Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Newt Matters
Here’s why: he doesn’t back down. From This Week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbVx9Xb7vkM
Published in General
They always evoke in me the image of the circus photos, where you stick your face through the hole and they snap a picture. Democrat guests are seated behind the cardboard cut-outs of superheroes; conservatives have to pose with the clown body.
It doesn’t matter what the conservative said… he was the clown. It was right there on TV.
That’s why I haven’t watched those shows in many years. They are all insult, very little insight.
Newt should have said, “There is nothing wrong with inequality when it is earned…
But I disagree with this. We can’t go out and defend inequality. It won’t work to tell people: “Let me take a moment to defend all the stuff you intuitively think is bad, and explain why it really isn’t.”
The average voter thinks with their emotions and doesn’t have the patience to listen to those arguments.
We should be saying “Yes, inequality is bad. Poverty is an absolute evil. And we could do something about it if the Democrats cared enough to try. But they don’t. Look at the effects of their policies.” Then go into the policy argument. Detroit, destruction of black communities, etc.
We care about poverty. They don’t. Period.
Our presidential nominee probably couldn’t do this. It would be seen as too mean, too uncivil. But the bulldogs like Gingrich and the other talking heads need to be saying it every chance they get.
Democrats never worry that calling us bigots will make them look mean. They know if they say it enough people will just accept it.
That does seem outrageously unequal. A dead person (Peter Jennings) should never make more than a live one.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR (CNN) : $2 million/year
TOM BROKAW (NBC): $1 million a year
KATIE COURIC (NBC): $1 million a year
SAM DONALDSON (ABC): Reportedly earns $2 million a year
BRYANT GUMBEL (NBC): Reportedly earns well over $1 million a year
PETER JENNINGS (ABC): Reportedly earns several million dollars a year
TED KOPPEL (ABC): Reportedly earns $6 million a year
DAN RATHER (CBS): Reportedly earns $5 million a year on a contract that runs to 2000
DIANE SAWYER (ABC): According to USA Today , her annual salary is $7 million a year
BARBARA WALTERS: Reportedly has a base salary range of $4 million with additional fees for her specials that add up to an annual salary in the $7 to $8 million range.
Cokie Roberts will give a speech of screech on a panel for $20,000. ·13 minutes ago
Bingo. You nailed it. The phony set-ups, the feigned conflict, the cartoonish pre-assigned roles… it’s professional wrestling for people who would never be caught dead watching professional wrestling. Every bit as phony. Only the furnishings are nicer and the performers wear suits.
So he starts by surrendering the moral high ground, and then tries to point out that Democrats’ policies are bad. Sorry, Newt. The argument’s already over. You lost. That’s precisely the rhetorical strategy that led Republicans into the wilderness.
Shorter Gingrich: “I recognize that conservatives like myself are mean and unfeeling. But the nice guys’ policies don’t work, so please vote for me.” And yet we don’t win elections. It’s a mystery.
We have to stop doing this. Don’t try toearnthe moral high ground. Justseizeit first, then explain how your policies put you there.
Democrats don’t care about the poor. Say it again. Democrats don’t care about the poor. Don’t be afraid to say it. Democrats don’t care about the poor. Look at the cities they run. Democrats don’t care about the poor. We’re trying to lift the poor out of poverty, but unfortunately the Democrats don’t care about the poor. Repeat it over and over until the public understands it to be true.
Newt’s good because he stands his ground and fights but Blake has the fundamental analysis.
Regards,
Jim
They always evoke in me the image of the circus photos, where you stick your face through the hole and they snap a picture. Democrat guests are seated behind the cardboard cut-outs of superheroes; conservatives have to pose with the clown body.
It doesn’t matter what the conservative said… he was the clown. It was right there on TV.
That’s why I haven’t watched those shows in many years. They are all insult, very little insight. ·3 minutes ago
This is a good description, but you forgot one detail: on the opposite side of the clown cut-out is a sign that says “Interested in bipartisan/compromise solutions? Look here.”
