Glenn Beck has officially gone off the deep end. This is very sad, as I have written about my admiration for Beck’s unwavering support of Israel.
Beck said this about Newt Gingrich on Judge Napolitano’s show:
“This man is a progressive. He knows he’s a progressive. He doesn’t have a problem with being a progressive…So if you’ve got a big government progressive [in Gingrich] or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this Tea Party. Is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.”
This quote is misguided and inaccurate for several reasons. First of all, to state that Obama and Gingrich are so identical that the Tea Party must be racist for supporting the latter and not the former, is laughable. Plus, Beck is making the same accusations about the Tea Party as the left! Does Beck honestly believe that Newt’s record and ideology is in any way similar to Obama’s? Here are just a few minor ways in which Newt is starkly different than Obama.
- As Speaker of the House Newt helped balance the budget and reform welfare.
- Newt would appoint John Bolton as his Secretary of State. Does Beck think he would be better than Clinton?
- As soon as Newt became President, America would become dramatically more supportive of Israel. Does Beck dispute this?
- Newt would work to repeal Obamacare and the onerous Dodd-Frank banking regulation law.
- Newt doesn’t think we should raise taxes…on anybody!
To ignore these substantive differences between Newt and Obama is to ignore reality.
Beck then said that he would vote for Ron Paul as a third party candidate instead of Newt in a general election. This is unexplainable to me. Beck has spent a great portion of the last year supporting Israel with moving programs and documentaries, culminating with his rally in Jerusalem. Why would Beck support the only Republican candidate in the field who would leave Israel to the wolves in the form of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah? Newt is the only candidate who is not scared to speak the truth about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, accurately calling the Palestinians an “invented people.”
Yes, it is true that Newt took some un-conservative positions when he left office in the late 90s. However, he undoubtedly is driven by much more of a small government philosophy than Obama.
Beck, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a brother. You’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do. I don’t want to see at the hotels…(OK, maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get the point).
*And by the way, If Beck said the same thing about Romney, I would be just as upset.
Well said.
Beck is dead to me too.
Right And Kraut and Levin. All a bunch of crackpots.
Listen people, they have a point. The Fanny/Freddie thing just gets worse the more you think about it. It can’t be defended. Its hard to imagine a principled person helping that bunch. He could face charges given the amount of money that’s being talked about. Those fees were very high. That’s a yellow flag.
Such remarks are inexplicable and undefendable. It’s hard to remain a defender of Beck (not that he needs me) if he’s going to go off like this. Call me “Codependent no more”.
Me too. And it really breaks my heart to say it. Glenn used to alert us to how todays government strays from Constitutional and moral issues and his research on Obama’s czars was effective and rid us of at least Van Jones. But his departure from Fox to his own endeavor seemed to take the lid off his own control of thought. I no longer listen to his radio show, and this Paul lunacy has caused me to drop watching him as well.
Ah, Beck. Once I liked you. Then I tolerated you. Now, I’m afraid, it’s more or less over between us.
Here’s our take on WHY Beck is doing this.
Unfortunately, Mitt Romney IS very much a progressive. He will never repeal Obamneycare. Moreover, as head of Bain Capital, he gutted US companies and offshored US jobs. He would continue doing exactly the same thing if he became CEO of the US.
Anybody who is capable of being elected in any New England state will automatically be too much of a leftist to be qualified to be President of the US. The mindset in that part of the country is alien to anything that we could possibly tolerate in the South or in Flyover Country.
And yes, Mitt Romney would sell us, and Israel, out to the Muslims in a heartbeat.
One big problem with your analysis.
What Beck is saying about Mitt is not–I say again, NOT–the topic of this piece.
This is about what Beck is saying about Newt. Different person.
In fact, I haven’t heard anything about what Beck might have said about Mitt. His most recent outburts have, as far as I’ve read, been focused on Newt.
