The Quiet Conservative January 23, 2012
Let Me Get This Straight... McCain 2012?
So I haven't been writing a column for a month. I've been too busy trying to reach people intent on
reelecting Barack Obama to another term. If you think that means anyone even remotely connected
with the Democratic Party you'd be wrong. Nope. I've been trying to reach the people who have been
telling you that Mitt Romney had the nomination sewed up what with his political machinery and
experience.
You know, the Republican establishment types. A funny thing happened during that month, it's starting
to come out that the only people who want Romney are the very people who brought you McCain in
2008. And they hate you for not buying what they are selling just like they hated you in 2008.
Romney didn't win Iowa, Santorum did. Granted it was a coin flip on how many votes either way, but
Santorum for all of his moral fiber has as much command presence as, well, bran fiber. He may have
the moral high ground but nobody would pick him for a last stand on it. If two guys were kicking in
your front door the last person you would expect to see grabbing a baseball bat and going after them
with gusto would be Santorum. He doesn't come across as a guy that would dust it up with the bad
guys. Yet, he beat Romney's machine with a fraction of the money and a fraction of the support.
This drives the press and the Republican establishment crazy. They were advertising, they were
selling, but not enough people were buying.
In 2008 the only reason McCain wasn't the Republican equivalent of Mondale getting crushed by
Reagan was Palin. That caught all the intelligentsia by surprise. A woman from Alaska preaching
American values was about as outside of the incestuous cesspool of Washington and political insiders as
you could get. And, most of America wanted that. It took all of the media, both press and cultural, to
destroy her and she still got all the votes. McCain might as well not have been there. He only added
the votes of himself, his family, and the Republican National Committee. The rest of the nation voted
for Palin. It is why they still go after her and anyone who even remotely poses the same threat.
Think differently? Even in Kansas when McCain had the nomination sewed up, Kansas voted for
Huckabee over McCain. That should have been a warning. McCain was foisted on us, we didn't want
him. With that enthusiasm gap Obama squeaked by. He didn't have a mandate, he had inept
opposition.
Jump ahead to today. No surprise that Romney won New Hampshire. He's been selling his used car
brand of politics there forever. He's got a vacation home there. And, plenty of people who voted for
him in Massachusetts saw what a great job he did there and promptly fled to New Hampshire to live.
Liberalism is a carrier borne disease after all so they brought their infection with them. He got 39%
percent in the state next to his home state. Shouldn't he have gotten higher for all his vaunted political
machine? Ron Paul got 22%. Paul isn't from the Northeast. He's from Texas and he got 22%. The
inside the baseball political pundits may know what that means, but to me it means that there is trouble
in Romney City.
Now I'm not blind to the fact that while all this is going on the corrupt press is busy trying to destroy
any threat to their man in the White House. As each Republican gets to the top he is subjected to a
colonoscopy by reporters going all the way back to the third grade. Meanwhile, Obama during all this
time still hasn't shown up on the radar with a single ex girlfriend, or boyfriend. He popped out of the
mold already married with two kids and a state senate seat. No history, no past at all. Pretty cool.
Then something happened just before the South Carolina primary. The next person in the cross hairs,
Newt Gingrich, decided that he didn't care about the press smears. The strongest debater by far in any
venue, he did what everyone has been waiting for. He fought back.
Finally someone with balls! For all the bobble head pundits back and forth on Romney, Paul,
Sanatorum, and Gingrich and all the blather, none of it mattered. Gingrich said 'Hell yes I want to
fight!' and that was all it took. Gingrich got over 243,000 votes and took 40%. Romney, with his
machine and all his establishment backing got 167,000 and 27% of the vote. This South Carolina vote
was supposed to finish the nomination process. This was supposed to finalize the contest of the
Republican inept verses the Democrat evil. All of America was sitting back getting ready to watch the
Ewoks (without Luke) take on Darth Vader with Emperor Soros in November*. And suddenly, there
was Gingrich saying that he wanted to flush the socialism out of the system. Can you still say that
aloud? He said what people outside the Beltway wanted.
