But this is from before he let Jesus into his heart, right?That's right. Also, Limbaugh has come out on this topic with something like "Everybody has an angry ex-wife."
Undoubtedly, his mistress — a Callista Bisek, a former Hill staffer who was then 32 — would not have appreciated the comparison. Bisek and Gingrich had reportedly been having an affairs for 6 years before Gingrich told Marianne.Whatever you think about his sexual habits, perhaps the rank hypocrisy and pervasive dishonesty is worth considering.
After Gingrich’s phoned-in confession, they talked at their home — just after he’d given a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania about the importance of family values. She told Esquire she asked him how he could give such a speech days after he’s admitted his affair to her and asked her to tolerate it
"It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live."
What's oddest to me about Newt Gingrich is his ability to inspire his own attitude in his liberal opponents. He who once declared that Republicans need to be "nasty" now finds that details of his private life are trotted out as though they are some kind of indication of his ability to lead.What liberal are you talking about? His ex-wife is the one who has done this, and she's a Romney supporter.
To believe that a person's right to private enjoyment of her or his own sexual proclivities is contingent on that person sharing our political beliefs – even if those political beliefs are very important – is to believe that the right to live our private lives the way we want is a very limited thing that can easily be taken away if we do or say the wrong thing.If by "if we do or say the wrong thing", you mean "say that others don't have such privacies and propose legislation to take such privacies away", OK.
The recent NYT article about the Tea Party in SC was informative. Basically, primarily because of Mass. health reform, they deeply despise and distrust Romney. Then secondarily, the ones who aren't hard-core Tea Partiers are evangelicals and they don't really like Romney, either. And they don't really like Catholics, so Santorum isn't much of an appealing choice.Weirdly, Gingrich actually converted to Catholicism recently.
Trotted out by other republicans.
What's oddest to me about Newt Gingrich is his ability to inspire his own attitude in his liberal opponents. He who once declared that Republicans need to be "nasty" now finds that details of his private life are trotted out as though they are some kind of indication of his ability to lead.
I'm guessing this isn't going to hurt Newt all that much, if at all. I could imagine that it might even help him, drawing attention to him as the non-Romney whom the dastardly Romney is fighting dirty against.Sarah Palin said:
I call them dumbarses. They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview that’s old news — and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign — all it does, Sean, is incentive conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it’s played so selectively by media, that their target, in this case Newt, he’s now going to soar even more.I feel like I should wash my hands or something.
Newt: "Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America's enemies. Kill them.Holy shit.
Crowd: ROARING APPLAUSE
I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.posted by argonauta at 6:48 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]
That little girl from Aliens is currently 35 years old, which means she is just now eligible to become president.
I do believe in doing my civic duty and paying my taxes and all, but... wouldn't you want a leader who consulted experts, considered the fiscally wisest solution, and chose that?I think I'd want a leader who, after paying his 15% tax rate, would realize that the system was incredibly unfair and work to rectify that unfairness. Warren Buffett clearly has a bevy of top notch tax accountants, but that doesn't stop him from saying "this is fucked up."
What is being called out here, and tittered about in the news, and sneered about by liberal pundits, etc, is that he asked his wife for an open marriage. The horror! What a disgusting person, asking her such a filthy question. What a shameful thing to do.
Yep. This is America - where you can endorse genocide, and nobody (even the liberals) bats an eye; but be a 'sexual deviant' who cheats on your spouse like millions of other people in this country, and we come down on you like a ton of bricks.Oh, koeselitz, please. You've been harping on "the liberals" all night for picking on poor Newt supposedly due to his infidelities, and totally ignoring all of the people telling you that it's his hypocrisy, not simply his infidelities. And now here you are specifically saying that nobody bats an eye at something that plenty of people in this thread have batted plenty of eyes at.
He wouldn't have had to lie under oath about blowjobs if he wasn't already being asked about blowjobs.I can't believe that we're rehashing the Clinton impeachment, but this is a tad disingenuous. He wasn't being asked about "blowjobs." He was being asked about blowjobs administered in a workplace setting by someone who had significantly less power in the workplace than he did. The issue wasn't that he got a blowjob, but that he got a blowjob from a White House intern.
I believe what [Gingrich] brings in the table is what is needed in this particular moment to break through and to be able to keep us from having a candidate like Romney. If we have a candidate like Romney, the evangelical participation will drop, probably from a 2010 level to a 2008 level, that would be from 28 percent to 23 percent, and that would result in the reelection of President Obama and our country cannot possibly, morally and economically, survive that. It would spell, in my opinion, the end of the United States of America as we have known her and consequently the end of Western civilization.I bet churchgoers will be (illegally) hearing that message across a whole lot of pulpits in the next 10 months.
I think I understand why they like NewtI forget where I heard this description of him, but I think it's fairly appropriate, and why they (the base, not the establishment) like him: He's the raw, unrestrained id of the Republican Party.
...they are settling on Newt, and not on Rick Santorum, because Santorum, while admittedly a dick, is not an angry bully of a dick, and that's what the base is looking for.posted by benito.strauss at 5:27 PM on January 21 [6 favorites]
Also, there is zero chance Ron Paul mounts a third party run. Zero.I'm pretty sure he's already explicitly ruled it out.