Therefore, a diatribe about Mitt is, at best, a non-sequitur. At worst, it’s a calculated red herring trying to get us away from discussing Newt.
Here’s why I said this:
“*And by the way, If Beck said the same thing about Romney, I would be just as upset.”
My point is: If Beck had said the same thing about Romney, it would have been TRUE.
Beck is attacking Newt in order to promote Newt’s closest competitor, namely Romney, and I find that despicable.
Want to talk about Newt? He’s the only candidate who is getting any significant level of support who understands the threat of Islamic expansionism. Newt stands unequivocally on the side of Israel and the US, and against our Muslim enemies. He deserves our vote.
Except that Beck has explicitly endorsed Michelle Bachmann. And has trashed Mittens as well. And going third party for Ron Paul is an endorsement of Romney?
Total BS.
I am with you on that AD.
there is not a great option on the GOP side, but as it stands Newt is the best of the lot.
Newt has some awful ideas …green bullsh!t/immigration/freddyfanny yet Romney is bad with all that and more.(they are progressives ..with the exception of Bachmann who does’t seem to have a chance)
Good get on Beck’s idiotcy! Love your site 1389AD….one of the few sites that post the great Julia Gorin and the news from Clinton’s Kosovo disaster.
Don’t alcoholic’s self destruct?? He started meeting with the *Hollywood Big Wigs* and he’s never been the same. They lured him in and made him think he was one of them I think, mistake number one. He has given the left all they needed to attack us, I can’t believe he doesn’t know this. I hope it was worth it Glenn, live a nice life in Texas after you turn on them, sheesh. Isn’t he one of those liberal whack jobs from New York now?? lol
Newt is a progressive, just slower moving, and Obama is a progressive, fast moving. If your growing government than your a Progressive..Period!!!
Glenn hit the ball out of the ball park while on Fox TV. Many of his shows were familiar territory to many of his viewers, but to a vast majority, he was treading in new and unknown territory (to these new viewers). An awakening, or at least an alert, was sounded. Very good, kudos. Tea Party activist and his many “steps” to fulfillment, were purely inspirational. Black America’s preseance and participation in the Continental Congress had a profound effect on every thinking and breathing US African-American. Pure genius.
His parody of “The Puppet Master” was masterful, funny and entertaining. Glenn’s descriptions of Soro’s meddling in Fox’s TV format (ultimately Glenn’s ouster)were amusing…an insight into MSM (TV) entertainment decision-making.
Glenn’s accomplishments were and are, to be commended. A recovering alcoholic, is to congratulated as well as a faithful follower of his religion. A beautiful family and loving wife, too.
Fox’s treatment of Glenn and the station’s short shrifting of Glenn’s show, because one powerful person demanding his ouster, is shameful…but expected. MSM media is that way.
Apparently, Glenn’s trajectory (up and down) at Fox and this Soros experience, has embittered him. It seems to have had a profound mark on his psyche.
One hopes, Glenn can reflect on this FOX event in his life as a positive direction, for him to build upon and be the funny, entertaining, Glenn Beck of old. God Speed.
messup:
George Soros and Rupert Murdoch as a tag team are quite formidable are they not?
Mormon bashing leads to access to the big leagues does it not?
Thinking too much can cause headaches can it not?
“Thinking too much can cause headaches can it not?”
And so some have the thinking done for them.
I have to say then when Beck put a telephone operator in a Red Army uniform on a platform on his set and dared the libs to call in, it was one of the most manically brilliant pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.
And some of his radio schticks are simply brilliant.
But this new nonsense borders on insanity. You have to wonder whether he is mentally unstable or desperate to keep his network alive. I’d like to see his financial statements, because my hunch is that he invested way more than he should have and is in serious danger of going under financially.
I think Glenn is ‘right on’ by what he said. I can’t believe so many conservatives are supporting Newt. Can we ever forget him sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi discussing global warming. And how about his making $1 million per year while lobbying for Fannie Mae. That is enough to disqualify him. Seems like ‘birds of a feather’ all stick together.
