realized that if Romney is intentionally doing this, then he is a fool on at least two counts.
First, projections is a strong trait of most leftists. They assume their opponents are guilty of all their own worst traits, especially the ones they refuse to admit in themselves. And were the posistions reversed, a leftist would almost certainly lie and send false signals before the election, then break his agreements, both stated and implicit, the moment he had power in his hands. So any leftists who have gone over the line will project duplicity onto Romney and assume he will double-cross them.
Second, if Democrats have crossed a red line in the abuse of political power, why would they stop now? If they’ve already crossed that line, they didn’t do it avoid punishment for some previous crime, but rather to sieze and wield absolute power. They’ve been working decades to get to this point. They’re not going to turn aside now when they believe they’re on the verge of final victory. They won’t continue to abuse their power in order to avoid punishement for it, they’ll continue abusing their power in order to continue abusing their power. Power is an end to them, not a means.
Charles…
ScenarioA is not to be moved … to scenario B.
The fact is that wildcat economics dictate that success is NOT BROADCAST until the players have amassed just about all of the acreage they can possibly finance.
When East Texas was but young its elephantine nature was entirely unknown to the public. Heck, even the oil men hadn’t a true clue. All of the technology was way too primitive — especially as East Texas was the FIRST hyper-massive deposit discovered. ( i.e. it was spread out over a very, very wide area. That surprised the hell out of everybody. )
Now comes tight formations. They are East Texas on super steroids. ScenarioA is still stuck with a mental model a century old. It has not sunk in that Paris, London, Warsaw and Berlin are ALL smack dab in the middle of a hyper-scale tight gas formation that spans Northern Europe.
This deposit is ruining all of the out-year projections for long distance methane imports.
While we are still early in the process — test wells have demonstrated that the process is economic and practical already — and prior drillings establish that the hyper-reservoir extends for a countless hectares.
When the very first big blow-outs occurred 110 years ago — Kern County, California and Spindletop — attitudes changed. Before that time absolutely no one expected that 200,000 bbls could possibly flow out of a single bore in just ONE DAY. ( Kern County is the world record blowout AFAIK. )
It was such a spectacle that tourists rode up from Los Angeles to see it. Imagine a literal RIVER of oil — held in check by an improvised wooden wall leading to an oil lake. It took nine months to abate the flow. (!)
Coal to liquids as an economic proposition is dying. There are simply too many heavy oil prospects – -which are much, much easier to deal with. This is especially true for those with access to cheap methane.
——-
I discussed these points a couple of days ago.
This reality is slowly sinking in globally. It certainly has KSA freaked out.
I’d say that goes double for Tehran: all of her energy ‘partners’ have given her the brush-off.
Europe can see that peak islam is dead ahead — and that LONG DISTANCE methane transmission is a dying proposition.
The suppliers are impossible to trust, and generally can’t stop their fellow muslims from blowing up the gas works.
( That’s what killed the line to India: they saw what Israel endures.
Even now idiots on the Web post as if some great scheme is afoot to vector Iranian natural gas via Pakistan to points east.
All such projects are now completely unfinanceable. The money is going into fracking, en masse.)
Sorry ScenarioA.
—–
It is flatly not true that horizontal boring has been done for decades — ScenarioA is referring to WHIPSTOCKING.
(See “Two Jakes”)
While both methods do go horizontal — whipstocking uses a ‘dumb’ drilling tip. It can’t follow the pay strata as it waffles away — perhaps even two miles down. Horizontal drilling — as in the current fracking scheme is actually able to ride the wave and stay in the zone. That ‘smart drill tip’ is as much a game changer as the Hughes rotary bit and the ensleevement of the bore hole. ( Spindletop being the very first instance of wooden ‘pipe’ used to ensleeve the top of the bore hole. Do note the results. )
—–
Again, I must refresh memories: you can’t just look at crude oil imports and exports. You must also take a peak at refined products — especially when viewing Iran and America.
Iran has a very impressive export stat: 4.3 MM bbl/dy. However, she is forced to refine her own needs in alien lands. India is at the top of the list — but there are others. ( Singapore )
So Iran’s NET liquid energy exports are substantially less — down around 3 – 3.5 MM bbl/dy.
America is another very interesting case. Being at the top of the heap in demand — any shift becomes market shifting. And gasoline demand is off substantially, year over year. The construction workers with beat-up pick-ups have them parked/ scrapped… and it’s Kias that are selling.
As for middle distillates: heavy trucking, railroads and home heating are not yet backing off.
So you have diesel trading VERY strong — and gasoline flooding America. Something like 1.5 MM bbls/dy is leaving North America. Petroplus has had to shut down approximately 500,000 bbls/dy in capacity — with the rest of her plants choking back. Her crack spreads are so terrible that her bankers have pulled the rug/plug.
It’s only going to get worse from here on.
The break up of the Euro bezzle will cause a massive contraction in gasoline demand. ( Refiners normally make their money on gasoline — not middle distillates.)
The PIIGS will see their fuel imports exploding in price — dead ahead.
European pain will cause misery on Wall Street: the S&P 400 make tremendous profits in Europe.
Oh, well.
Cheers.
129. Fletcher Christian
Cheap oil is not the way to growth, or the way to freedom, or the way to anything else at all. Cheap energy is.
……………………
Typically you hear economists say that cheaper energy goes straight to productivity. That is, the cheaper the energy costs are for producing anything–the more productive are the workers.
More productive workers command higher wages.
The way you gauge a country’s prospects for wealth is to watch its productivity. More productivity, more wealth.
On Tuesday, George Stephanopoulos interviewed David Plouffe and began, “[I] got this e-mail from [the] Democratic National Committee…saying Mitt Romney’s tax returns release raises more questions than it answers.”
The media is just the propaganda ministry of the left.
129. Fletcher Christian
The meaning of the big continental sized talk about oil fracking for a place like Singapore–is that the Chinese within the next couple years will get hold of this technology. Their oil/gas reserves on the mainland accessable to fracking are said to be even greater than the reserves of the USA. This means that in a decade or so the Chinese have a shot at being energy independent.
This is just as huge for them as oil independence is for the USA.
That also means that they don’t really need to grab the oil reserves under the south china sea. In the end, it may well be cheaper to frack the oil & gas onshore.
Now the USA is both contesting Chinese claims to the South China Sea and providing them the means to become energy independent.
That means that the Chinese military is now a vanity organization.
Unsk, your conspiracy theory is so Leftist it doesn’t just stink it raises a stench. You represent the mirror image of the left–a distinction without a difference. If Newt hadn’t existed Alinsky would have invented him. We have been corroded by men of shameless lust, greed and envy. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289159/gingrich-and-reagan-elliott-abrams
Fact Checking President Obama’s Claims About Domestic Energy Production
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/01/20/fact-checking-president-obamas-claims-about-domestic-energy-production/