I am firmly in the Gingrich camp now.

[seeker_two]

There will be more than one America by 2040, and that's the good news.

....and at least one of those will be occupied by Mexico.....

[roo_ster]

We'll "make it" to 2040 or even later.  Don't get so melodramatic.

Bread will cost $40 a loaf by then and the average blue collar guy will be making $300k due to inflation, but we'll make it to then.

It just won't be the same America, that any of us would actually WANT to live in.  We'll have our guns.  We'll be able to vote.  We'll have the 1A.

-But the vote won't matter (Giant *expletive deleted*che / Turd Sandwich)
-The guns won't matter (no one will use 'em for their purpose)
-Speech and Assembly won't matter ("Free Speech Zones")
-Patriot Act(s) will make any groundswell movement to replace the Police State, impossible.

Sadly, the only GOP contender to question the Holy PATRIOT ACT was Ron Paul.  Newt was "all PATRIOT ACT all the time" when they debated it.

[Jamie B]

Newt is running for 2 reasons: rebuilding his ego, and the money.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[roo_ster]

Newt is running for 2 reasons: rebuilding his ego, and the money.

Nothing more, nothing less.

He's already got lotsa money.  I would substitute power for money.

[Jamie B]

He's already got lotsa money.  I would substitute power for money.

More money ties in with the ego and power - all three.

[Perd Hapley]

Somebody's running for the Presidency, for the money, power and ego boost? I am shocked. Shocked and outraged.

[MicroBalrog]

THere's also this:

http://www.fitsnews.com/2011/12/05/georgia-gun-owners-blast-newt-gingrich/

In 1996, Newt Gingrich turned his back on gun owners and voted for the anti-gun Brady Campaign’s Lautenberg Gun Ban, which strips the Second Amendment rights of citizens involved in misdemeanor domestic violence charges or temporary protection orders — in some cases for actions as minor as spanking a child.

[AJ Dual]

THere's also this:

http://www.fitsnews.com/2011/12/05/georgia-gun-owners-blast-newt-gingrich/

Meh... He was vocal on the AWB, which is the main litmus test for most gun owners. Which really comes down to the ability of the American public to fight a war or stage (Constitutionally/Declaration mandated) insurrection if need be. The rest is just nibbling around the outside honestly.

Romney supports an AWB, AFAIK, newt doesn't. Technically even better than Bush II's position of "he'd sign it, but wink-n-nod, Congress will kill it".

And as odious a piece of legislation it is, how far the term "Domestic Violence" gets stretched is not directly the fault of the Lautenberg Amendment. That just gets back into the purist 2A debate of if someone shouldn't have arms, they shouldn't be free in public either.

And keep in mind all the anti-gun stuff Reagan did as Governor of California, and some import bans/EO's he signed as well. The FOPA, machine gun poison pill notwithstanding, really only brought Reagan up to "gun neutral" in my mind.

If it finally does come down to between Newt and Romney, at least the debates prove to me Newt is the smartest person in the room. Romney, Obama, and Perry all strike me as the kinds of leaders who just pick and choose from the policies presented to them by their staff.  Ron Paul is great, but gets really vague when pressed on the details of how to implement Libertarian policy in a rubber meets the road kind of fashion.

[AZRedhawk44]

Ron Paul is great, but gets really vague when pressed on the details of how to implement Libertarian policy in a rubber meets the road kind of fashion.

Agreed.

But "implementing" libertarian policy is about as challenging as disproving a negative.

The core of libertarian policy is get out of the way of people living their lives.


How do you "implement" such a change in HUD, DoE, etc?  In a soundbite-friendly manner that doesn't throw you to the wolves in the general election if you win the primary?

"I will disband the HUD and reduce federal spending, allowing that tax revenue to remain in the hands of tax payers."


If you were a democrat, how would you spin that?

[MicroBalrog]

Ron Paul is great, but gets really vague when pressed on the details of how to implement Libertarian policy in a rubber meets the road kind of fashion.

Libertarian policy is easy to implement. Just start repealing s7^&.

[makattak]

Libertarian policy is easy to implement. Just start repealing s7^&.

And this is why Libertarians lose. 

[birdman]

Libertarian policy is easy to implement. Just start repealing s7^&.

I think you mean create a well thought out list, ranked in order of decreasing effects on personal liberty, and start working through it repealing s$&t.

[MicroBalrog]

I think you mean create a well thought out list, ranked in order of decreasing effects on personal liberty, and start working through it repealing s$&t.

That works too.

[AJ Dual]

Actually, Newt's own "Wither on the vine" phraseology.

I'll be honest, what has to happen to get a Libertarian revolution is to couch it in an shell game of "reforms" that are carefully designed to at least have a superficial appearance of not gutting the fed.gov and everyone's pet program... at first.

Make a public case for combining agencies, with savings, then slowly divest that agency of it's combined functions. That sort of thing. Then, you point out a year later that the agency's functions do not exist anymore, and life went on for everyone etc. Then, you've got some political capital to move on to the next round of cuts, and so on.

And some idea of a strategy to actually get Congress to go along with some of this would be nice too.

In nitty gritty "rubber meets the road" terms, I fear Ron Paul could just be another flash in the pan president like Obama, who was supposed to be the great "new way" black messiah, and was just a liberal hack, and an ineffectual one at that. I can easily see RP being the great Libertarian Messiah, neither side of Congress working with him, and him just disappointing everyone in the libertarian side of things, when the actual exigencies of office get to him, and he realizes he's got his hands tied in ways almost every new president comes to learn as he enters office.

That's not to say it wouldn't be great to see him at least try.  

[Lee]

If it finally does come down to between Newt and Romney, at least the debates prove to me Newt is the smartest person in the room.

