“Defeating Barack Obama becomes, in fact, a duty of national security. Because the fact is, he is incapable of defending the United States.”
- On President’s Day, Newt Gingrich told a crowd of 4,000 at Oral Roberts University that we must defeat President Obama because he won’t keep us safe. Or something like that.
I imagine that Osama Bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) and Muammar Gaddafi would have something to say about that, Newt. Just sayin’....
The wealthiest couple, Mitt Romney and wife Ann, finished slightly ahead, giving 13.8 percent to charity — most of it to the Mormon church. Of course, Romney also made far more than anyone else in 2010, at more than $21 million.
But when you calculate charitable giving based on adjustable gross income, Obama actually takes a lead. He and Michelle gave 14.2 percent of their AGI, while the Romneys gave 13.8 percent.
Santorum and Newt Gingrich, by comparison, gave very little of their income to charity.
Gingrich and his wife, Callista, gave 2.6 percent of their $3.2 million income in 2010.
By a narrow margin, GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney, won the straw poll at the Conservatives Political Action Conference, with Rick Santorum placing second, and Gingrich and Paul coming in third and fourth, respectively.
The Washington Times/CPAC straw poll results of 3,408 conservative activists showed Romney with the support of 38 percent of respondents. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was in second place at 31 percent.
When the results were announced, a packed ballroom erupted in both cheers and jeers as supporters of all four candidates sat in the room.
Does this mean anything? Probably not. Santorum currently enjoys a 15-point lead on Romney overall, according to Public Policy Polling. Mostly this just demonstrates something we already knew --- that Conservative voters are not all that happy with Romney. This doesn’t mean that he will not win the nomination, and I still believe that in spite of any and all setbacks, he will be the eventual GOP nominee.
“When Republicans act like Democrats, they lose. And in Newt Gingrich's case he had to resign. In Rick Santorum's case, he lost by the biggest margin of any Senate incumbent since 1980.”
- Mitt Romney joins Santorum and Gingrich together as Washington insiders in an interview with NBC News yesterday.
“I think that the election [in Florida] will be substantially closer than the two polls that came out this morning. When you add the two conservatives together we clearly beat Romney. I think Romney's got a very real challenge trying to get a majority at the convention.”
Let there be no doubt that former Republican senator and presidential candidate, Bob Dole, is a Romney supporter. From a statement released by the Romney campaign today:
I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.
Gingrich served as Speaker from 1995 to 1999 and had trouble within his own party. By 1997 a number of House Republican members wanted to throw him out as Speaker. But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when Newt could read the writing on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources.
Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with President Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics like shutting down the government helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.
In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty bucket in his hand — that was a symbol of some sort for him — and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it, and I’m not certain he knew either.
The Democrats are spending millions of dollars running negative ads against Romney as they are hoping that Gingrich will be the nominee which could result in a landslide victory for Obama and a crushing defeat for Republicans from the courthouse to the White House. Democrats are not running ads against Gingrich which is further proof they want to derail Governor Romney.
In my opinion if we want to avoid a sweeping victory by Obama in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer. He could win because he has the requisite experience in the public and private sectors. He would be a president in whom we could have confidence and he would make us proud.
“We discovered last night that Mitt Romney has picked up Charlie Crist’s campaign manager. I thought that told you everything you need to know about this primary. As governor of Massachusetts [Romney] was pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, pro-tax increase and pro- gun control. Now that makes you a moderate in Massachusetts but it makes you pretty liberal in a Republican primary. That’s probably why he hired Charlie Crist’s staff.”
On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Over the previous year, he had reported earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.
And unlike most of Romney’s financial holdings, which are held in a blind trust that is overseen by a trustee and not known to Romney, this particular investment was among those that would have been known to Romney.
Over the weekend, Romney intends to start airing an ad that will say, “While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. Gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create the crisis.” Shockingly enough, the ad fails to mention Romney’s own investments in the government backed mortgage giants, which have netted him tens of thousands of dollars.
Romney went after Newt Gingrich with a vengeance in Ormond Beach, Florida, yesterday. He attacked both Gingrich’s career as the speaker of the House in the 1990’s, and his career as a lobbyist for mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. From Romney’s remarks:
“Speaker Gingrich has also been a leader. He was a leader for four years as speaker of the House. And at the end of four years, it was proven that he was a failed leader and he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know whether you knew that, he actually resigned after four years, in disgrace.
He was investigated over an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of his Republicans voted to reprimand Gingrich. He has not had a record of successful leadership.”
Over the last 15 years since he left the House, he talks about great bold movements and ideas........ell, what’s he been doing for 15 years? He’s been working as a lobbyist, yeah, he’s been working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington.”
Gingrich’s various careers, along with his personal foibles, are easy pickings for rivals. The question is, can they make it stick? I would have thought so, but then I would not have thought that evangelicals in South Carolina would go for Gingrich with his three marriages, and penchant for conducting illicit affairs on the side.
Adding........great tweet on this from David Frum:
Look on the bright side: no more family values talk from South Carolina Republicans.
David Gregory talks to Newt Gingrich on ‘Meet the Press” yesterday about Gingrich’s lobbying activities for mortgage giants, Fannie and Freddie:
“You are running against the establishment, you're trying to run as an outsider. You talk about housing in Florida. You were a consultant, or, depending on your point of view, a lobbyist for one of the mortgage giants. I'm wondering how you think you win that inside-outside game, given your history.”
A Gingrich now on the offensive, responds to Gregory, denying any lobbying activity ever. So there.
