Introducing the New Newt
WASHINGTON – The headlines started immediately and they’re unlikely to stop. The transcript gives you the play by play.
The Hill: GOP debate: Gingrich divides himself from pack on immigration.
Politico: GOP debate: Newt Gingrich beats back immigration.
Gingrich doesn’t have Mr. Romney’s discipline. Pivoting on immigration, he made what could be a fatal error in the debate last night. Showing the compassion of a general election candidate, which has no relationship to what can win the nomination among hard right conservatives, Mr. Gingrich made his pitch for compassionate immigration based on family values. It doesn’t matter if he thought channeling Reagan on immigration was a good idea, because this crowd wouldn’t nominate the Gipper today.
“I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who have been here a quarter century, who have children and grandchildren, who are members of the community, who may have done something 25 years ago, separate them from their families and expel them. I do believe if you’ve been here recently and have no ties to the U.S., we should deport you. I do believe we should control the border. I do believe we have various penalties for employers, but i urge you to look at the Krieble Foundation plan. The party that says it’s the party of the family is not going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families who have been here a quarter century. I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.” – Newt Gingrich
Romney’s team is already slamming him on it:
“Newt Gingrich supported the 1986 amnesty act, and even though he conceded that was a mistake, he said that he was willing to repeat that mistake, by extending amnesty to immigrants who are illegally in the country today,” Romney adviser and spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said in the spin room following the AEI/Heritage Foundation debate in Washington, DC. “Mitt Romney is against amnesty, and Newt Gingrich made it very clear he was for amnesty.”
The Washington Examiner reporter also got into a real back and forth with both Romney, then Gingrich, aides that was absolutely brutal, not to mention inconclusive, on what could be done with immigrants inside our country that have no path to documentation. It is hilarious in that many Republicans make no sense on immigration sort of way. Look what sanity on this subject cost Rick Perry.
Mr. Gingrich was good last night, the best on the stage at times, the crowd loving him. But you may remember last spring on “Meet the Press” when screwed up and insulted Paul Ryan and dissed his budget proposal, which threw his campaign into free fall. All these months later, he gave the bookend to his spring Ryan gaffe, when he showed his compassionate conservative side on immigration.
Mitt Romney has it drilled into his political being that he has to win the nomination first, so discipline on appealing to the core beliefs of primary voters is his plan. Sticking to it has been the most impressive part of Mr. Romney’s campaign. Knowing that he’s got serious challenges with Tea Party and right wing conservatives, he’s not going to antagonize them through general electioneering, because he can’t afford to lose a single point. Mr. Romney just doesn’t do foreign policy well, but all he has to do is sound sober and serious, which is his political DNA to a fault. With his strongest competition to date handing him a cudgel, you can bet he’s going to keep wielding it.
This is what Gingrich’s said after the debate, when the dust started to fly about his immigration comment, coming first from team Bachmann, via TPM:
“Newt has a commitment to human dignity,” Tina Ramirez, Gingrich’s National Security adviser, told TPM. “He has that commitment across the board with people around the world, not just with people who are immigrants here in America. He’s supported religious freedom in Egypt for instance, and he’s been speaking out in — if you look at his nine days that change the world in Poland, he talked about the rule of communism was brought down by the understanding of religious freedom and dignity.”
Now we’ll just have to wait and see if Newt Gingrich takes a hit in the polls for his family values immigration stance.
If he doesn’t, then Mitt Romney’s team will be dropping into Iowa and carpet bombing the voters with attack ads, because Mr. Gingrich had game last night that could make him the alternative to iron man Mitt.
Call him the new Newt, the compassionate conservative version, and oh, what a gift he would be to Pres. Obama.
Taylor Marsh’s new e-book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss, the view from a recovering partisan, has been chosen by Barnes and Noble as one of 4 books in the launch of “NOOK First” Featured Authors Selection. Marsh is a veteran political analyst and commentator. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her new media blog.
17 Responses to “Introducing the New Newt”
Taylor I wonder what he would think of that immigrant family who have been here 24 years? Or 23? 18?
Newt Gingrich has etched a certain scratch across my collective memory over the decades. Any time his record is played, I hear (over and over) examples of hypocrisy, and the phrase “mushroom clouds.” Nothing new with Newt.
Yeah, I hear you. It’s pretty amazing, JeffP.
