Aren’t You Glad You Supported Newt?

Posted on | May 2, 2012 | 48 Comments

It was on Nov. 14 — when Newt Gingrich first emerged atop the polls — that I warned “Newt can’t beat Romney,” and further said that if, after the Florida primary, we were “left with a choice between Newt and Mitt, I’ll endorse Mitt.”

Thank God and Rick Santorum, it never came down to that, eh? By the time Santorum quit April 10, Gingrich had already made himself a ridiculous laughingstock, so that the continuance of his pathetic shuffling zombie campaign resulted in his final humiliation in Delaware.

Wait, did I say “final humiliation”? Spoke too soon:

President Obama’s campaign deployed an unusual surrogate to attack presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in a new Web video: Republican Newt Gingrich.
The video released Wednesday, titled “Newt Gingrich: Frankly, not Mitt Romney’s biggest supporter,” details a long list of attacks by the former House Speaker on Romney’s business experience, Swiss bank account, immigration policy and accusations of dishonesty and an inability to rally the party.

Look, some of my best friends — genuinely intelligent people — sincerely thought Newt was the ticket to ride. My warnings went unheeded, and my occasional reminders serve only to increase their rage . . . at me.

Why me? Why aren’t they mad at Newt? Why make me the scapegoat for Newt’s predictable failure? Why punish me for having been right?

But if I keep thinking about it, the dark mood will return, and next thing you know . . . Well, not today. It wouldn’t be pretty.

Please, I beg you: Hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

Comments

48 Responses to “Aren’t You Glad You Supported Newt?”

Finrod Felagund
May 2nd, 2012 @ 12:27 pm

Sorry, I can’t hit your tip jar, I already donated to Newt at the end of March when you were running articles every day about how Newt’s campaign was out of money.

Law of Unintended Consequences, baby.
Kristi
May 2nd, 2012 @ 12:46 pm

Actually, I AM glad I supported Newt, now that you mention it. I figured Mitt Romney would get forced on us anyway, though, and that’s what happened.
smitty
May 2nd, 2012 @ 12:52 pm

Taping the “I told you so” card to the football and spiking it gets into the Diminishing Returns Curve in a really big hurry, boss.
William_Teach
May 2nd, 2012 @ 12:52 pm

Thanks for giving the Obama campaign talking points, New!
jwallin
May 2nd, 2012 @ 12:59 pm

If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?

Don’t hurt your arm patting yourself on the back sport.

😛

I think we lost all way round but that’s the process. Until the Party leaders realize that the process they’ve setup is designed to produce ineffective or unappetizing choices for the electorate (if that matters to them) we’ll do this all over again next time.

Until then, let’s not be too hasty in staking out bragging rights.

Under any other President with a different economic situation, Romney wouldn’t stand a chance.

He still may not.
Lisa Graas
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:00 pm

If you want to convince people, it’s probably best to try to show that Newt was wrong in the things he said. Well? Was he?
surfcitysocal
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:14 pm

As far as I’m concerned, as a supporter of Bachmann and, secondarily, of Santorum, the Republicans get what they deserve for foisting Romney upon the electorate. What a waste of time, energy, ad space and debate-watching over the last year. As Obama uses Newt’s and everyone-else-who-had-a-brain’s words against Romney, the Republicans will squirm and stick their finger in their ear and wonder how did this happen? I was not going to vote for Romney under any circumstances anyway, whether he had a chance or not. As a Californian, in the primary, I’m voting for Santorum, if he’s on the ballot, and in the general, I’m writing in my conscience–Bachmann–because this state will go overwhelmingly to Obama anyway, so my vote is a throwaway anyway you paint it.
Thomas L. Knapp
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:19 pm

Well. Hmmm. I didn’t “support” Newt. He wasn’t even my favorite among the Republican candidates. And I certainly don’t blame you for his loss.

I just realized that he was the only even remotely plausible Republican nominee who had a chance in hell of competing with Obama, and mentioned it.

And then belatedly I realized that all that psychobabble hooey about “gestalt” or “zeitgeist” or whatever must be true after all, and that Republicans were just voting their collective subconcious: “Yeah, we’re not really that into the whole winning thing this year.”
demsaresatanic
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:27 pm

Newt was not in it for the long-haul. This country needs a leader who is prepared and focused like Romney!
Finrod Felagund
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:36 pm

Prepared = “has tens of millions of dollars to spend”

Focused = “willing to spend that money pissing on Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment in the form of an avalanche of TV ads”

There, I clarified your words for you.
Mike Rogers
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:41 pm

I try to be well informed, I make my choices, and I stick with them until they become unviable.
We agreed on Herman, we disagreed on Newt (although I admitted Santorum was a good candidate, and that you’d spotted his surge before anyone else), and we agree on Romney.
The death star done burned all his opponents, and now he’s all we’ve got, unless you have some theory of the resurrection of Dr Paul.
So, now it’s Romney or Doom, with both seeming equally likely, sigh!
TR
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:54 pm

What kills me is after the ‘good guys’ get elected they continue to beg for money (Rubio, my new congressman, my own new senator). My latest protocol (as I am facing loss of funding for my job also) is to just support locally. And maybe bloggers in Maryland can be considered local to PA, depends on whether I get my next grant funded.

