Jan 31 2012
With the latest NBC-Marist poll showing Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich by 15 points in Florida, NBC?s Domenico Montanaro and Carrie Dann discuss Gingrich?s road forward in the race for Republican nomination.?
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46190445/
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Jan 28 2012
Asked at last night’s Florida Republican debate if Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich should return money made from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Ron Paul responded:
“That subject really doesn’t interest me a whole lot.”
The Texas congressman might not be #1 in the polls, but he showed last night that when given a proper forum, he’s as substantive as anyone – and funny too.
Asked where he stands on Newt Gingrich’s proposal to put a permanent base on the moon by 2020, Paul said, “Well, I don’t think we should go to the moon.”
“I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.”
Paul, who at 76 would be the oldest person ever elected President of the United States also drew cheers in his response to a question about his medical records.
Noting that his records are “about one page, if even that long,” Paul challenged his cohorts to “a 25-mile bike ride, any time, any day in the heat of Texas.”
But, you know, there are laws against age discrimination, so if you push this too much, you better be careful,” he quipped, and he wasn’t done by a long shot.
Asked by CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer what he would say if Raul Castro called him in the Oval Office, Paul said, “Well, I’d ask what he called about, you know?”
Which isn’t to say Paul’s wit was his only asset. He routinely scored points with his strong responses, especially regarding monetary policy and civil liberties.
Florida’s primary is Tuesday, January 31.
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/florida-presidential-debate-highlights-ron-paul-style/
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Jan 26 2012
COMMENTARY | The talk in the political arena is the Jan. 31 Florida primary, and the two-week period leading to the primary. Political pundits question whether Mitt Romney can hone his debate skills, whether Rick Santorum is stumping for a vice presidential bid, or whether Ron Paul is now a mere afterthought in the primary process. However, the main focus is the momentum Newt Gingrich gained as a result of his upset of the Republican establishment favorite Romney, in the South Carolina primary, and how the Republican establishment in Washington accepts it.
The Washington Republican establishment, who worked with Gingrich when he was speaker of the house in the mid-’90s, are his friends, but not his fans. Nevertheless, instead of trying to appease, Gingrich seems to confront them. A Jan. 23 Associated Press article quoted Newt Gingrich as saying, “I think you’re going to see the establishment go crazy in the next week or two.”
While Gingrich was Speaker of the House, his roughshod demeanor, power-hungry personality, and lack of ethics created waves, and, in disgrace, he resigned from the house in 1999. Those in today’s Republican establishment, who worked with him when he was Speaker of the House, see him as a divider, not a unifier.
But the older Republican electorate remembers his successes, such as when the Republicans took over the house in 1994, welfare reform and leading the drive to balance the budget, more than his failures.
Therein lies the dilemma. The Republican establishment does not want to back Gingrich, while, at this time anyway, the Republican electorate favors him. The rub is a 100 percent unified effort is necessary to defeat President Barrack Obama in the 2012 election. In spite of this, less than a year before the election, both Gingrich and the Republican establishment are throwing jabs at each other, while their electorate awaits a meeting of minds from their leadership.
It’s evident a compromise is necessary from both sides. It’s been 13 years since Gingrich resigned as house leader, and he admits his mistakes, both in D.C. and in his personal life. He says he asked God for forgiveness, and put that part of his personality make-up behind him. If God forgave Gingrich, shouldn’t the Republican establishment do the same?
On the other hand, though, if Gingrich came to God with an attitude of contrition, should he not approach the Republican establishment in the same manner? If he does, and the Republican establishment does, wouldn’t the electorate be appeased, and all three can concentrate on the similar mission of winning the election in November?
Source: Associated Press: Gingrich enjoying rise in fortunes, sasses ‘establishment’ backing Romney: foxnews.com
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Jan 23 2012
Newt Gingrich defied conventional political wisdom in coming back to win solidly in South Carolina. Can he do the same in Florida, and what must Mitt Romney do to recover from Saturday’s drubbing?
Was Newt Gingrich?s very solid victory in South Carolina Saturday night a fluke ? as the Republican establishment fervently hopes?
