I have not personally written much here on this blog about Speaker Gingrich, be he is one that has from the beginning been on the bottom of my list of candidates I would support. My reasons for not supporting him have been my own and I never felt to share them since I never thought Gingrich would surge as high as he has in the national polls. While it is true that his support is currently waning, it’s my belief that he still has the greatest potential against Romney due to his strong support in South Carolina.
The following letter came to me in an email from Grant Hallstrom of Southern California. Though I didn’t write it encapsulates very well my personal thoughts and feelings on Speaker Gingrich, so I thought I’d post it here. Before this came to me Grant had sent it out to more than 1000 of his contacts and received many positive responses for his letter. I’d like say thanks to Grant for reaching out to so many people to help Mitt Romney, and for letting us post the letter here on our site.
I do not know your political affiliations, and do not want to offend anyone, but I feel the need to speak up. It is not my normal practice to point out negative attributes about political candidates, but I am amazed at how gullible so many Republicans are in buying the re-invention of Newt Gingrich from the bombastic, dishonest, ego maniac into an older, wiser and gentler statesman. I don’t buy it!
I can understand how uninformed people would be impressed with this smart, knowledgeable person with a strong personality and good communication skills who says the right things, but we have a track record on this guy to put things into perspective.
My number one problem with him becoming the president of the United States is that he has a proven track record of not being able to work well with people. Oh, sure, others are impressed with him at first, but over time his caustic know-it-all personality rules the day and relationships break down. Just look at his failed multiple marriages, and how the House Republicans kicked him out as Speaker after he single-handedly alienated both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, along with much of the American public, resulting in the biggest loss of Republicans seats in the House in 64 years. Just so you don’t say “he’s changed,” remember that most of his own senior staff resigned en masse about six months ago because they couldn’t stand working with him.Many people are impressed with how he discourages negative comments between the candidates at the debates without realizing how self-serving this is. When you live in a glass house you not only don’t throw stones, you don’t want your neighbors to either. Newt probably has 10 times the baggage as all of the other candidates combined. So, of course he doesn’t want a negative campaign.
Sure, he has a nice sound-bite response for all of his past follies, but how can you trust someone who has admitted to lying to the House Ethics Committee while they were investigating him on 84 charges of ethical violations and which sanctioned him for $300,000 before he resigned from his seat in the House in disgrace? And this investigation had nothing to do with Newt admitting to kiting checks in the House Banking/Post Office corruption scandal years earlier. Not to mention that he launched the investigation and was a vocal critic of President Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal while Newt was having his own affair.
“Oh, but he’s changed,” you say. Has he? In essence, he now says that his affair is our fault because he was so burdened serving us that he couldn’t deal with all of the pressure. He also says that there was no influence peddling involved with working for Freddie Mac, yet Freddie found it beneficial to keep paying Newt over $1.6 million dollars for “advice” that Freddie didn’t like. Yeah, right. I don’t like what you say, so I’ll keep paying you. On top of that, Newt feels that President Obama should return the campaign contributions he received from Freddie. Also, Newt previously praised Freddie’s business model and now criticizes it. Are you confused yet? I don’t blame you. It is hard to keep track of all of Newt’s flip flops.
Take climate change for example. He did an ad with Nancy Pelosi promoting Al Gore’s climate protection alliance, at the same time he was testifying against Al Gore’s cap-and-trade proposal. Yet, Newt supported other cap-and-trade proposals which he neglects to tell us about today. Now, Newt dismisses all this as just some dumb mistake. The one thing Newt is not is dumb. But, Newt is playing us for fools, and Republicans seem anxious to prove him right. However, Independents won’t be deceived in the general election when all these issues, and many more, will be highlighted by the Obama campaign.
So what is Newt all about? Beyond being your typical “rent-a-politician,” I believe Newt is driven by his insatiable ego. I, for one, have had enough ego maniacs in my life with the current occupant of the White House. I am concerned that with Newt’s continual inconsistencies and need for attention, he will be unpredictable and make rash, precarious decisions. I am concerned that many Republicans do not care enough to make an informed decision, but instead are drawn to the loudest voice promising a quick easy fix to all of our problems. I, for one, want a good, honest, wise leader in the White House, not just someone with charisma who tells me that he is so smart that he will usher in the “hope and change” he thinks we need. We already have that.