My response to the politicos is a large contribution to the ripped up mail recycle bin. Once you’re in baby, walk up to a camera and use the FREE media, OR do something notable while in office. Besides, they all become millionaires after being elected, why is that, hmmm ????
Adjoran
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:55 pm

HOW is the process “designed to produce ineffective or unappetizing choices for the electorate”? Can you support this claim, or is it just frustration because you didn’t like the field? Please be specific – nothing can get fixed with broad and general criticism.
Adjoran
May 2nd, 2012 @ 1:56 pm

Yeah, as opposed to the nice, respectful, issues-based approach used by Newt?

Don’t get any onya.
Rbirchtree
May 2nd, 2012 @ 2:09 pm

Well, you could vote for a more legitimate candidate who is still in the race…Ron Paul. He is more likely to win a state now than Bachmann or Santorum are. I will tell you Arkansas will be interested to watch and perhaps even Texas.
Pathfinder's wife
May 2nd, 2012 @ 2:38 pm

The problem is: while nobody can ever doubt that Romney is focused like a laser on winning the WH, what exactly is his focus after that?

I still haven’t heard anything from him that tells me he has any ideas or plans beyond winning that don’t involve the most gentle of tweakings to the status quo — on all fronts (unless of course a more radical idea is doing well in the polls that week).

Count me in as one of the people who isn’t sure this is a good policy going forward for the country.
Pathfinder's wife
May 2nd, 2012 @ 2:48 pm

Ahhh, that’s the crux of the matter, now isn’t it?

Gingrich wasn’t my guy (although when he was in Newtzilla mode it sure was fun), and his campaign did begin to strike me as very un-serious; he shouldn’t have attacked Romney over Bain from the left either….but….but…Newt wasn’t exactly being a liar with some of those statements in those ads.

These are things the GOP should have thought through earlier, and will now have to address in the general if Romney is (a foregone conclusion at this point it seems) the nominee.
FrankLaughter
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:21 pm

Anybody that thinks Santorum would be better in the WH than Newt, needs a brain transplant.
jwallin
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:28 pm

Why should I justify my comment to you?

I could but I don’t see the point.

(Unless you have some position with the RNC and/or (a|the) State Republican Party Committee(s). If so, please provide references and/or credentials then we’ll talk).
Adjoran
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:36 pm

I just asked the question. But you can keep your secrets if you wish.
ThePaganTemple
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:37 pm

Robert Stacy McCain, to me, a few days ago-

“Don’t get me started on Newt”.

My reply-

“Okay, I’ll wait two or three days”

I scare myself sometimes.
Anon Y. Mous
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:48 pm

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Gingrich advocated a clean primary. He wanted the candidates to focus on attacking Obama. Of course, differences between the Republican candidates would have to be explored, but he clearly wanted to do so with an elevated, no cheap shots tone.

Romney would have none of it. He went after the other candidates hard, and so they, including Gingrich, responded in kind. It is a little rich for anyone to now cry or try to shift the blame about the consequences of Romney’s decision.
Finrod Felagund
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:49 pm

Hate to burst your alternate reality bubble, but Newt was the only one that came out at the beginning saying he was going to run a positive campaign. Once Romney went to the gutter attacks, was Newt supposed to pull a John McCain and try to stay above it all? That’s a loser move and you know it.

Newt Gingrich talked more about the issues in an average campaign week than Mitt Romney has from the start until now. When you try to claim otherwise, you’re just saying “Dead men DO bleed!”.
richard mcenroe
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:58 pm

He wanted a clean primary.

Then he accused voters of voting their religious preferences when they picked Romney.
David R
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:58 pm

Mitt didn’t get ‘forced’ on us, except in the sense that he was the only one running a serious campaign. It’s hardly his fault that the only other candidates even capable of running a serious campaign (Pawlenty and Perry) flamed out either before the primaries even started (in Pawlenty’s case) or very early on (in Perry’s case).
Quartermaster
May 2nd, 2012 @ 3:59 pm

Looks like you wound him up then and just released the key today.
ThePaganTemple
May 2nd, 2012 @ 4:34 pm

Just imagine how he’d act if he heard Newt was planning on running on a third party ticket? But no, Newt just come out today and endorsed Mitt Romney. Newt will probably get his campaign debt paid off with that move, provided he’s willing to work hard for Romney in the general election.