I suspect the reason Beck said this, as with many of the things he said, was that he knew it would get people talking about his show, and consequently boost his ratings.
I have no use for his buffoonery, personally. I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy, but it’s not a good use of my time.
Rand Paul would be running away with these Republican primaries if he’d been elected to the Senate a few years earlier. He has his father’s bedrock principles without the lack of discipline and needless antagonizing of many Republican voters, even though mainline Repubs do need to be confronted on their previous support for open ended, endless nation building and idiotically antagonizing Russia and China for no strategic gain.
It’s really a shame. Beck is indeed a contradictory rodeo clown. I remember a few years ago him saying that Putin was forcing everyone in Russia to become Russian Orthodox while simultaneously building mosques. He has no problem contradicting himself every minute. The backhanded endorsement of Ron Paul is more interesting.
He appears to me to be bitter…
He also continues his hand wringing litany
of immediate destruction as though there is nothing left to do…as it is all gone.
I am a Christian and believe God has a hand in all of this.
Beck claims to be a believer yet he speaks as someone without faith in anything save for sufficient gold, food, water, and toilet paper to last while bands of malcontents roam the nation intent on wreaking havoc.
I find it sad as there are many who continue to hang on every word.
Glenn Beck is not an ideologue or politician: he is an entertainer. He had a TV show that was the political conservative version of Mad Money and he ran out of crazy ideas and the show ended. Why act like Beck is not in it for money and ratings? Or the entirety of Fox News and MSNBC? They are not the places to get info about politics.
“*And by the way, If Beck said the same thing about Romney, I would be just as upset.”
I say it all the time about Romney. You believe a single thing that stealth Dem says? He doesn’t mean a single word he says. Just like Obama, and pretty much every Dem pol.
As for Beck, he’s a Liebrtarian, just like Paul. He is just following Paul’s comment that Paul might run 3rd-Party. Beck is just helping lay the groundwork. Because they are both Libertarians.
Paul running 3rd-Party would very likely give Obama the election, because he has a large enough following, now.
not for likely, for sure. 90% of Paul voters would vote for the Republican. That and cheating would allow the marxist in chief to win comfortably.
Why do the Paulista’s think the attack machine doesn’t go after the guy who is the fiscal opposite of the economic moron in the white house? With all the skeletons in Ron Paul’s closet, he makes Herman Cain look like a hardened silo. They could bring him down in one news cycle if they wanted to.
Glen Beck knows what Michael Savage knows and everyone, but Republicans in Iowa and Florida, knows. If Newt runs against Obama, people will see an old fat white guy.
About a month ago I heard Beck say on the radio that the only reason one can muster to argue that Israel has the right to exist is the Biblical and religious view of the issue. That’s nutjobbery. If you subscribe to the Biblical and religious argument, that’s fine with me, but to say that the only reason Israel now has a right to exist is because God said so in the Bible is either deeply confused or loopy.
With the recent loopery, I start to stop to tune in on the drive to work nowadays.
I will write in Herman Cain
Newt helped balance the budget…
- During an economic bubble caused by destructive monetary policy that ultimately built to cause the housing and mortgage crisis that crested in 2008.
- Without cutting spending.
- With minimum increases in spending of 7%. Most years spending rose by greater than 9% during the Newt’s tenure as speaker.
- Ultimately the balanced budget was the result of an accounting gimmick allowing the counting of social security revenues directly in the overall budget. That was back with SS was turning a surplus.
Glenn Beck is partially right. Newt is a progressive. He’s a progressive neo-con as opposed to a progressive neo-lib, which I think counts for the difference that some tea partiers see in supporting him over Obama. That is where Glenn got it wrong. Trying to hold up Newt’s conservative record is a joke.
The problem I have with Beck’s remarks isn’t the obvious one that Gingrich is demonstrably different than Obama. It’s the way he hauls out the race card to explain why Tea Partiers don’t see things the way he does.