Grant J. Hallstrom
~Addendum from Ross
After a desperate and angry Newt Gingrich calls Gov. Romney a liar, Mitt responds on Fox & Friends:
Nate owns and manages a small souvenir manufacturing business. He and his wife of 12 years have 2 children. Nate has been blogging for Mitt Romney since late 2006 and is co-founder and editor of MittRomneyCentral.com.
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1000 contacts! Wow.
These points perfectly demonstrate my hang-ups and concerns with Newt as well. I will forward this some of my contacts. Unfortunately I can only think of 12 or so, but one of them is in Iowa! Thanks for writing this Grant.
Grant,
I happen to be leaning Romney at this time but I’m not a big supporter of the negativity being used in this campaign so far. I was raised on the motto, “Your record should speak for itself. If you need to tear others down or bring up their shortcomings then obviously your accomplishments are not good enough to Stand on their own
merits! I guess we didn’t get it in ’08 when Obama promoted “Yes we can!” keep it positive or he’ll he back in there for another 4 years.
Paul,
I think we all share your concern, but in a field this competitive, there is going to be a little contentiousness. Besides, it may be good practice. Just wait until the so-called “positive” Obama campaign (it was far less so than you indicate) unleashes their $billion dollar war chest of negative ads, with the likes of foul-mouth Debbie Wasserman-Schultz leading the way. They have nothing to run on, and have vowed to “destroy” Romney. It’s going to get personal. It’s going to be ugly. But, we all know that Mitt’s vision for the future will be far more positive and optimistic than Obama’s. How could it not be? It’s about freedom vs. an Orwellian government.
Paul, this site is not a branch of the Mitt Romney campaign, but a fan site. As fans, we’re allowed to discuss whatever we want. But to the point, Gingrich singled out Romney’s Super PAC ads because Mitt Romney is his biggest and only threat. The more effective anti-Gingrich ads were actually put out by the Ron Paul campaign, the actual campaign, not a PAC. So don’t buy all the media hype about Mitt being negative. They’re trying to nail him anyway they can because Mitt, unlike Newt, doesn’t have any newsworthy baggage with which to manure people’s televisions. All the official Mitt Romney ads of the past several weeks have been positive about Mitt’s record and vision for America. Check it out at http://www.MittRomney.com.
I agree with this somewhat, I dont like Gingrich’s ever eagerness to self promote his books, his morality gives me pause too. He has some good ideas. I do not like how Perry thinks he can will by slinging mud though. Key points to win in Iowa- talk about jobs, talk about chances to do the jobs they know how to do, there are so many struggling towns there. I used to live in Keokuk and if you went there you would say Why? Except for beautiful old homes it needs a injection boost of commerce and productivity. Focus on what each state needs and you will go far along with national needs- Personalize it to them.
Paul…Why should we nominate a candidate who was forced to resign from his own party as speaker of the house and a candidate who has walked back many of positions. Positions that he has taken recently. With the left leaning media and far right media (Fox), reporting biased information in favor of Gingrich, many voters were in the dark about Gingrich. The negative ads might have been negative, but they were the truth. Gingrich is an opposition researcher’s dream. His baggage is disturbing and substantial. People needed to know the truth.
Romney has had negative ads too, but they couldn’t pass factcheck.org. The ads were edited, words out of context… very phony. Gingrich himself did a misleading dishonest ad on Romney concerning immigration. He took a snippet from 1994 and built a false ad around it. But he has no problem calling Romney a liar. Unbelievable.
Everyone who is running for president talks a good line. I think it would be much more effective for Mitt if he would not just say “I reduced taxes 19 times” but give a reference if someone wanted to look it up. Isn’t there a record somewhere. He says he is pro-life. Then give the reference for all the legislation that he dealt with that was pro-life. It would be a great tv ad. He says one thing, the attackers say something else. Who are the public going to believe. I think it would be effective to show where the facts are. One good ad would do a lot of good. I know mitt is a great guy and would make a great president. I think ads with more than just words would be effective against his attackers. They attack these things: his pro-life stance, his health plan (mention all the organizations that helped him develop that plan–it wasn’t his own. Those seems to be the main arguments passed around.