Why GOP embraces simpletons and how it hurts America

Well, a couple weeks ago people here were crowing about how his liberal stance on immigration would do him in. That hasn't happened.

Oh, he and Pelosi agreed on something once... Nobody seems to care about that either.

People are realizing that they basically only have two options, Mitt or Newt. None of the others have any chance.

Because of that, people will likely look the other way about Newt's tumultuous personal history. I don't know that I would say it's been common knowledge for years and years, but it's not like anything new is being revealed. This isn't like Herman Cain where all the revelations are pretty fresh.

I will be curious if the first wife ever winds up on 60 Minutes. I think it would take something like that for his personal issues to hurt him. His daughter has come out and said that the divorce had been in the works for years when that happened. Is she being truthful or just helping daddy? I don't know... Maybe it's a little of both...

Nobody was clamoring for Gingrich to run for president. But with the field being the joke that it has been. He may wind up being the choice by default.

 

Yes, when you look at the timing of it all, it's clear Gingrich became more interested in his side job (politics) than his day job (academia).

Re: Nixon. I recall reading in some of William Manchester's work a quote that the Nixon and Kennedy debates clearly showed (and I paraphrase) "the difference between Harvard and Duke." My point raised earlier was that Kennedy, by virtue of his social standing and certain stylistic gifts, was credited with far more intelligence (especially as compared to his opponent) than was warranted.

 

I'm sorry, why does Newt get the benefit of the doubt now? He's cheated on two wives, but "that's in the past"? How do we know he's not cheating on this one? Why should we assume anything other than once (twice) a cheater, always a cheater?

 

Really? I always thought the narrative on the debates was that people who listened on radio thought Nixon won, while people who saw the youngster and the curmudgeon on the TV gave the edge to Kennedy. Of course, that could have been tied to the older generation's reluctance to embrace the alien invasion via that box of death rays.

 

He doesn't cheat now because he finally just said "forget it" with the sneaking around and they're the most active swingers in Washington.

 

Ah, I never read that Manchester book (I really liked his Churchill/MacArthur books). Nixon was very intelligent. So was Kennedy.

 

1. Who cares if Gingrich is cheating on his wife? Considering that we had a president lie under oath about receiving blowjobs from a woman other than his wife in the Oval Office and he still kept his job, I don't see how marital fidelity can be an electoral qualification.

2. As YGBFKM noted earlier, a message board for journalists debating the relative intelligence of anyone else is the height of unintentional irony. I've met more total morons working for newspapers over the last 20 years than I did when I worked retail at the local mall as a teenager.

 

1. Newt must care very much about cheating. Else why try to impeach Clinton?

2. Completely agree that no one anywhere should ever discuss the qualifications of a presidential candidate.

 

If you're going to represent a party that claims to be morally superior to the other one in the issue of "Family Values", then your candidate must follow those values to a T, otherwise, he's an utter hypocrite, and makes the party look even more hypocritical.

 

Yes, but in the real world we all know the Party Of Family Values means the Party Of Don't Be Gay. So there's no hypocrisy.

 

Just keepin' it real.