I wonder how Beck would feel if someone said he opposes Gingrich only because he’s not Mormon? It would be equally ridiculous, contemptible, and pathetic.
I didn’t know it at the time, but FoxNews was doing us a HUGE favor by taking Beck’s show off the air. Besides, I’d rather look at Andrea Tantoros than Beck.
Even worse than the despicable dealing of the race card to anyone willing to support Gingrich, I think, is the incredibly incoherent suggestion that one might prefer to vote for a third party Ron Paul instead of Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee. Anyone who can make such a suggestion has forfeited his claim to be “a great supporter of Israel” and begins to raise doubts about his own rationality. I suspect that Beck is just going over the top in opposition to the current main threat to Romney’s candidacy, but a partisanship for Romney so extreme as to suggest Paul would be more acceptable than Gingrich marks Beck as just another political hack willing to say anything.
I like Newt precisely because of the people who hate him.
I have a lot of disagreements with Ron Paul but he is at least saying some of the things that need to be said. Perry won a lot of points with me when he said “Ponzi Scheme”, but then he backed off. Why did Trump make such a good showing for a few weeks ? Again, saying what all the weasels are afraid to say. What I want to hear from my candidate is what mainstream ‘conservatism’ and Republicanism is afraid to say or hear. Give me ‘crazy talk’, the more the better, because this country is in big trouble and we are not going to turn it around by mouthing platitudes and continuing on the same path at a slower rate, which is all I am hearing from the current crop.
Beck needs to take a month off. Maybe do a ten day Buddhist meditation course. Get his head together. His radio show has become a wasteland of silliness and holier than thou preaching. Now he’s smearing the Tea Party. Stuck on stupid.
Pajamas Media sure is obsessing off this remark, got under your skin heh?
Time to start supporting someone other than the big government losers the GOP is giving us. Let’s review: GHW Bush (read my lips, no new taxes), Dole, Bush II (we had to set aside the free market to save the free market), McCain. Newt Romney is cut from the same cloth.
Well, I’ll admit that I’m stunned by Glenn’s proclamations about Newt so I’ll just chalk them up to some sort of mental ailment, temporary I hope. (Especially since I’ve paid my 90 bucks for his internet shows) I watched a few minutes of his show last night but soon tired of it. Glenn is acting like a liberal on this, picking the dark side and dark utterances of Teddy R. that any rational person faintly familiar with Newt’s past and his present positions knows that he doesn’t agree with. I love Glenn and will defend his massive good works, but not this one, he needs taken out back to the woodshed.
Actually I think Beck is a circus barker with a touch of mental illness/ messiah-ism. He’s done us a favor in educating his supporters on the Progressive march through society in the last 150 years and has certainly been successful in a $$ way but has become a certified crank. It was always evident just as was BHO’s leftism, FOX being Conservative or the WSJ being Pro-American. It is nothing more than everyone against our Elitist bettors. We need to realize this simple fact.
Oh Sammy…when will you learn that despite the stupid statements of Beck, Gingrich is not a good nominee?
Need I list all the reasons? Paul Ryan’s Budget is “right-wing social engineering,” he supported Carbon Caps and sat on the couch with that witch Pelosi, took 1.6 million from Freddie Mac to give them “advice,” thinks GSEs like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are good ideas and should only be “split up,” supported the individual mandate as an alternative to Hillarycare, was kicked out of the House and forced to pay for an ethics violation—and those are just off the top of my head.
This guy would have been disqualified in any other year. But people don’t like Romney because he’s a wishy-washy moderate (true) and are looking for some alternative. The field is not good, so Gingrich has benefited by default. God help us if he gets into office.
I checked the Blaze, he’s insisting on the same delirium.
What a pity.
Sending money to Mitt tonight. Haven’t trusted Newt since 1998. In NY23 Newt supported Scozzafava Mitt endorsed Hoffman. There are other examples.