Sharks are swimming around Obama . One of them isGingrich probably has at least as good a chance of getting a pass on his various transgressions in 2012 as Reagan, Schwarzenegger, and Clinton did. If 2012 were an ordinary election year, Gingrich would be doomed by his gaffes, three marriages, and fleeting alliances with Hillary Clinton on health care and Nancy Pelosi on global warming. But 2012 is different. Republicans are fixated on defeating President Obama. They’re obsessed. They think about little else. And if that means choosing a candidate with a lurid past and a penchant for self-destruction to beat Obama, Republicans are likely to swallow hard and nominate Gingrich Republicans have always wanted a candidate who is bold and tough, and Gingrich is. Recent polls have shown Gingrich at or near the top of the Republican field, along with Mitt Romney. With a little less than six weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, people are listening to the former Georgia congressman.They’re not sure about Mitt Romney, who is cautious, conventional, and sounds more conciliatory than Gingrich. There’s a reason Romney’s support has been stuck for months at roughly a quarter of the Republican electorate. His blandness explains it. Gingrich is anything but bland.To rally behind Gingrich, Repub-licans wouldn’t have to forgive his past sins, just treat them as irrelevant. They already talk about how sweet it would be to see Gingrich crush Obama in presidential debates. They don’t see Romney that way.But Romney has two important traits Gingrich lacks: carefulness and self-discipline. He doesn’t shoot off his mouth recklessly, as Gingrich often has. In May, the former House speaker practically blew up his campaign by attacking Representative Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan as “right-wing social engineering.” He later apologized.Yet in all this, the media didn’t begin to push back until Gingrich started rising in the polls. It was too late. Gingrich had already reaped accolades from Republicans and conservatives for standing up to the media. The irony is that Gingrich, more than any other candidate, is indebted to the media. Without the debates, he’d be a hopeless also-ran. Last June, his campaign was at death’s door. It was heavily in debt. Most of Gingrich’s advisers had quit. Only his strong performance in the debates saved him from humiliation and defeat Gingrich turns out to be a shrewd analyst of himself and his prospects. He has told friends he’s like Richard Nixon, not particularly likable and hated by the press and the left.And far from a stumble, Tuesday night's remarks seemed a calculated tactic to draw a contrast with Romney, whom he now sees as his chief rival to the party nomination and who has had his own trouble with conservatives, largely because of the health care overhaul law he pushed through as governor of Massachusetts.
But Romney has been tough on undocumented immigration while running for president. He said Tuesday night that what Gingrich was proposing would act as a magnet for foreigners to enter the country without documents.He’s hardly a perfect candidate, but against a weak field, he can win the nomination and beat Obama in a tight race. And by the way, he’s the best of the bunch in connecting with the populist yearnings and resentments of average Americans..
NOTES AND COMMENTS:.
No matter which party decides to tackle this issue, they have to realize that deporting illegal immigrants will cost LOTS of money, money we don't have. Hotheaded approaches to this issue have done nothing to solve it.
Newt is soliciting a PRAGMATIC approach, and the right will simply have to adjust it's temparment on their hardline view. His is the best approach based on the reality on the ground.
Many of the immigrants that are of the group he indentfied, have been productive and law abiding citizens who have already been here long enough to have become 'natuarliz ed.'
I think once the conservative base realizes that America can't just uproot these entire families and toss them out, they'll come around to Newt's way of thinking. What's to lose.nothi ng has worked, because everyone is too unreasonab le about a path forward on the issue.
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