Walter PattersonIt is just too early to begin the Presidential Campaign of 2012, but the politicians are going to do it anyway.
So let them have at it. Let them make their speeches, shake those hands, eat that rubber chicken at all the fund raisers, and self-destruct when necessary.
Apparently, Newt Gingrich felt the overwhelming need to self-destruct last week when he told David Gregory of Meet the Press that “right-wing social engineering was just as bad as left-wing social engineering.”
He even added more explosive material to his political suicide belt when he attacked Congressman Paul Ryan, the man who crafted the budget that has passed the House of Representatives.
Newt is an intellectual. He has a Ph.D. in history, and he is very smart. His brain is always in high gear, and in the past, he has offered some of the more creative and practical conservative solutions to some of our most pressing problems. During the 1980s when President Reagan was coming under fire from the likes of Ted Kennedy and other leftist in Washington, Newt came to his defense and did it in a brilliant way. Every night, he took to the floor of the House of Representatives to give “special order speeches” that defended Reagan and set out a logical foundation for the actions the President was taking.
These speeches were so effective that the Speaker of the House, “Tip” O’Neal finally ordered that they be stopped. But Newt had made his point and a “conservative revolution” had taken hold. When William Jefferson Clinton arrived at the White House filled with so much liberalism that it overflowed into the Potomac, Newt built the dike that prevented “Hillary Care” from becoming law.
To make matters worse for Clinton, Newt helped devise the “Contract with America” which propelled the Republicans to a majority in the House. This forced Bill Clinton, against his will I must say, to moderate his socialist agenda. The United States of America was a better place because of the efforts, brain-power, and boundless energy of Newt Gingrich.
Being a legislator and an “idea” man is one thing. Presidential politics is another thing entirely. As a young person, when I did something wrong, my uncle Wade would always say, “Boy, you need a keeper.” Well, Newt needs a keeper, someone to calm him down, whisper in his ear that he does not need to verbalize everything he thinks, and advise him to study the political environment.
The political environment today is much different than it was two and a half years ago. The economy is bad and getting worse, gas prices are through the roof and getting worse, the housing market has crashed, inflation has begun earnest and I’m afraid that the worst is yet to come.
People are stressed. They don’t like what they see going on in the country. They instinctively know that we cannot sustain a $14.29 trillion budget deficit, and they don’t see any movement in Washington to correct a problem that threatens the very sovereignty of this country - and yes, this scares the daylights out of reasonable people.
Unfortunately, Newt broke President Ronald Reagan’s eleventh commandment never to speak ill about another Republican when he criticized Paul Ryan. Ryan, in my opinion, is one of the brightest politicians in Washington, and he, almost single handedly is doing the heavy lifting.
If Newt can learn to control his mouth, he might have an outside chance of surviving this latest buffoonery. My guess is that he has blown any chance of ever becoming President.
On the other hand, last week, Mr. Obama made a mistake that will come back to haunt him. He deliberately threw the State of Israel under the bus when he gave his foreign affairs speech.
Israel is a small democratic country surrounded by enemies that want to eradicate it from the map. America has a special and unseverable relationship with Israel. It is clear that Obama does not understand this.
This speech and his attempt to pacify the Muslims by giving them Israel will prove to be a mistake so severe that a second term will be extremely unlikely.