GOP Is Now A Three-Man Race: Romney vs Gingrich vs Gingrich

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by Agent_286, Dec 6, 2011.

  1. Agent_286

    Agent_286 New Member

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    GOP Is Now A Three-Man Race: Romney vs Gingrich vs Gingrich

    By Arianna Huffington | HuffPost | 12//05/11

    Excerpts:

    “Now that Herman Cain has "suspended his campaign" the race is down to three people: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. At this point, the question isn't so much whether Gingrich can beat Romney (he can), but whether Gingrich will beat Gingrich.

    This task is complicated by the fact that there isn't just one Gingrich. He's a very Walt Whitmanesque candidate - he celebrates himself, he sings of himself, he is large, and he contains multitudes.

    Gingrich winning stage one of the GOP race - the contest to be the Primary Non-Romney, and face Romney in the primaries - wasn't that high of a bar to clear, seeing that he was up against a candidate who didn't know China is a nuclear power, a candidate who didn't know the U.S. embassy in Iran had already been closed, and a candidate who didn't know that the voting age is 18.

    And it wasn't just a low bar to become the Non-Romney; it was also not that hard to become a real contender once Primary Non-Romney status was attained. It's been clear for a while that people don't exactly warm to Romney. He addresses the nation like an accountant - and conversations with your accountant, however necessary, are never something you look forward to. As Jon Stewart put it, Romney "looks like everyone who ever fired your dad" - every inch the management consultant/turn-around guy.

    Newt, meanwhile, is like the crazy uncle you stay up late with after dinner, drinking and shooting the bull. He's fun, but you're never going to say yes to the crazy investment schemes he's always bringing to you. ("You're a hoot, Uncle Newt, but I'm just not sure about putting my retirement savings into your Alpaca farm idea.")

    To put it another way - and to repeat my favorite leadership metaphor - Mitt is a fox and Newt is a hedgehog. In 1953, Isaiah Berlin published an essay in which he divided leaders into two categories, foxes and hedgehogs, quoting a line from the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." And in times of crisis and anxiety, people are often drawn to the clarity of the hedgehog.

    Now, Gingrich is a serial hedgehog - jumping from one big idea to the next.
    But he's a hedgehog nonetheless. After all, it's not as if he isn't just as much of a flip-flopper as Romney. The differentiating variable between the two isn't consistency; it's conviction. Whereas Romney tries to reconcile his flip-flops with lawyerly logic, Newt has the ability to seemingly believe each of his contradictory positions with absolute conviction. He is, wrote Kathleen Parker, "certain of his certainty." And for better or worse - usually worse - the natural selection of our political process strongly favors that trait.

    That's one reason the latest Des Moines Register poll has Gingrich at 25 percent (up from 7 percent just over a month ago), Ron Paul at 18 percent, and Romney at 16 percent.

    Romney was always going to have trouble if the Non-Romney vote consolidated behind one person, as appears to be happening with Gingrich.

    But, luckily for Romney, the one person it has consolidated behind is himself several people. So Romney might still pull it out by winning a three-way race, with Gingrich and Gingrich costing each other the top slot.

    It has been so many Gingriches ago, it's hard to even recall the Gingrich of the early and mid-90s. That was the Gingrich who, in his first speech as Speaker, called FDR "the greatest president of the 20th century," and said, "The balanced budget is the right thing to do. But it does not, in my mind, have the moral urgency of coming to grips with what is happening to the poorest Americans." (That, incidentally, is the Gingrich I supported at the time - until I realized that this Gingrich spiel was only empty rhetoric.)

    That was Gingrich 1.0 -- many, many iterations ago. And like Microsoft Windows, he's gotten worse with each successive version. As Maureen Dowd put it on Sunday, "he plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas."

    This latest Gingrich is the one who calls child labor laws "truly stupid," and recently claimed:

    “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash' unless it's illegal.”

    In fact, as the New York Times' Charles Blow pointed out, three-quarters of the working-aged poor do work. And crime rates have plunged, even while poverty has been rising.

    This is the Gingrich who shamefully lent credence to a scurrilous Forbes cover story by Dinesh D'Souza by saying, "What if Obama is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together his actions?"

    We'll find out starting in four weeks, when actual voters take over from the pundits and prognosticators. It should be interesting, since that's enough time for at least three or four more Gingriches to emerge”

    Read full article:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/romney-gingrich-_b_1130195.html
    ………

    In a wild and crazy debate session, the flip-flopping candidates have resigned, been driven off course, starting out with high grades and then virtually ignored as the front-runnng flip-flopper Mitt Romney counters questions in a flip-flopping way without a hair on his head being ruffled, but here comes double flip-flopper Newt Gingrich onto the scene with new campaign strategists, new money, and a few new Newt Gingriches.

    So it will be between two corrupt flip-floppers to see who will get the nomination unless Jon Huntsman shows the nation the true Newt Gingrich who will say anything to get your vote, and promptly forget what he said.

    What happens in Iowa is nothing compared to what the eventual republican nominee will have to master to beat President Obama in a wordy debate.

    Both Romney and Gingrich would be beaten in the first debate by Obama whose whole life has been dedicated to win by strategizing the enemy, watching him flinch and perspire, and finally finishing him in the old Chicago way.
     
  2. waltky

    waltky Well-Known Member

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    Granny says is still a 3 man race - on one side ya got a billionaire an' ideologue outta touch with the common man an' on the other side ya got a candidate outta touch with the common man `cause he always snuffin' up to the rich folks...
    :dohtwo:
    Ryan pick shows Romney is focused on solving America's financial crisis
    August 11, 2012 - Ronald Reagan famously challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” Mitt Romney has just challenged President Obama to “Show us your plan!” Mr. Obama has painted this presidential election as a stark choice; in choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, GOP contender Mitt Romney has answered in kind. While Reagan pushed Gorbachev to free his country, Romney will now push Mr. Obama to address our nation’s fiscal abscess -- something the president has resolutely refused to do.
    See also:

    Romney, Ryan would hurt middle class
    11 Aug.`12 WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats pounced on Mitt Romney's selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday, saying the pick showed a commitment to "budget-busting tax cuts" for the wealthy and greater burdens on the middle class and seniors.
     
  3. Subdermal

    Subdermal Banned

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    knock off the granny bullsh!t. No one gives a sh!t about your granny, and barely gives a sh!t about you.
     
    Montoya and (deleted member) like this.
  4. Defengar

    Defengar New Member

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    ^^^ This. And why the hell would he bump a thread from an entire year ago XD.
     

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