|
 |
 |
|
Pass on Gringrich
What do you get when you put Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson on the same stage together?
A plea for help!
Maybe someday. But the candidate who jumped into the race this week isn’t the man on the white horse, either.
Forget the personal stuff about Newt Gingrich. I don’t care how many wives he’s had. See how liberal I am? I’m sure Christian conservatives will accept Newt’s explanation that love for his country caused him to cheat on his first two wives. And who could disagree with one friend’s assessment of his third marriage to a woman with whom he first conducted a six-year extramarital affair: “They’re a great couple that had a non-traditional start”?
No, it’s not his personal life. It’s all the other baggage that’ll sink the Newt. Our memories are not that short. We remember …
This is the guy who shut down the government in 1995. This is the guy who whined because President Clinton wouldn’t let him sit up front on Air Force One — only to have the White House release a photo of Newt chatting with the president, up front, on Air Force One. This is the guy who was reprimanded by the House of Representatives, 395-28, and ordered to pay a $300,000 fine for violating House ethics rules — when he was Speaker! This is the guy who was forced to resign as Speaker after Republicans lost five seats in the 1998 midterm elections.
And now he wants to be president?
And, yes, this is the same guy who introduced the politics of personal destruction to Washington. Gingrich alone turned the Congress from a place where, in between elections, members of both parties sat down together and tried to solve problems — to a place where partisan political sniping never stops. It was Gingrich who gave Republicans a list of words to describe Democrats: “incompetent, sick, radical, destructive, shallow, liberal, anti-flag, traitors.”
And now he wants to be president?
This is the guy who, on March 7, called for bombing Libya immediately — yet, two weeks later, after President Obama had actually ordered the bombing of Libya, declared it was a mistake to intervene. And, yes, this is the same guy who’s actually campaigning today on a pledge to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency — created by Republican President Richard Nixon. While, at the same time, according to The Daily Beast, his American Solutions organization received $1.5 million in 2010 from oil, coal and power companies.
And now he thinks he can beat Barack Obama? Forget it. Newt’s not the one. Republicans had better keep on looking.
Bill Press is host of the nationally syndicated “Bill Press Show.”
Most Viewed RSS Feed »
