Will the GOP candidate in 2012 show up to play and fight back against Obama’s surrogates in the media? Or will he be intimidated and be the next McCain, Bob Dole, or Gerry Ford?
Stacy McCain spots this Epic Fail from Newt, who told bloggers on a conference call today:
Gingrich said he should have been better prepared for the “adversarial nature” of “Meet the Press.”
“I didn’t go in there quite hostile enough, because it didn’t occur to me going in that you’d have a series of setups,” Gingrich said. “This wasn’t me randomly saying things. These were very deliberate efforts to pick fights.”
Stacy responds:
Newt didn’t realize David Gregory was going to play “gotcha”? Hello? But the comparison with Reagan is a bit much. The 24/7 New Media environment — including cable TV, talk radio and the blogosphere — didn’t exist in 1980.
Does the acronym WCFCYA mean anything to you?
This is where Newt’s long, long political record works against him. Leave aside the ex-wives and the half-million-dollar Tiffany’s account. That’s just a distraction. The fact is, Newt has a record to defend, he’s opined on a variety of topics during TV appearances and speeches, and his difficulty in meeting Gregory’s “gotcha” attacks exposes that vulnerability.
And finally, Stacy has a flashback to another flip-flop from Newt, in addition to his cozying up to Nancy Pelosi in 2008 for a “global warming” PSA:
For me, of course, it’s personal. I was there in the ballroom at the Hotel Saranac on Nov. 3, 2009, when Doug Hoffman gave his concession speech. Lot of red-rimmed eyes in the crowd there that night. But there is no crying in journalism . . .
Still, I haven’t forgotten. Michelle Malkin has not forgotten. There are lots of us who remember that Newt supported Dede Scozzafava against the Tea Party movement’s first national hero.
Perhaps Newt didn’t want to be seen as one of the “Stalinists” by Frank Rich of the New York Times, or simply wanted to stay on the happy, fun-loving, “moderate” side of the MSM.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member