“David, wait a second, David. David, you know better than that. I was not a lobbyist, I was never a lobbyist, I never did any lobbying. Don't try to mix these things up. The fact is I was an adviser strategically and if you look at the only thing ever published by Freddie Mac, I said you need more regulations. If you look at the only article ever written about my talking to the Congress, it was in the New York Times in July of 2008, and I said do not give them any money.
Now I opposed giving money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I think they should both be broken up into four or five much smaller companies and I've long felt that. And so I think that to jump from one to the other is simply wrong. In Florida, my case is going to be very simple. You have a clear establishment candidate in Mitt Romney. Look where his money comes from, look at his background, look what he did in Massachusetts. And you have somebody whose entire career has been a Reagan populist conservative going all the way back to the 1970s.
I think that's a pretty clear contrast, and I think Floridians would like somebody who speaks for them to Washington, not somebody who speaks to the establishment to them.”
Watch the video of Gingrich denying the lobbyist claim:
Media Matters weighs in on Gingrich’s "I was not a lobbyist" claim:
The holes in Gingrich's "I was not a lobbyist" argument have been demonstrated several times over. Politifact gave the claim a "Half-True" rating, noting that it's depressingly easy and common for "consultants" who provide "strategic advice" (which is how Gingrich's campaign explained his relationship with Freddie Mac) to essentially function as lobbyists without having to register as such. The Washington Postcalled Gingrich's denials of being a lobbyist "clearly misleading," laying out all the known details of Gingrich's dealings with the mortgage giant.
Newt Gingrich just can’t stop using that old canard, the Southern dog whistle, that code for the term “welfare queens” (which don’t even exist in reality). Here’s Newt when asked what he would say to the NAACP if given the opportunity:
“More people are on food stamps today because of Obama's policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history. ... And so I'm prepared if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
Really, Newt, really?
Give me a freaking break. Calling President Obama the “food stamp president” and insinuating that black people are all on food stamps, i.e., too lazy to get jobs thus live off food stamps, for Christ’s sake, is old, racist, and not based in truth. [Gingrich’s association with truth is always tenuous, but this is to the point of utterly ridiculous.]
Yes, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has increased during the Obama administration, but as experts continually point out, and which Gingrich continually ignores, this is because of the near depression caused by the policies of Bush and company, a deep, deep recession which continues today, necessitating assistance to many more people than would be the case during better times.
Watch Fox News amplify Gingrich’s message:
So did President George W. Bush preside over the highest number of food stamp recipients in history? Thus far, yes. 11 Alive in Atlanta [emphasis mine] fact-checked Gingrich:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition service tracks month-to-month figures dating back to January 2001. The numbers show that the total of food stamp recipients rose to 14.2 million during President Obama's administration.
The highest in history so far is President George W. Bush. The number of food stamp recipients grew to nearly 14.7 million while he was in office. But, that's eight years in office, compared to President Obama who has not finished his first term.
It's possible that when the figures for January 2012 are available they will show that the gain under Obama has matched or exceeded the gain under Bush. But not if the short-term trend continues. The number getting food stamps declined by 43,528 in October. And the economy has improved since then.
One out of seven Americans is currently getting food stamps, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The figures also show the rise in food stamps began before Obama took office, and accelerated as the nation plunged into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
The economic downturn began in December 2007. In the 12 months before Obama was sworn in, 4.4 million were added to the rolls, triple the 1.4 million added in 2007.
So, who gets food stamps?
The most recent Department of Agriculture report on the general characteristics of the SNAP (food stamp) program's beneficiaries says that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010:
-- 47% of beneficiaries were children under age 18.
-- 8% were age 60 or older.
-- 41% lived in a household with earnings from a job - the so-called "working poor."
-- The average household received a monthly benefit of $287.
-- 36% were white (non-Hispanic), 22% were African American (non-Hispanic) and 10% were Hispanic.
Oh, and by the way, Newt and Fox liars, the state with the highest number of Americans eligible for and receiving food stamps is Nevada. [Nevada, where if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that there might be maybe fifteen whole black people living in the entire state of Nevada.]
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-IN), a prominent supporter of the food stamp program:
“People now see that it’s necessary to have a strong food stamp program.”
“Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that, in fact, the whole goals of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever, legal ways to loot out a company.”
“They're whitewashing his career now. We had a scheme where the rich got richer. I did it, and I feel good about it. But I'm not planning to run for office.”
“As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years. On every measure you’ve got, the state was a substantial under-performer.”
“Voters are just now meeting the Real Romney — the buyout tycoon who executed takeovers, bankrupted businesses, and sent jobs overseas while killing American jobs.”
5. Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney, (who pretended that he didn’t run for reelection in Mass. because he wasn’t interested in being a career politician) during the Republican primary debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary election:
“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?The fact is, you ran in '94 (for the Senate) and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating (as governor in 2006), you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You have been running consistently for years and years and years. So this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people. You've been running for -- at least since the 1990s.”
“Mitt Romney has never worried about pink slip. He might have worried about not having enough of them to hand out. But he’s not worried about losing his job.”
“You are the first political candidate I've ever come out to meet in my entire life. I listened to your speech in Iowa the other night and that’s exactly what I wanted to hear for so many years. I hate darkies and homos too. God bless you.”
- Arnie Snood, one of Rick Santorum’s Iowa supporters.
Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul all have one thing in common other than their party affiliation - they are all beloved by white supremacists and homophobes.
“
Romney went after Newt Gingrich with a vengeance in Ormond Beach, Florida, yesterday. He attacked both Gingrich’s career as the speaker of the House in the 1990’s, and his career as a lobbyist for mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. From 
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