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Or was it a clear sign that all bets are off in the GOP nomination race ? a time when the mix of social, economic, and political forces in the United States have combined to create a new landscape for electoral politics?
Just three contests into the primary/caucus season, the question may be unanswerable, the kind of thing that keeps pundits and political scientists gainfully employed. But the results are stark.
RECOMMENDED: Newt Gingrich: 8 of the GOP idea man’s more unusual ideas
?South Carolina has proven to be a disaster for Mitt Romney,? write Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics in their morning-after analysis.
?The size of his defeat by Newt Gingrich ? a 12%+ landslide in a four-way race ? is virtually a repudiation of his candidacy in a state that has prided itself on picking the eventual nominee for 32 years,? they write. ?And we suspect Romney will have several more nights of heartburn, much like this one, as the nomination process unfolds.?
In the Palmetto State, Romney?s slide from presumptive front-runner was swift. Three days earlier, he?d had a clear lead in the polls. But back-to-back debates in South Carolina clearly showed Romney?s weakness and Gingrich?s strength in such crucial venues. Romney waffled on his wealth and income taxes; Gingrich dined on red meat when he took after the media over his marital infidelities.
Gingrich did well across the board in South Carolina, according to exit polls gathered by CNN: By gender (51 percent of men and 49 percent of women voted for him), age, education and income level, religion, ideology (Romney barely won among self-described moderates).
Most tea party supporters went for Gingrich. Importantly, so did most of those for whom the ability to defeat Barack Obama was the key to winning their vote ? ?electability,? which was supposed to be Romney?s strong point.
If Romney doesn?t want to be discouraged by the Sunday morning analysis of his defeat, he?d better stick to the funny papers.
Writing at Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende says there are three takeaways from South Carolina: ?There is no good news buried in here for Mitt Romney?. This is worse than George W. Bush?s loss to John McCain in New Hampshire?. Analysts are kidding themselves if they say Romney is the inevitable nominee.?
South Carolina was always going to be tough for Romney. In 2008, he came in just fourth there.
Now, Romney seems to be heading to ?more favorable ground,? as Sabato and Kondik put it.
According to 2008 exit polls from Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan ? important upcoming contests ? the number of evangelical Christians and those who describe themselves as ?very conservative? is smaller there than it was this year in Iowa and South Carolina.
Although Gingrich?s South Carolina win no doubt will generate more financial support for his campaign, Romney at this point has more resources to get his message across in Florida (including expected attacks on Gingrich), which is a much larger state than the candidates have fought in so far.
As of Sunday, Romney was leading Gingrich by 18.5 percentage points (40.5-22.0) in Florida, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polling data. In national tracking data, he?s ahead of Gingrich by 8.2 points. But as this past week’s experience shows, that can swiftly change. The extent to which Gingrich’s momentum continues will be key.
Though the South Carolina results for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were less than spectacular (17 percent and 13 percent respectively), both vow to stay in the race for now. That works to Romney?s advantage, avoiding the two-man race that at this point would seem to benefit Gingrich.
Still, all eyes are focused on the two men at the head of a dwindling pack ? especially as they prepare to do rhetorical battle in critical debates in Florida this coming week.
RECOMMENDED: Newt Gingrich: 8 of the GOP idea man’s more unusual ideas
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Jan 17 2012
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich faced tough questions Saturday about his past statements on race and class, making a rare appearance by a Republican primary candidate before a black church ? an audience unlikely to vote in South Carolina’s Jan. 21 contest.
Standing behind the lectern at Jones Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, Gingrich was peppered with questions about his assertion that poor children lack work ethic and his criticism of President Barack Obama as a “food-stamp president.”
Gingrich may get credit for spending nearly an hour in front of a largely unsupportive crowd. But the event is unlikely to help him win many votes in South Carolina’s primary, a contest Gingrich himself has said will be make-or-break for his campaign.
Blacks made up just 2 percent of those who voted in South Carolina’s 2008 Republican primary, according to exit polls.
