Wright was never found guilty of anything, never sanctioned and fined by the House itself, and was not investigated by the IRS.  The charges, destroyed his leadership ability thus forcing him out, Gingrich was pushed out by what amounted to coup within his own party after being found guilty and given a fine of over a quarter of a million dollars, he resigned a few days after his reelection in another one of his famous snit fits (we got a great one the other night too).   The remark that "I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals" is pretty funny because those people being a lot of the folks he himself helped elect.  One followed a course of trying to keep at least a shread of dignity about them, the other a scorched earth policy, one that the current campaign is also running.

I found it funny that even Mitt had enough of Newt tying himself to Reagan, and talking about 'how closely' he worked with RR, and how they did all that great stuff together when the reality was, as Mitt pointed out: "I mean, I looked at the Reagan diary. You're mentioned once in Ronald Reagan's diary. And in the diary, he says you had an idea in a meeting of young congressmen, and it wasn't a very good idea and he dismissed it. That's the entire mention."

And hey, even you must see the humor in Newt - of all people - saying that sexual conduct is not a matter of public debate.  It played well for the audience, but that kind of stuff works poorly in the nation as a whole.  Divorce is one thing, two is pushing it, but when both of them come with adultery attached (and both of the divorced women were sick at the time), it's going to be something that is not easily dismissed by attacking the messenger because you can't dispute the message.  It plays very, very poorly with women too, as it make him look like someone who thinks that women (as well as marriage vows) can be disposed of whenever the mighty wiener gets hard and heads out like a heat-seeking missile to find the next closest target.  I doubt that it drives them to Obama (who has a clear margin with women) but it does result in them staying home and not voting (or voting the down-ticket only). 

I never thought I would live to see the day that Conservatives - and some pretty rabid Social Conservatives also - would tout a serial adulterer as an acceptable candidate, but it's a pretty clear indication that they are desperate.

Quote from: tekla on January 20, 2012, 06:27:43 PM
Wright was never found guilty of anything, never sanctioned and fined by the House itself, and was not investigated by the IRS. 

Yeah, and Nixon wasn't impeach either.

You make a distinction without a difference.  Wright was forced out as Speaker because of the ethics charges.

Gingrich is only the second speaker to be subjected to an ethics committee investigation. Former Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, resigned in 1989 rather than continue to fight charges initiated by Gingrich himself. - NY Times, 12-22-96

Regarding the "fine" paid by Gingrich from campaign funds:

The ethics committee that handled the charges against Gingrich went out of business at midnight last night without resolving complaints that the speaker received improper gifts, contributions and support from GOPAC, the political action committee he once headed. House Democrats are likely to submit those charges to the new ethics committee.

In addition, the Internal Revenue Service is looking into the use of tax-deductible charitable contributions to finance the college course Gingrich taught, which was at the center of the ethics case, and the ethics committee is making the material it gathered available to the tax agency....

But some lawmakers said the $300,000 financial penalty, described as a reimbursement to the ethics committee for the additional cost Gingrich caused it when he gave it false information, was too severe. - Washington Post, 1-22-97

As it turned out, the IRS investigation of the House Ethics Committee allegations led to Gingrich and the "Progress and Freedom Foundation" being cleared of any legal wrongdoing.  The IRS ruling concluded, "... he did not illegally use tax-exempt money for political purposes, one of the main accusations against him."

Quote from: tekla on January 20, 2012, 06:27:43 PM
And hey, even you must see the humor in Newt - of all people - saying that sexual conduct is not a matter of public debate.  It played well for the audience, but that kind of stuff works poorly in the nation as a whole.  Divorce is one thing, two is pushing it, but when both of them come with adultery attached (and both of the divorced women were sick at the time), it's going to be something that is not easily dismissed by attacking the messenger because you can't dispute the message.  It plays very, very poorly with women too, as it make him look like someone who thinks that women (as well as marriage vows) can be disposed of whenever the mighty wiener gets hard and heads out like a heat-seeking missile to find the next closest target.  I doubt that it drives them to Obama (who has a clear margin with women) but it does result in them staying home and not voting (or voting the down-ticket only). 

Of course, we must remember that Gingrich led the impeachment of Clinton, not for the President's sexual peccidillos, but because he lied about them under oath.

