OK, so contrary to my earlier post, maybe Jeffrey Lord doesn't know after all.
At least that's what NRO's Rich Lowry asserts as he responds to Lord's response to Elliott Abrams' response to Newt Gingrich's claim to be a genuine Reaganite. (Confused yet?) Actually, Lowry's response is more than just a correction to the record as he accuses Lord of "smearing" Abrams and "misrepresenting" Gingrich.
Look, there are plenty of sound reasons to prefer Mitt to Newt. But this anti-Gingrich crusade is beginning to smell more and more like the settling of personal scores than it does a sincere concern over winning this fall's election.
If the Newt Gingrich of the 1980s and early 90s was not only a non-Reagan, but in fact an anti-Reagan crazy man, and this was known at the time, then how on earth did he rise to such prominence and get himself elected Speaker of the House by his fellow Republicans?
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The problem here is that Newt (along with many other conservatives) was attacking Reagan from the right. Did that display good judgment? One might deduce that moderate-sounding policies may be the most prudent course of action. Or the right conclusion could be that one appears moderate when taking fire from both sides, so conservatives played an important role in attacking Reagan from the right. How this applies to today's situation (with a likely GOP Congress)is another question.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ken. As political tactics, all of that makes sense. But the question remains for those who are so viscerally opposed to Newt Gingrich NOW: If he was so unfaithful as a Republican and so unreliable as a conservative and THAT WAS KNOWN AT THE TIME, then how did he become Speaker of the House?
ReplyDeleteDon't misunderstand, I'm not defending Newt. As I've said many times before, there are very real problems both with him and his candidacy.
Nevertheless, I sure would like to get to the bottom of this.
If it's something personal between Newt and his adversaries, then I wish they would be up front about it so we could weigh it.
On the other hand, if they genuinely think his candidacy disastrous for the party, then I would say to them that in their zeal to destroy Newt's chances of winning the GOP nomination, they're on the razor's edge of destroying at the same time the party's chances of winning the general election.