Newt's Baggage Weighing Him Down...

For Christians elections are no longer so much voting for anyone as they are voting against someone. We will not get a committed Christian with excellent understanding, abilities, and solid and unbending Christian and conservative principles who also has wide support from a Babylonianish nation like America has become. I will never fault anyone for voting only for Christians with those credentials, but they are supporting a losing cause.

This world is given over to the devil and all we can do is work the system like wise serpents with good and gentle natures. People should have learned a big lesson from the Ross perot experience. The devil has tools in his cabinet and dividing the conservative vote is just such a tool he has used very effectively. If Christians are to ever have an impact in politics, like it or not, they are going to have to make the best out of all that will ever be available to them. Refusing to budge at all on conservative principles will result in liberal victory at the polls. That should be avoided as an issue of primary major importance.

 

Overwhelmingly!

 

I am not sure if he repented or not. However, I do not think I have enough evidence to determine if his character has changed. He also never repented for the ethics violations in the 90's.

 

I don't have a television and I do NOT watch Foxnews often. The most Fox I watch was the debates, which I believed their debates were horrendous.

I eliminated Newt before he announced he would run for President because of his past and even before the news talked much about him. I eliminated him before his campaign walked out on him. Why? Because of his past.

He is a big government person who supports things like the New Deal, the prescription drug benefits, and other big government solutions.

Newt is about as conservative as the Pope is Baptist.

 

If you mean he's not a libertarian, you are right. Since when do you get to define conservatism?

 

No, he is not libertarian. However, conservative is not Newt. Again, I cite what I have cited before, Newt thought the New Deal was a good idea. Do you think that is conservative.

 

Point being that the hated neocons were born in the opposition to the new counterculture of the 60's-70's. By that definition yes he is conservative.

AS far as spending goes, well it depends. It would be nice to have a big-screen TV but if I don't have the money I don't buy it. Not because it's unconstitutional or immoral, just a bad idea.

But if I missed the memo where only your definition counts then I'm sorry.

 

Well, I use this as a litmus because every major conservative including National Review, the Cato Institute, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Barry Goldwater believed it was the opposite of conservative principles.

I am to the left economically (which means the right politically) of the conservative stalwart, Milton Friedman. Compared to Friedman, Newt is nowhere close. If Goldwater is the Godfather of conservativism, then Newt is closer to Obama than this Godfather. If Reagan was the litmus of conservativism, then you cannot hold to the New Deal. Or, as Reagan said, "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time" (Time Magazine, May 17, 1976). To call the New Deal "acceptable" is not conservative, Reagan was conservative and Newt is just a wannabe.

What shocks me is that you would even say that FDR's New Deal is valid for conservatives. If that is the case, the liberals have won, the fascists have won. Then there truly is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats... we are all truly Keynesians now.

I admit to be more Austrian in my economics. Yet, I never thought I would see the day when people would excuse the New Deal as being acceptable to conservatives.

 

I haven't defended the New Deal, and I wish Newt hadn't. If all that spending had really worked, well then I would be onboard, whatever works. But of course it didn't.

And conversely, an awful lot of libertarians sound just like the 60's counter-culture in what they advocate and what they oppose. So much of it sounds just like some old hippie saying: America's evil man, military action is bad, stick it to the man. His false standards don't apply to me! In that sense they don't sound 'conservative' at all.

Just read this excerpt from one of The Ron Paul Investment Letters:

“I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me. Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my training as a physician helps me see through this one.) The Bohemian Grove–perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress’s Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica.”

See what I mean? He sounds for all the world like some 60's revolutionary.

 

That's because you're not paying attention.

Of course, since he is evil personified, we all know he's lying.

 

How do you know? Are you sitting in the judgement seat now?

Since repentence is not enough to satisfy you, I'm glad God still has the job.

 

He never apologized to either the ethics committee nor the public in general. If he has repented, he did not ask for forgiveness from the entities that were overseeing his ethics violations. As well, if you had a Pastoral Candidate for your church who was married 3 times and had adultery during his last marriage, you would question his character. I have questioned his character long before the adulterous relationship. I cannot see trusting the highest office in our land to such a man.