Also, there’s talk in certain circles that Newt and Callista might have their eyes on the Ambassadorship of a certain little South Pacific island nation with a recent history of volcanic eruptions.
Adjoran
May 2nd, 2012 @ 4:39 pm

The guy came out against capitalism, that was “positive” in your view?
Ford Prefect
May 2nd, 2012 @ 4:41 pm

Mitt didn’t get ‘forced’ on us, except in the sense that he was the only one running a serious campaign.

This kind of statement is frankly just silly. Santorum arguably ran a much more serious campaign than Mitt. He worked the hardest, communicated the most comprehensive policy positions, made the most of his money and volunteers, and had a pretty cost effective campaign.
From a business perspective, Mitt was horrendous in this regard. His ROI on money spent per vote was preposterous. The guy was a train wreck. He used a strategery in the primaries that he won’t be able to use in the general so my guess is that we just have to keep hoping that Obama will keep tanking the economy. Because if it comes back, even to where it was at the beginning of this year, Obama and the MSM will spin it as a huge achievement and Obama will win running away.

But setting aside my pessimism for Mitt’s ability to string a cogent campaign argument against Obama together, he’s now “our guy” for all his faults. It was preordained (in a non-Calvinest way of course).

After all, it’s the moderate GOP candidate with the most money that will generally ALWAYS win in the primaries because it will be that one guy against about a dozen conservatives. The problem in the conservative camp is that we can never weed out the loser conservative candidates before the moderate has essentially been proclaimed the nominee.

The problem we had this time around is that we had several candidates who were simply not ready to run but they still diluted the field.

Newt was the “idea guy” that a lot of conservatives like to support. The problem is, very few people really liked the MAN himself.

Perry was on meds so he didn’t come off as well as he should have (plus he got in WAAAY too late).

Bachmann was a non-starter and she should be commended for not really running so I can’t criticize her too much for Mitt’s ascendency.

Herman was too much of a threat to Obama so his Chicago machine took him out early so as to let candidates like Newt rise when they otherwise would not have gotten traction. Cain would have been a much more viable candidate than Mitt and Axelrod knew this.

So that left Santorum (Paul is always hanging around in the background no matter what so I don’t consider him a factor plus or minus on the ability for conservatives to field a single candidate to take on the center/left establishment GOP candidate.)

I think a lot of people are still thinking that, in a head to head between Santorum and Mitt, Santorum could have had at least a 50/50 chance of going to Tampa.

I’ll still vote for Mitt of course because I have this thing against fascist dictators. But whether he can win? If he does, it will be the first time a center left GOP candidacy has prevailed since Nixon.
Tennwriter
May 2nd, 2012 @ 4:59 pm

You were doing so well until you said that silliness about fascist dictators. Surely you’re aware that the typical moderate Republican is far more fascist than the Conservatives? Fascism increases the further leftward one goes.
Ford Prefect
May 2nd, 2012 @ 5:02 pm

Actually, setting aside the snark behind the question, it’s still a good one. 😉

Strategy 1: Let’s posit for a moment that the challenge the GOP has is that the primaries turn-out a lot of grassroots conservatives so this tends to entice a lot of conservative candidacies which then water down the conservative vote. Look at the numbers.

70% voted conservative but the conservative that lasts the longest doesn’t even get 20% of the delegates. Meanwhile, we generally will see one or two moderates running in the primaries one of whom is the establishment favorite and thus, will have the money and endorsements.

So, to fix the problem; these two wings of the party should field just one candidate each. But that’s not what we get. We get 6 candidates vying for the 70% conservative/libertarian vote and one or two vying for the 30% moderate/establishment vote.

The math will always be against a conservative victory without a Reagan like persona.

In a fair world for the GOP electorate, there would be one candidate from the conservative/libertarian wing of the party against one from the moderate/establishment wing of the party and let the best man or woman win.

But this does not favor the establishment so they’re not going to fix this.

What I’d like to see is a TEA party “convention” prior to Iowa where the preferred candidate ran for the right to run as the conservative favorite. Sure, others might still make a run in the primaries but they would be doing it knowing that the bulk of the grassroots already picked their horse. Worst case, there would be maybe 4 candidates running (two from each wing of the party) but there would be a more clear front runner from each wing.

Strategy 2: The other option is for conservatives to take the local state process from the establishment and set up a system that doesn’t favor the moderate candidate.
Ford Prefect
May 2nd, 2012 @ 5:21 pm

I agree with your words, although not in that order.

We all know that Newt is/was a loose cannon and not a very good manager. These are not qualities we need in a president right now. Newt’s big ideas (e.g. a moon base) are interesting if we are running a budget surplus. By all accounts, Newt’s campaign budget was a metaphor for the country’s budget as a whole. Can you honestly say that Newt would be able to turn the country around after what we saw with his campaign?