I'd settle for that at this point.  Dubya seems like a braniac compared to the rest of this group....yeah the guy who signed off on the patriot act and said he would sign the AWB. 
Sometimes people get what they ask for.

[AZRedhawk44]

I'd settle for that at this point.  Dubya seems like a braniac compared to the rest of this group....yeah the guy who signed off on the patriot act and said he would sign the AWB. 
Sometimes people get what they ask for.

...Except for the fact that the smart guy is actually crafty enough to lie straight to your face and build a reasonably convincing story to support the lie.

The rest of these idgits are at least nominally transparent.

[Jamie B]

Great line from the Daily Show last night - Up Newt creek without a paddle.

[longeyes]

Actually, Newt's own "Wither on the vine" phraseology.

I'll be honest, what has to happen to get a Libertarian revolution is to couch it in an shell game of "reforms" that are carefully designed to at least have a superficial appearance of not gutting the fed.gov and everyone's pet program... at first.

Make a public case for combining agencies, with savings, then slowly divest that agency of it's combined functions. That sort of thing. Then, you point out a year later that the agency's functions do not exist anymore, and life went on for everyone etc. Then, you've got some political capital to move on to the next round of cuts, and so on.

And some idea of a strategy to actually get Congress to go along with some of this would be nice too.

In nitty gritty "rubber meets the road" terms, I fear Ron Paul could just be another flash in the pan president like Obama, who was supposed to be the great "new way" black messiah, and was just a liberal hack, and an ineffectual one at that. I can easily see RP being the great Libertarian Messiah, neither side of Congress working with him, and him just disappointing everyone in the libertarian side of things, when the actual exigencies of office get to him, and he realizes he's got his hands tied in ways almost every new president comes to learn as he enters office.

That's not to say it wouldn't be great to see him at least try.  

+1

Incrementalism, in reverse.

Creeping libertarianism, in other words.  One demolition at a time.

[MicroBalrog]

Do you trust Newt to implement that? Remember, Newt is a historian by trade. This means he's a top-of-the-line professional bull***er.

He cares more about not getting mocked in the evening news than he does about saving the Republic or liberty in our time.

[seeker_two]

He cares more about not getting mocked in the evening news than he does about saving the Republic or liberty in our time.

So....he's another Hillary Clinton.....


....which is rather interesting.....esp. when you consider that you never see Gingrich and Hillary in the same place at the same time.....

[makattak]

Do you trust Newt to implement that? Remember, Newt is a historian by trade. This means he's a top-of-the-line professional bull***er.

Felix Cortez: Whatever this man has told you is a lie. He LIES for a living!
Ernesto Escobedo: He is in the Intelligence business.
Felix Cortez: Exactly.
Ernesto Escobedo: YOU'RE in the Intelligence business!

[AJ Dual]

Do you trust Newt to implement that? Remember, Newt is a historian by trade. This means he's a top-of-the-line professional bull***er.

He cares more about not getting mocked in the evening news than he does about saving the Republic or liberty in our time.

No.

I was talking about Ron Paul laying out some more concrete plans other than "abolish this"... "abolish that".

There's no plan in his platform, at least that I've seen him articulate, for when Congress says "Uh... how about no?".

The only thing Newt has going for him is being the smartest person in the room. This is "good", at least because we currently have a POTUS who leads by having his staff bring him different variants of Keynesian socialist policies on the golf course and he points, and says "Um... that one, I guess." And the point has been made that the GOP base is now overly-sensitive to the MSM and entertainment industry consistently portraying GOP/Conservative POTUS'es as "dumb". The doddering caricatures of Reagan. The constant grinding on Quayle. Dana Carvey's Bush I, Will Ferril's Bush II, etc. on SNL...

So someone who can talk rings around Obama, and anyone else, even if it means he'll be talking free market privatization ideas for entitlements one day, then cap-n-tax and ethanol the next... Newt looks and sounds good to someone who's seen their POTUS'es slammed as "dumb" every day for the past few decades.

However, no one here, least of all me, is claiming that being smart has any correlation with being honest, or wise.

Despite being "smart" Newt is mentally and politically undiciplined, and leaving aside any other "beltway insider", Machiavellian, and disturbingly statist  tendencies he has for the moment, he's prone to following any idea that comes into his head, maybe even just that morning.   That's where stuff like sitting on that couch with Pelosi for that execrable MMGW commercial came from.

Honestly, there is something fundamentally wrong with the GOP nomination process and the primaries. The rare times we ever get a quality candidate of some substance, like Reagan, he's a fluke dark-horse surprise candidate, where the momentum for him builds faster than whatever mysterious cancer the GOP has can get out ahead of it and divert things back to the usual mediocre RINO we're used to, who is also often completely lackluster in personal appeal or energy, like Dole and McCain.

Newt is the front runner right now because the GOP base is desperate. They know "something" is wrong. And they know the MSM is also meddling in the process with their usual bias and selective coverage. This coming year should have been a slam-dunk for the GOP, considering Obama's fundamental polling problems, and every "incumbent indicator" in history working against him. Yet the best we've got right now is Newt?

NEWT? Seriously?

This kind of FUD factor is making the GOP base anxious to grab anyone who's got even the slightest level of appeal or "edge" to them, and back them, out of a desire for some direction and "clarity" in the process, and they'll be willing to overlook any number of flaws to do it.

A revitalized Perry campaign would seem like a Godsend at this point.

[longeyes]

Thinking that we are going to be "led" to righteous republicanism by anyone in power on the public scene strikes me as self-defeating.  We've been in a cultural war for decades, one that has seriously undermined American civilization.  Until we recognize that and take steps to fight fire with fire through a broad-based popular movement we are going to be wandering in the desert on a slow death march.  This election is really about expanding and strengthening the "Tea Party" and realizing we are going to need a militant mass movement to combat the organized forces of American Leftism.