I don't know who is more worried, the Democratic Socialists or the Republican establishment. The
press and the bobble heads immediately labeled Newt as "angry" or unbalanced. Thereby seeking to
marginalize him and make him unelectable. On Meet the Press the worm Gregory interviewing him on
Sunday wanted to know why he didn't play nice with the people that wanted to tear down America.
Gregory wanted to know if Newt would play nice in the general election. He quoted Jeb Bush on the
need to have a “positive tone” and wanted to know if Newt was going along with this “positive tone.”
He then played a clip of Newt the night before saying Obama has a radical left/Saul Alinsky view of
America. This is then what he asked:
MR. GREGORY: Can you win independent voters in a general election campaign with that message?
And this was the reply:
FMR. REP. GINGRICH: Absolutely. Ronald Reagan did it by a landslide in 1980. He carried more
states against Jimmy Carter than Franklin Delano Roosevelt carried against Herbert Hoover, and
the reason's simple: What I said last night is the truth. Nobody in the elite media wants to cover it.
Nobody's ever gone back and looked at what Saul Alinsky stands for. Nobody ever asks what
neighborhood organizer meant. He wasn't organizing Boys and Girls Clubs. He was teaching
political radicalism. It explains his entire administration. He is who he is. It's--you know, it's not
that he's a bad human being, my impression is that he has a good family, that he really loves his
children and his wife, that he's a very pleasant person in some ways. But the objective fact is he
believes in a very radical vision of America's future that is fundamentally different from probably 80
percent of this country. And nobody in the elite media has ever wanted to dig into it, ever wanted--
why would he veto the Keystone pipeline? Why would he kill jobs in America? Why would he have a
National Labor Relations Board attack Boeing? Because it fits the model of Alinsky radicalism.”
What a loose cannon! He spoke the truth again! It wasn't an accident! He is speaking the truth and
that can’t be allowed by the press.
Now this may come across as a ringing endorsement of Newt Gingrich. It's not. It’s more a
condemnation of the press and the establishment. Maybe if Santorum came across as more of an
angry man, a man who would clean house, he would be the one to beat, not Newt. While I can see
Newt’s obvious intelligence in the debates and in smacking around clueless press bobbleheads, it is his
character that concerns me.
By that I mean his ambition and arrogance. In this he is very much an establishment type. As far as
his past history in marriages and his personal life with women, I find it ironic that Democrats seize on
the very character flaws they themselves demand is acceptable and moral. The press has no say, the
Democrats have no say, after Clinton and Edwards about anything sexual. None. However, it could
be said that Gingrich isn't the same man as he was before. He has converted to Catholicism and there
is no sign that his past sins are current sins. A man can overcome his demons and his sins and live a
moral life. What could be current, and a concern, is the ambition and arrogance.
Ambition itself isn't a sin. But when that ambition leads to choices against moral character it becomes
one. As for coupling that with arrogance, it isn't that Newt isn't a smart man, even a brilliant one and
knows it. It is that the gift of his intelligence could be used in self aggrandizement and not in service.
That is the concern.
A parallel example is that while President Obama is perceived as brilliant, he really only appears that
way because the press tells us he is. He shows no sign through speech or action that he has a clue
about anything. He is a man singularly without accomplishment or vision. Yet, he does give off the
airs of narcissist-in-chief. In this he is every bit cut from the Clinton bolt of presidential cloth. He has
the arrogance, but no sense of service or duty.
I would trade Gingrich's arrogance of intelligence and capability for the inept arrogance of a pretender.
I would take his character over Obama's any day and twice on Sunday. But that may not be a choice.
The Republican establishment says you will get Romney whether you like him or not. Just like they
said you would get McCain. The press wants Romney either as someone easier to beat by Obama, or
more like Obama in that even if elected he won’t undue the progressive’s progress of the past fifty
years.
If I have passed over Romney in this discussion, there is nothing to commend him to the highest
office.
The primaries will lumber on. It will be interesting to see which power will be ascendant, the
establishment’s or the people’s.
*No, the Darth Vader and Soros reference isn't racial. It’s a cultural movie reference. I did the whole
Ewok thing and had to go somewhere with it. So lighten up.