While the give and take between Gingrich and more than 50 people in the audience was largely respectful, some in the crowd had sharp questions for the former House Speaker. Many centered on Gingrich’s remark last month that poor children as young as nine should work at least part time cleaning their schools in order to learn about work.
Gingrich said his comments were misconstrued.
“What I was saying was, in the poorest neighborhoods, if we can find a way to help young people earn some money, we might actually be able to keep the dropout rate down and give people an incentive to come to school,” he said.
The explanation little satisfied some in the crowd, including a woman who said Gingrich’s words came across “so negatively, like we’re not doing everything for our young people.”
Gingrich was also asked if he stood by his assertion that Obama is a “food stamp president”, a line the Georgia Republican uses often during stump speeches. He responded with a simple, “Yes.”
Gingrich is grasping for campaign life in South Carolina after disappointing fourth place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Success for Gingrich in the South’s first primary will depend largely on his ability to draw support from the state’s conservative and evangelical voters.
That made Saturday’s appearance at a black church all the more head-scratching, particularly because it was Gingrich’s only public appearance of the day in South Carolina.
But Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said the appearance was a good use of the candidate’s time.
“If you’re going to lead America, you have to be willing to lead all of America,” he said.
The often-combative Gingrich did try to strike a conciliatory tone at times, promising “a very serious outreach to Democrats” in Washington if he were elected president. And he said the forum was appropriately being held around the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
“This would be what he would have liked,” Gingrich said of the late civil rights leader.
Following the question and answer session, church members prayed over Gingrich and his wife, Callista. The couple then joined the crowd in the church basement for dinner.
Associated Press
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Jan 16 2012
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? A splintered conservative vote in South Carolina could pave the way for Mitt Romney to win this week’s pivotal primary, some rivals said Sunday, acknowledging an outcome that prominent state lawmakers suggested could end the nomination fight.
“I think the only way that a Massachusetts moderate can get through South Carolina is if the vote is split,” said Newt Gingrich, portraying himself as the lone conservative with a “realistic chance” of beating Romney in the first-in-the-South contest.
Polls show Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who struggled to a fourth-place finish in South Carolina during his 2008 White House run, with a lead heading into Saturday’s vote. The state has a large population of evangelicals and other conservative Christians, and concerns arose four years ago about his Mormon faith.
But Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry all said Romney, after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, continued to benefit from the fractured GOP field and the failure of social conservatives to fully coalesce around a single alternative.
Santorum said South Carolina is “not going to be the final issue” and spoke of the “need to get this eventually down to a conservative alternative” to Romney. “When we get it down to a two-person race, we have an excellent opportunity to win this race,” said the former Pennsylvania senator, who won the endorsement of an influential group of social conservatives and evangelical leaders Saturday in Texas.
Perry, the Texas governor, said it was “our intention” to compete in the next contest, Florida’s Jan. 31 primary, even if he finished last in South Carolina.
Gingrich said he would “reassess” his candidacy if he lost in South Carolina and acknowledged that a Romney victory would mean “an enormous advantage going forward.”
The former House speaker appealed for the support of “every conservative who wants to have a conservative nominee.”
“I hope every conservative will reach the conclusion that to vote for anybody but Gingrich is, in fact, to help Romney win the nomination,” he said.
The state’s senior senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, started looking beyond Saturday’s primary, saying, “If for some reason he’s not derailed here and Mitt Romney wins South Carolina … I think it should be over.” He added, “I’d hope the party would rally around him if he did in fact win South Carolina.”
To Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the equation is simple: “If Romney wins South Carolina, I think the game’s over. This is the last stand for many candidates.”
He noted that three candidates are pursuing the evangelical vote “very strongly, and without any question that works to the Romney campaign’s benefit. It’s hard to find a single candidate that rallies all of the Christian voters in South Carolina, and therefore that splintered approach will probably have a major impact” in the primary.
Romney took a rare day off from campaigning while his opponents focused on the South Carolina coast.
Ron Paul returned to the state Sunday after spending three days at home and off the trail. The Texas congressman, whose libertarian message propelled him into second place behind Romney in New Hampshire, attended a rally in Myrtle Beach where he picked up the endorsement of a state senator popular with tea party members.