Newt wrecked himself when he was Speaker. He took his eye off the ball and decided to cash in with his book deal. Book deals are for AFTER you accomplished something. For Newt that was getting a majority and being Speaker. The Republican Congress did a good job for a couple of years pushing Clinton to the right on trade and spending.
Newt has an ego almost as big as Hillary’s and it leads him astray. The GOP Congress lost its way under Hastert and left us with the Panic of 2008. Bush was too distracted by Iraq and 2001. We could have had a real healthy economy but the Republican Congress joined the Ruling Party.
Simply standing your ground brings great dividends as is proven here by Newt, and in the recent past by the Robertson Family and Rush. Stop playing defense, conservatives; liberalism has a glass jaw.
Professor/Politician Gingrich and Politician Perry (Oops) joined forces to attack Capitalist Romney in the primary debates last year! Newt then tried to deny the populist rhetoric that was so obvious to all of us!
Am I the only one who thought the Moon Colony proposal was just a little bit nutty?
Sadly, I think you’re right. I voted for Newt in the primary because he stood up in presidential “debates” (stop laughing) and challenged the underlying premises of the Professional Journalists’ set-ups… er, questions. But he doesn’t seem willing to do the same when it comes to the underlying premise that whenever there’s a problem, such as “inequality,” government must try to solve it.
Like both Presidents Bush (“When people are hurting, government’s got to move!”), he doesn’t seem to understand that the term “government solution” is an oxymoron. It would have been better for President Bush to say, “When people are hurting, government’s go to move out of the way.” Another government program managed by yet another agency will only make things worse — while creating a built-in constituency with a vested interest in seeing that the problem never goes away.
That’s the point Republicans should be making, rather than apologizing for “indifference.”
Those shows are unwatchable. I just cannot torture myself anymore by watching Sunday morning talk shows.
Reich employs the usual liberal trick of packing a bunch of lies into a longwinded statement when time is running out in the segment (e.g.: Resolved: the War On Poverty worked for a while). Newt was deft enough to get a good shot in at just one of those lies. And he did a decent job of it.
I agree with others that his statement that Republicans are indifferent to poverty was jarring.
We may not have pure ‘equal opportunity’ in the US, but it is a value that we work to achieve. We worked hard in my generation to convince people that their opportunities would be enhanced by graduating high school and, where merited, continue to even higher education. And this worked well in the late industrial age when manufacturing physical products was a most significant part of economic activity. Now, in the information age where knowledge and the ability to work with it are primary, the need for education, and learning how to think, is required. But we have a host of distractions: pop culture consumes people (and in many cases their money), higher education costs bankrupts people, family breakdown makes people poorer, and government supporting dependency does not help.
…
Is Newt the only one on our side who preps to challenge the false premises? How can that be? Is everyone else new to this game?
Except Newt didn’t challenge the premise here. He swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
“Is this an issue that Republicans should be talking about?”
“Absolutely…the Republican Party has an obligation to rethink its indifference to the poor…”
At what point did he question the premise? What am I missing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdR7WW3XR9c
There is absolutely no good reason why we should not be able to embed videos into comments.
If I am the next Republican president, I get that man on my Cabinet. Whatever the post, he’ll name names and think outside the box.
I have no doubt that he’s a complete egomaniac, but sometimes that can be an asset. He’s definitely one of the sharper knives in the kitchen.
I have no doubt that he’s a complete egomaniac, but sometimes that can be an asset. He’s definitely one of the sharper knives in the kitchen. ·0 minutes ago
I’m not the first to suggest this, but Newt should be the Press Secretary in the next Republican administration.
Jon,
I love Newt’s moxie. Let Blake coach him a little. Blakes’s points will help. Of course, if you aren’t willing to fight you can’t win period.
Regards,
Jim
Jon,
I love Newt’s moxie. Let Blake coach him a little. Blakes’s points will help…
Terrible idea. Let Lady Thatcher coach him a little instead…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdR7WW3XR9c
She understood: Don’t criticize their policies. Criticize their values. It’s what they’ve been doing to us for years. Give it right back to ’em.
·3 hours ago
Never concede the premise to the left. Always turn them into the people who made sure that K’Shaun and D’Neesha grew up without a dad.