And I say this as a guy who voted for Newt here in Georgia. Newt, at one time, seemed to understand fiscal maturity. Of late, that doesn’t seem to be his forte.
Ford Prefect
May 2nd, 2012 @ 5:22 pm

Now that’s just cold.
alwaysfiredup
May 2nd, 2012 @ 5:32 pm

Yes, I am glad I supported Newt, and no, I won’t hit the tip jar until you stop this pointless tantrum. Thanks for asking.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 2nd, 2012 @ 6:58 pm

I guess I wish there was a composite Republican candidate I could support.

Obama apparently had a composite girlfriend. http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/05/barack-obamas-new-york-girlfriend-in.html
Ford Prefect
May 2nd, 2012 @ 8:13 pm

That’s why I was referring to voting for Mitt lest the fascist get a second term.
Garym
May 2nd, 2012 @ 8:31 pm

Damn, that would take Stacy’s cake.
richard mcenroe
May 2nd, 2012 @ 8:37 pm

You either talk slowly to Gingrinches or shout, nothing else gets through.
richard mcenroe
May 2nd, 2012 @ 8:38 pm

Dunno why this disappeared after I posted it last time, but…

Tip jar, hit
Newt, schmuck
Republic, screwed
Rosalie
May 2nd, 2012 @ 8:50 pm

Romney should be an expert at running a serious campaign since he’s been doing it since 2005.
SVT
May 2nd, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

And if someone else was the nominee, nothing Romney said could have been used as a talking point, right?
David R
May 2nd, 2012 @ 11:04 pm

Santorum ran Huckabee’s campaign slightly better than Huckabee. Being the SoCon champion against the Establishment is a strategy that can win a lot of states. But it’s not one that can win the nomination (and don’t give me any nonsense about the primary calendar — the 2012 version helped Santorum; in earlier years, he would have been knocked out on the much larger-scale Super Tuesday where he did not have the funding to compete everywhere).

Mitt did not spend anything resembling unprecedented amounts of money on his campaign. He outspent his rivals by a lot for the most part because they were bad at raising money, not by dipping into his fortune.
Wombat_socho
May 3rd, 2012 @ 2:48 am

Good heavens, people. Put down the rifles and get out of the circle! Now that it’s all over, can we have an end to the intramural sniping and just concentrate on getting Obama out before he does more damage? Here, enjoy some humor before the site goes away:
http://newtjudgesyou.tumblr.com/
Sure, I’m Glad I Supported Gingrich – And Knowing What I Know Now, I’d Do It Again, Too | Daily Pundit
May 3rd, 2012 @ 10:30 am

[…] Sure, I’m Glad I Supported Gingrich – And Knowing What I Know Now, I’d Do It Again, Too Posted on May 3, 2012 7:30 am by Bill Quick Aren’t You Glad You Supported Newt? : The Other McCain […]
t-dahlgren
May 3rd, 2012 @ 10:44 am

I supported Santorum ,the wife support Gingrich.

Santorum proved ultimately no more effective that Gingrich.

Given that neither succeeded the “I told you so’s” are a two way street.

Might as well be kicking yourself.

Ont the plus side I’ve never felt the slightest inkling of voting for Romney, and doubt I ever will (however, I do have the luxury of living in TN, where it simply does not matter.)
richard mcenroe
May 3rd, 2012 @ 10:48 am

See, there’s the problem: you call it intramural sniping; the RNC calls it a bunch of outsider punks trying to kick over their rice bowl.

The sooner we recognize that we have one enemy — ESTABLISHMENT DC — regardless of party, the sooner we can get on with fixing this country.
t-dahlgren
May 3rd, 2012 @ 10:59 am

If Carter had had the type of fawning and protective media that Obama has then he very well could have won a second term.

I’m amazed more don’t remember – the MSM actually did their job ( a little bit.) Carter was openly challenged by news reports and reporters. The hostage crisis led every news broadcast – ‘Day 43,’ ‘Day 44,’ ‘Day 335’ – it was an incessant drumbeat reminding the entire nation of his fecklessness.

And then there was all the economic doom and gloom – which usually came right after the hostage stuff.

Plus Carter was viciously mocked across the media spectrum – from the Tonight Show to Hustler Magazine (which really had it in for his wife.)

Today is nothing like then. If Obama faced one third of what Carter had thrown at him Obama would have already collapsed into a quivering pile of jello.
t-dahlgren
May 3rd, 2012 @ 11:15 am

Trying to argue that Gingrich ‘came out against capitalism’ for jumping on Romney’s vulture ventures does nothing to improve your credibility.

Bain is as insider as insider gets and Romney may very well enjoy that version of capitalism. As opposed to conservatives, who are in favor of FREE MARKETS.

You might want to learn who came up with each concept. Maybe then you’ll stop fetishizing a socialist term.

Romney’s abject inability to articulate an effective defense of his own marked him as the one mentally and constitutionally on the left.