I thought about putting “new” in quotes, because as you say, nothin’ new with Mr. 1%.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t new for him. I think his website has had this on there for a good while. Anyway, he mentioned what the failures of the ’86 bill were, so I’m thinking he wouldn’t re-invite the same happenings. I think it’s a good stance overall.
Hey, you guys remember when Newt was chiding Obama on Libya because he wasn’t doing enough? That was when Obama hadn’t yet made the coalition with France and other nations yet. Then when Obama did authorize air strikes in conjunction with other nations to help out the rebels Newt said the President was doing too much and we should not be dragged into another conflict? That is Newt Gingrich. There is no “new” Newt. He is an incompetent hypocrite that perfectly represents the childlike mentality of the current GOP electorate. That is the only reason he is where he is in the polls. Those who are voting have really short memories and an ability to gloss over facts when presented with much faster and more digestible options.
“Pivoting on immigration, he made what could be a fatal error in the debate last night.”
Agreed. It’s the one thing he’s said recently that shows a modicum of understanding of anything, and that’s a big no-no in the field he’s chosen to be a part of. I mean, the idea that Mexicans are human, and deserve human dignity? Yep, he’s hosed.
I’ve said before that Romney is the only one of the candidates I can see myself voting for, but that possibility is fading fast. Newt’s position makes perfect sense, not that I would vote for him either.
Politically, I think the mistake that both Newt and Romney are making is to stray from the standard line that we should secure the border first and then talk about what we do with those who are here. There is safety in that vagueness. Newt’s mistake is to say out-loud what any rational Republican knows but doesn’t dare say. Romney’s mistake is to pile on him for it and therefore also breach the vagueness, which will hurt him in the general election when he needs to explain how his newly-nuanced position is really different than Newt’s when it sure looks the same.
Either way, Obama is happy to let them duke it out over this one.
If I didn’t carry over my negative mental image of Newt, I would have said he was the best last nite. If I had just slid down from Mars, I would vote for Newt, a “reasonable” man. The others came across as harpies.
I find all the hoopla about Gingrich now pretty funny, given what he has said in the past, very funny if it weren’t so dangerous. One of those people might actually be the next President of the United States!
http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2011/11/republicans-revolutionaries-and-the-human-comedy/
‘harpies” … good word dduck. In the later ancient Greek stories, they were once like angels, but then were made to devolve to flying over and fouling the fresh food of the starving. Amazing parallels in ancient ideas to our times…sometimes. Thanks.
Well, yesterday reminded me of another ancient pair, Cicero and Cato. Two smart birds that wound up on the wrong side of Roman swords. Cicero because he was too smart and Cato because he was too stubborn and egotistical.
They remind me of Newt.
Another Greek tie in, Callista: As a name it is derived from the Greek name of a huntress in the myth of Callisto, who was loved by Zeus, who ruled the Olympians (Speaker of the House?).
that’s funny, newt as callisto… maybe more like caligula. I still remember Newtie’s ultra manic giggling and wide gesturing when he brought in live elephants to the white house during his tenure. There’s a long list of seemingly manic outbursts. Grandiosity beyond the beyond.
Callista is Newt’s wife, for real.
I know. My error…. typing too fast in a brain zone… should have read, ‘that’s funny, callisto’… newt as maybe more like caligula”
Uh, oh. The first sign that the Apocalypse is upon us: Is Arianna Huffington voting Republican?
I guess the space/time continuum would collapse if she casts a vote for the Newt.
Huffington was a conservative columnist and married to a Republican Congressman whom ran for the Senate, all in the early 1990′s. She became a liberal in the early 2000′s. It happened to a lot of us, not due so much to changes in our positions but to the strong rightward shift of the Republicans and the redefining of reactionary as the new conservative. Moderates became liberals liberals became a pejoritive.
Well said merkin, Ronald Reagan would be a Democrat if he were alive today. He’d kick Michael out of the basement again, too.
Considering how far, and how radically the Republican Party has gone from what they (we!) were I find it hard to believe that 25 to 30 percent still consider themselves Republicans.
Aren’t they paying attention? Don’t they see what the GOP is doing to, and failing to do for to OUR country?
Pay even closer attention, and keep your hand on your wallet, even though bucks keep shrinking, because over spending and over regulating costs money. The Reps are no angels, but the Dems need to be controlled as well.