Unless you are well educated black American who was born in Kenya…
Income inequality is bad only to the extent crony capitalism is to blame, and lately, crony capitalism is almost wholly to blame.
I wish he’d said that, if he had to say something regarding income inequality.
I’d have preferred that he slay the bogus false premise that is income inequality. For who is to say what’s fair for someone else to earn? Should a suburban single-mother of 3 struggling to make ends meet decide Cokie Roberts’ compensation? Should the corner crackhead dictate Robert Reich’s pay?
Implicit in the income inequality canard is the notion that what each person should earn is rightly decided by by someone else, someone who has no skin in the game, no clue what’s involved, and no business relationship to the person who’s pay is being decided.
I wish Newt had asked Roberts or Reich, “So how much should each person in America earn? How did you arrive at your numbers? Who should decide what each of you earns?”
Jon,
I love Newt’s moxie. Let Blake coach him a little. Blakes’s points will help…
Terrible idea. Let Lady Thatcher coach him a little instead…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdR7WW3XR9c
She understood: Don’t criticize their policies. Criticize their values. It’s what they’ve been doing to us for years. Give it right back to ’em. ·44 minutes ago
Blake,
Nobody had as much moxie as Lady Thatcher. The argument is clean & clear and attacks them at the root of their contention. She lets them speak and then calmly & coolly launches a devastating counter attack.
The perfect training film.
Regards,
Jim
There is absolutely no good reason why we should not be able to embed videos into comments. ·1 hour ago
Edited 1 hour ago
Absolutely agree.
…
This is pathetic. But, as Franco pointed out, it’ll get him invited back on the panel to play the same role next week, and apparently that’s what matters. ·1 hour ago
I’ll think you’ll get some pushback from people like Rob (how’s that for a pejorative?) on the idea that Newt said this to curry favor with the beltway smart set. I doubt that’s his motivation.
I think it’s just pure Stockholm Syndrome. Conservatives — even the brash ones like Newt — have to constantly fight this bizarre urge to apologize for being conservative.
Newt is usually one of the best at this. He just blew it this time.
Actually, I thought that was a logical proposal from Gingrich. President Barack Obama’s ego is constrained by his office; Newt’s ego is constrained by his planet; he contains multitudes: The World Is Not Enough. Don’t deny Newt the ability to shake, stir and find the perfect dry gin martini.
The name is Bond: U.S. Government Treasury Bond.
Blake, you’re right, of course. I didn’t mean to imply that Newt was just trying to curry favor among the Beltway set. I wouldn’t for a minute believe he’s that shallow or insincere (or desperate). Anyway, the old sneer that they’re all concerned about “Georgetown party invitations” is another silly, cartoonish oversimplification.
Your analogy of the Stockholm Syndrome (or battered wife syndrome) is better. It seems to be an inevitable consequence of swimming too long in the media sewer — eventually you end up reflexively apologizing for being a conservative, just to get people to let you speak. As you said, Newt is usually better than this.
On the other hand, much as I admire Newt, I have to admit Nat Brooks is onto something: Newt has no objection to big government programs, as long as they’rehisgovernment programs. For example, I seem to recall years ago (pre-moon colony) he was advocating government support for digitizing medical records. A good idea — but why is that a government function?
As good as he is (usually) at challenging questioners, I fear that, at his core, he’s still basically a “big government conservative.”
Am I the only one who wants to know what Cokie was trying to say?
I thought that this was an excellent reminded of why Newt Matters, and a much more direct one than the usual method by which such reminders are given (awful things emanating from White House staffed in large part by Newt’s actions).
It’s my hope that he’s mostly done mattering; the eventual decline of Dick Morris comforts me in moments that I worry if figures with their appeal can ever wither.
I have never found myself wondering what Cokie was trying to say… She is a pretty boring thinker, no?
Newt views himself as a transcendent historical thinker, and has a metaphysical imperative to demonstrate at every opportunity that he transcends both parties, which is why he opens with a knee to his own party’s groin before throwing a right cross at his opponent.
I view it as a relatively harmless hobby, lest his ambitions focus on Peter’s throne in Rome.