Newt Gingrich: A Too-High-Risk GOP Nominee?

Newt Gingrich: A Too-High-Risk GOP Nominee?




By Guest Blogger Richard Falknor @ Blue Ridge Forum
                                
“Newt Gingrich is a bad bet because he will embarrass the Republican party. He will do so through things he has already said and done, and in ways we cannot predict except to be sure — because character will out — that they will happen.”  Mona Charen today in NRO.

Since we are writing for seasoned conservatives and their center-right sympathizers, those who value our common civilization and take pleasure in our common language, let us stipulate up front that we find former Speaker Newt Gingrich both articulate and often instructive on emerging issues, for example, the threat of an electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) attack.

By way of contrast, public men and women today often speak in rote phrases – they generally champion “common-sense” solutions and refer to their prospective supporters as “hard-working Americans.” Such cant not only stifles serious discussion, but, what is almost worse, bores and lacks humor.

We also owe Mr. Gingrich a debt for trying to get the humbug out of the recent “debates” among contenders for the GOP nomination by calling out some of the debate moderators as the hollow men they often are.

Yet as much pleasure as we may take in following candidate Gingrich’s thoughts on everything from the Federal leviathan to German history, we should continue our quest for a genuinely conservative nominee on whose careful judgment we can depend during the coming times of great peril.

Whether it is the sometime Speaker’s missteps on immigration policy here, on environmentalist overreach here, on Second Amendment matters here, on Fannie Mae and health policy here, on expanding entitlements here, Mr. Gingrich doesn’t show much of a conservative core.  Some might even see him as more concerned with corporate welfare.

Like governor Mitt Romney, Mr. Gingrich can get into the real detail of government. And he likely has a formidable grasp of the machinery itself of the leviathan we call the Federal Establishment.

This understanding of the nuts and bolts of governing is necessary to downsize the Federal domestic role – - but we don’t detect any Gingrich passion to go very far in that direction.

Our first essential: we need a nominee wedded to plain-vanilla conservative principles who can also command sufficient support across the right-center spectrum to unseat president Obama in November 2012.

And if we fail?

Fred Sauer today paints such a picture in his “The Death of America in 2015” –

“And to think that this was all triggered by some talking heads on FOX News and others, who beguiled many frustrated Republicans to vote for Donald Trump, the 2012 Independent candidate for president. Trump took 23% vote, mainly from Republicans. The Republican nominee received 30% of the vote, and Barack Obama won the presidency with just 47% of the vote.”

Mr. Sauer’s chilling snapshot is worth reading in its entirety.”