At the Cathedral of Praise in North Charleston, Gingrich was cheered by church members as he criticized activist judges who he said had made “anti-American” rulings to keep God out of schools. Santorum spoke at the same church Saturday.
At a prayer breakfast in Myrtle Beach, Perry appealed to religious conservatives to back his candidacy.
“Who will see the job of president as that of faithful servant to the American people, and the God who created us?” Perry said. “I hope each of you will peer into your heart and look for that individual with the record and the values that represent your heart.”
The candidates faced a packed week of campaign events and nationally televised debates Monday and Thursday. No Republican has won the party’s presidential nomination without carrying South Carolina.
Santorum battled Romney to a virtual tie in Iowa before falling to fifth place in New Hampshire. Gingrich and Perry fared poorly in both states.
All three have the backing of well-financed independent groups known as super political action committees that can help keep their candidacies afloat.
Santorum refused to suggest anyone should drop out of the race as a way to consolidate conservative support behind an anti-Romney candidate. But he said Republicans would have a hard time beating President Barack Obama in November if Romney were the nominee. Santorum cited Romney’s push for mandatory insurance coverage in Massachusetts.
Gingrich and Perry used television interviews to focus on Romney’s former leadership of the Bain Capital venture capital firm. Both defended raising questions about Bain’s business practices, saying Romney’s tenure would come under relentless assault from Democrats in the general election.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman picked up the endorsement of The State, one of South Carolina’s leading newspapers. Huntsman came in a weak third in New Hampshire after skipping Iowa, but the paper described him as a “realist” able to appeal to the centrist voters who will decide the general election.
Gingrich, Graham and Scott appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Santorum spoke on “Fox News Sunday” and Perry was interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
___
Associated Press writers Tom Beaumont in Myrtle Beach and Julie Pace in North Charleston contributed to this report.
___
Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/bfouhy
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Jan 06 2012
The busy mind of Newt Gingrich has been much in the news lately. He’s the man of grand ideas — a thinker, a theorist, the big brain in a GOP field of bureaucrats and simpletons. Don’t believe it? Don’t worry, Gingrich himself will tell you.
Gingrich’s mind indeed does churn. The problem is, he approaches ideas the way a gluttonous gourmand approaches food — with a rich, complex and subtle appetite, but also a hopeless weakness for corn dogs and Twinkies. If it’s edible — or, in his case, imaginable — he’s interested. This can be awkward, particularly when he steps outside of his comfort zone of history and public policy and starts to muck around with science. (Watch “10 Questions for Newt Gingrich.”)
Much has been made of some of Gingrich’s wackier ideas in the past few weeks, beginning with his oft-repeated worry that a rogue state with a nuclear weapon could shut down the U.S. power grid. To give Gingrich his due, there’s a grain of truth in his fears. Scientists agree — theoretically at least — that a missile detonated at the right altitude could trigger what’s known as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could fry the circuits of whatever country lay below. The one experiential data point that supports this idea occurred in 1962, when an atmospheric test of an American atomic weapon caused street lights in Hawaii to go temporarily dark.
Of course, it’s a big step from there to shutting down an entire country, especially when the bad actors Gingrich imagines blacking out America are the Iranians and North Koreans, who have nowhere near the missile technology or targeting know-how to pull off such a stunt — at least without being detected — and in the case of Iran, don’t even have a bomb yet. What’s more, if either country did want to launch a strike, it would be a whole lot easier to go the point-and-shoot route — pick a city and try to take it out directly. Yet Gingrich has continued to sound the EMP alarm, arguing that preparing for an attack should be an important part of the country’s defense posture.
“In theory, a relatively small device detonated over Omaha would knock out about half the electricity generated in the United States,” he warned in Iowa last week, according to the New York Times.
