Wolf Howling: Contract with America

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Major Garret On Gingrich Playing Nice With Romney

I have liked Major Garret since his days at Fox. His latest is an article at National Journal entitled Romney's 1994 Problem. He notes that, during the Iowa debate, when Gingrich pointed out that Romney would have been a career politician, but that he lost to Teddy Kennedy in a 1994 Mass. senatorial race, Gingrich was making nice. Gingrich pulled his punch, because there was much more he could have said about Romney's senate race that year. This from Major Garret:

. . . The deeper issue for Romney is that Gingrich, who has managerial and temperamental issues of his own, is just about the worst Republican challenger he could face at a time when undecided Republicans are trying to decide if Romney is an ideological cipher.

In this regard, 1994 is very tough on Romney. The contrast between Romney and Gingrich in this year of GOP ascendancy and congressional clout unrealized since the days of Eisenhower and Truman that many conservatives may find it disqualifying. Whatever Republicans come to think of Gingrich's leadership style as speaker, they know Gingrich helped lead the GOP to its first House majority in 40 years and didn't tinker around the edges with his newly won power. An agenda that achieved spending cuts, sought and over time won a balanced budget, welfare reform, tax cuts, telecommunications reform and congressional reform is not and was not timid.

Gingrich led this effort, he said, on behalf of the legacy of President Ronald Reagan. Gingrich said at the time the "Contract With America" was the second stage of the Reagan revolution, an attempt to translate his unfinished policies by means of a GOP-led Congress.

At the same time, Romney was running against Kennedy in Massachusetts, a liberal state where a successful Republican had to soften some of the harder edges of the GOP's anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic rhetoric. Romney softened them past the state of sponginess and came out on the hardened side of opposition. . . .

Major Garret posts several videos of Romney from 1994, doing everything from criticizing the Contract With America to denying association with Ronald Reagan to embracing Roe v. Wade. Do visit his site to watch Romney the 94 Rinocrat.

Targeting Newt

Romney's top achievement in office - Romneycare, which he really, really doesn't want to talk about anymore.

Newt's top achievement's in office - The Contract With America, welfare reform, a balanced budget, and taking the House for Republicans for the first time in decades,

True, Newt has a lot of baggage - much more than I intend to address with this post. But do remember in assessing that baggage, much of it comes from a left wing MSM that, at the time of his Speakership, wholly ruled the information that Americans read in their papers and heard over the air waves. There was no such thing as the alternative media in those days. And to the left of that era, Newt, who led a Republican conservative tide, was evil incarnate.

And today, Newt is the left's biggest problem. The thought of Gingrich debating the Teleprompter In Chief has got to be giving the left nightmares. Obama, who now has a record, will be raising up straw men and putting them on fire left and right. Gingrich will be talking facts, policy, and history. And do remember how flustered Obama gets when he is truly challenged. This promises to get incredibly ugly for the left. Which is why I just can't get enough of listening to the left talk about how much they welcome Newt as the Republican nominee. They are either wholly out of touch with reality or . . . or . . . or . . . they are being less than honest in their commentary. But lord knows, scratch a left wing paper today and you'll find someone on the left, animated apparently by the spirit of bipartisanship, advising conservatives that Newt is unelectable..

On the other side of the coin, Romney's team and his backers have got out the long knives for Gingrich. Romney tried to coast to the nomination, and now is scrambling to try and stop the Newtmentum that has Romney at 20% back in the polls. Moreover, the electability argument that was at the heart of Mitt's campaign is looking very thin indeed as Gingrich's poll numbers now put him in a statistical dead heat with Obama.

At any rate, Newt now has a big target on his back from both the left and the Romneyites. I expect both to pull out all of the stops. We will see if they do so with any intellectual honesty. This should get even more interesting over the next few weeks.. .

Update: Larwyn's Links