As an Obama-supporter, I would absoultely love it if he would -- it would split the vote like freaking whoa and lead to a Goldwater-style electoral demolition.That would be good, but it would also give the crazies an excuse for why they didn't win. I am kind of hoping for a result that finally makes it clear to them that the reason they didn't win is because they aren't nearly as much of America as they think they are.
I am kind of hoping for a result that finally makes it clear to them that the reason they didn't win is because they aren't nearly as much of America as they think they are.That's assuming they don't win. This is going to be a really weird election, what with the SuperPac money. I have no idea who is going to win it.
That's assuming they don't win.Sure, but I think that nominating Gingrich is one of the biggest potential steps the Republican Party can do to fulfill my dream of seeing them epically trashed in the general while still giving them no excuse like "This just proves we shouldn't have nominated that RINO McCain".
How many votes does the republican establishment have?They have a lot of money and a lot of power at the convention.
"I would, first of all, demand a thorough audit [of the Fed]. Second, publish all the decision documents for 2008, 2009, 2010. Third, I would prepare legislation to eliminate the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which has totally confused the Fed," Gingrich said.
The former House speaker went on to say that he would demand the Fed to hold "hard" money, which he described to mean that if the central bank saved a dollar this year, then it would have a dollar 20 years from now. Gingrich won't win Florida.I don't know about that. I seem to remember Gingrich leading Florida polls by a wide margin for quite a while, until his second collapse (so far) of this campaign, at which point Romney took the lead. Swap out "Florida" for "South Carolina", and that description still holds.
(And no, that's not anti-semitic. That's just fact.)Oh, ok. If you say it's a fact, then it must be true!
In fact, I will use a large month-by-month chart of that Gallup poll you cited to point it out.And you can cherry-pick events in Israel and claim they caused the rise and fall, but it seems more likely that Gallup's explanation is right and it's just an effect of the small sample size. Other than that it suits your bias, is there any reason to think those particular events caused the fluctuations?
My take: It's been four years. Make another schlep. Soon.My take: thanks for the advice, but my grandmother doesn't care about Israel and will almost certainly vote for Obama if she makes it to November. So fuck off, asshole.
Editorial in the Atlanta Jewish times suggest Mossad should assassinate the Presiedent.And everyone in the world denounced it, including the zany pro-Israel lobby. So now every nutty thing that any Jew anywhere says is evidence of what Jews in general are thinking?
From the outside the pro-Israel lobby seems to be in favour of anything dickish or that involves killing people.It suits my prejudices to believe this thing, so I will believe it without clicking through on the article to see if it's true!
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.".. and the lie being hidden here is that Jewish American voters behave like everyone else, when they clearly do not.No argument from me. We consistently vote for Democrats at higher rates than almost any other group, and our continued disproportionate support of Obama is in line with that. What you have failed to prove is the "fact" that Jews are deserting Obama at higher rates than the general public.
... which, incidentally, would be a good argument for throwing out Gallup's rather flawed conclusion entirely, would it not?!Not if you understand how statistics work. A larger margin of error doesn't make the entire poll invalid. But even if you did throw out that poll, you still haven't proven your "fact" that Jews are going to vote against Obama because AIPAC told us to. And if you're going to claim that a contention isn't antisemitic because it's a fact, you can probably anticipate that people might ask you to provide some evidence of it.
Gingrich is talking about having Sarah Palin play a leading role in his administration now<sarah>I hope I get to be ambassador to Hawaii!</sarah>
3> There is also a Quinnipiac poll that suggests the same thing as what the Reuters poll does, with 67% of Jewish voters disapproving the way the POTUS has handled the Israel/Palestine issue...That's only significant if you assume that Jews are single-issue pro-Israel voters, which you have failed to prove. And fwiw, I'm not really sure how to read those numbers. The poll you linked says that Jews are significantly more likely than Protestants and Catholics to see Obama as a strong supporter of Israel, with 50% of Jews answering yes to that question. So it may be that some of that 67% disapprove of Obama because they see him as too pro-Israel (which is where I'd fall), and others may see him as sufficiently pro-Israel but inept.
The difference, frankly, has a lot to do with the growth of rightwing media since Clinton, AIPAC's noted shift to the right, Israel's shift to the right, etc.That's irrelevant, because the issue isn't AIPAC's stance. It's whether Jews vote based on what AIPAC says. And since AIPAC has been drifting to the right since Clinton, according to you, and since Jews continue to be among the most reliable Democratic voters, I'm not seeing evidence for that.
craichead - I must sya you're being a bit eratic there - one moment there's a zany pro-israel lobby, the next anyone who mentions it is talking about all jews.There's no doubt there's a zany pro-Israel lobby. What's under dispute is the "fact," according to markkraft, that they're a significant factor in Jewish voting behavior.
The Jewish thing is kind of a derail isn't it? You guys want to take it to memail or something?You know, I'd be more than delighted if the mods would delete the whole derail. It freaks me out that people like markkirk state total bullshit about Jewish political behavior as "fact," and it gets repeated so many times that people believe it. I'm not going to let it stand, because it's dangerous and it's wrong. But I'm not particularly enjoying this debate, and I really wish it weren't necessary.
The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.” Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”
Romney said "The blind trust is an age-old ruse. You give a blind trust rules. You can say to a blind trust, don't invest in properties which would be in conflict of interest or where the seller might think they're going to get an advantage from me."posted by Rhaomi at 12:42 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]
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