Gingrich’s advocacy of space mirrors — albeit years ago, in a 1984 book — has provoked eye rolling too. The thinking is that scientists could position giant mirrors in space that would point toward Earth, reflecting sunlight downward and creating as much illumination as several full moons. This would eliminate the need for nighttime lighting on highways and brighten shadowy neighborhoods as a deterrent to crime. (Read “Newt Gingrich: Potential President, or Skilled Showman?”)
Put aside what this would also do to the day-night cycle under which all life on Earth is accustomed to operating; put aside what it would do to the simple business of looking up and trying to see a star. The technical obstacles are dizzying. The U.S. has already orbited one whopping big mirror — a slab of polished glass inside the Hubble Space telescope that measures close to 8 ft. (2.4 m) in diameter. But reflective space mirrors would have to be far bigger, perhaps the size of a football field. Even the massive International Space Station, which measures 357 ft. (109 m) across, appears to be little more than a moving star at the lowest point of its orbit, 234 mi. (376 km) above ground. To provide permanent illumination to a target area, you’d have to position your mirrors a whole lot farther away — in geosynchronous orbit, 22,236 mi. (37,786 km) above sea level, so that their rate of revolution matches the rotation of the globe.
The weight problem alone makes this impossible — at least if you were trying to fly a giant mirror made of glass, like the Hubble’s. While University of Arizona engineers have developed mirror material only .04 in (1 mm) thick, this doesn’t address other problems like the cost of launching and maintaining the mirrors, not to mention keeping so big a target safe from meteors and other space debris. All of this seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for an illumination problem that highway lights and porch lamps already solve rather neatly.
It’s Gingrich’s advocacy of moon mining, however, that is getting the most attention — and drawing the most derision — partly because this is a drum he doesn’t seem willing to quit banging. For the most part, the moon is a pretty prosaic mix of very familiar materials — including silicon, iron, calcium, aluminum, potassium and phosphorous. There is, however, also helium-3. A light isotope of common helium, helium-3 streams toward Earth all the time as part of the storm of charged particles coming from the sun, but our planet’s magnetic field deflects most of it. This is not so on the moon, which has a magnetic field far weaker than Earth’s. What makes this important is that helium-3 also turns out to be a cracker jack fuel for fusion reactors — far more efficient than the deuterium currently used. But it’s not just a matter of going to the moon, scooping up what you need and powering the world on it. (Watch TIME’s video “Earth Is Running Out of Helium.”)
First of all, a practical fusion reactor has not yet been invented and there’s no realistic projection for when it might be — though scientists have been trying for decades. What’s more, the moon’s helium-3 is not just there for the taking. Apollo samples revealed that the isotope is present in lunar soil in concentrations no greater than 30 parts per billion. Harrison Schmitt, the lunar module pilot on Apollo 17 and the only geologist to walk on the moon, estimates that it would take 220 lbs (100 kg) of helium-3 to power one city the size of Dallas for one year, and to collect that much you’d have to dig a trench three quarters of a mile square by 9 ft. deep (1.9 sq km by 2.7 m).
That’s a lot of digging, and it doesn’t even touch the cost of getting the stuff home. Even aboard cheap rockets like the Russian Proton, it costs $2,200 to launch a pound of payload to low Earth orbit. The shuttle, nobody’s idea of a bargain ship, cost $8,100 per lb. Things are a lot cheaper on the moon, where lower gravity means everything weighs less, but that doesn’t mean every ounce doesn’t cost — a lot. There’s a reason the skin of the Apollo lunar module was no thicker than three sheets of aluminum foil and that its windows were triangular, a shape that shaved a few ounces off of the framing and sealant that would have been needed for round windows of approximately the same size.
In the last presidential debate, Gingrich responded to Mitt Romney’s criticism of the moon mining concept by not responding. “I’m happy to defend the idea that America should be in space and should be there in an aggressive, entrepreneurial way,” he said — which most people agree with and which is not what Romney was questioning at all.
Answering evasively, of course, is what politicians do, as is dreaming big dreams of New Frontiers and Great Societies and shining cities on hills. But dreams aren’t science — and politicians, for the most part, aren’t scientists. Newt Gingrich may play one on TV, but that doesn’t mean anyone is required to listen.
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