Secondly, I never said he was evil personified. However, I give clear evidence that he is not a social or economic conservative. So far, you are the only one to offer any evidence to the contrary of my evidence.

Finally, because someone is for balancing the budget does not make them conservative as Clinton balanced the budget and several Keynesian economists believe in balanced budgets. One highly respected Harvard Keynesian wrote an article about a year ago criticizing Obama's Keynesianism because of a lack of a balanced budget focus and his unwillingness to cut taxes. He argued, and rightly so, that keynesianism does believe in spending to include tax cuts in order to stimulate the economy. Thus, a balanced budget is and tax cuts are not merely conservative, you have to look closer into their economics. Kennedy, for instance, was a liberal who was for tax cuts.

BTW, Newt was for TARP. Again, he believes government solutions for our issues. Can a conservative be for TARP? I contend he cannot.

As for cutting spending, Newt is only referring to baseline budgeting. In other words, there probably are no true cuts, just cuts in the rate of growth. Most of the references to cutting spending has been on baseline budgetting. As of today, he has yet to give specifics.

 

You are making a statement on the 60's social movement but the political social and economic principles that makeup a conservative movement are ignored. Politically, what makes a conservative is two-fold, their economic policies and their social policies.

Socially, Newt does give lip service to the conservative cause even though he does not live conservatively conservative.

Economically, Newt is not a conservative and resembles Obama and W more than Friedman, Reagan, and Goldwater.

You take a slight against the more humble foreign policy. For the last few years I have worked through, reading a myriad of books, thinking through all the issues, on what makes a just war. Taking into account several scholars and those in history, I believe Vietnam was an unjust war. I resemble more closely the Hugenots than the modern war lovers. If being a conservative means we jettison principles of just war, we have gone too far down the line of serfdom. I believe WWI, Iraq, and the Revolutionary War were unjust. Wilson was wrong to declare war after we provoked and purposefully placed our men in harms way; taxes are not a reason to fight a war; suspected weapons of mass destruction is not enough to put our men and women in uniform in harms way. The expansion of communism in Vietnam was not an issue we should have sent our men to die over. None of these threatened our national security, none of these were a threat to us.

Your comparison to those of us who are against war and the 60's movement is unfair. Many Christians opposed WWI for the same reasons. Many historians believe the Revolutionary War was not supported by the majority of those in America. Even Eisenhower warned against the buildup of the military industrial complex.

The 60's movement was a radical social movement. While their views may have some comparisons to others today, they are distinct. While their opposition against Vietnam was right, they did so for a poor rationale.

To get back to the OP, Newt is not a conservative. As demonstrated, his views are radical and should not be confused with those views of true conservatives like Reagan, Goldwater, and Friedman.

 

OK, I give up.

Let me know when I should renounce God and ask you for forgiveness.

 

I do love the way you rewrite history.

Now it's Clinton who balance the budget. :laugh:

Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming to a balanced budget by a Republican congress led by none other than Newt Gingrich.

Clinton was also forced by none other than the same Republican congress led by the same Newt Gingrich to actually make the only entitlement cuts in history.

As speaker, Gingrich could have stopped it all.

Instead, he constantly beat his drum for increased spending. Yeah, right.

 

RP supporters continue to lack any credibility. They hang on to every discredited claims and nuanced criticisms they can about who ever is currently ahead of RP. The devotion to him is rather creepy.

 

And that's what's at the root of the amped up criticicism and historical rivision concerning Gingrich.

 

Sigh.

[nyah-nyah voice]

And Newt supportes don't care that he's a serial philanderer that wants to fight global warming and defund federal courts he doesn't like.

[/nyah-nyah voice]

 

The global warming claim is false he has addressed this. He has repented and addressed the adultery since his presidential bid. And I am not a newt supporter. If he got the nod I would vote for him but I am not impressed with Newt or Romney.