Hey, and where is MoveOn.org?  After all, this is "just about sex." 

Gingrich is why I know the word "monogamish," and for that he will always hold a special place in my heart.

No worries, he'll leave us for a younger, hotter nation in no time.

Newt has shown (time after time) signs of chaos in his personal life, outright instability, poor impulse-control, and callousness toward others - and he's this weeks front runner?

And everybody going to get on-board with his whole educational policy, which seems to be "kids need less education and more training being janitors."  How's that going to work at private schools?  Are parents who are paying $10K a year for a private HS going to let their sons and daughters trade educational hours for a mop?

I like how family values is using the kids from your marriage #1, to attack wife #2 and praise wife #3.

This really shows you how much they have lost focus in that party.  Honestly there are many people out there who only voted for Obama because he was black.  I'm not saying he didn't deserve to win.  But the baby boomer generation finally had the chance to undo the civil rights era,  to give Dr. Martin Luther King Jr his dream.  Obama ran a clever campaign that way with his "Yes we Can"  It totally tapped into the lost days of 1968, the year that King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.


Great video about on youtube called  "1968  The Year that Changed a Generation."  So plenty of these folks voted for him for that reason alone.  And Obama blew it.  His hands were somewhat tied because of Bush's  mess.  But he didn't come across as a strong leader.

If Ronald Reagan was a candidate right now Obama wouldn't stand a chance.  If they actually had a strong leader, well liked, well spoken who seemed like a president  they would take it in a heartbeat.

However they all seem to be like a bunch of  lodge brothers who don't have a clue in the world.    Sigh.

Honestly there are many people out there who only voted for Obama because he was black
You mean that huge migration of African-Americans and people of color who defected from the Republicans to vote Democratic just that once, 'for the brother'?  The polling information showed that few people who were not Democratic leaning to begin with voted for him, he did however get a lot of people who registered to vote for the first time.  The 'Pubs on the other hand, coming off of Bush II and nominating who they did pretty much punted the entire deal.

If Ronald Reagan was a candidate right now Obama wouldn't stand a chance.
If Ronnie were to run now he'd find that he was much to liberal to get the Republican nomination.  That, and he never faced a highly-funded negative onslaught.  Remember Ronnie's 11th Commandment - "Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans"?   Yeah, about that...  I'm not sure he would fare all that well against a highly negative campaign.

Obama ran a clever campaign that way with his "Yes we Can"  It totally tapped into the lost days of 1968, the year that King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.
In fact, one of the most surprising demographics from the last election was how many people under 30 supported him, people who hold none of that personally.  You have to be at least 50 years old to remember any of that as anything other than old news footage.

So?   And no I'm not saying black people voted for Obama because he was black.  I'm saying many white people voted for Obama because he was black because it was an opportunity to change history.   It was no longer the typical election of the lesser of two evils.    Just because MORE people voted for him that were younger doesn't mean that he didn't use this campaign strategy. The Occupy movement is using the exact same strategy.   Trying to redo the grassroots movements of the 60s.   

And if you think you have to 'be 50 years old to remember" means squat,  think of the reaction to Hillary Clinton pointing out the Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June and was still on the campaign trail when she tried to explain why she wouldn't drop out.  The backlash was insane over that.  You don't need to "remember" history to be educated enough to know it.

Well, let's ponder how many people in 1968 voted one way or the other because of the events of WWII.  After all, that was was a lot closer (about 1/2) to '68, then '68 was to '08 (easily more important also).  The only real 'historical' vote goes on within the party faithful who will vote for their party, or not vote - as was the case last time with the 'Pubs who saw massively poor turnout in a lot of places because McCain was seen as as MeTooBushII person, and a RINO. 

That Reagan would win, hell, "Generic Republican" beats Obama in every poll, tragically they have to nominate a real person and that's when it hits the skids.  You'd have a hard time finding three people who are harder to like than old frothy, Rick Santorum (whose honorary chair in Florida is quoted this morning as saying "gays 'make god want to vomit'", Mitt (who's taking the gloves off now, well just as soon as his butler does it for him), and Newt one the most consistently unlikable people in American politics (and that's no small feat).

Added to that, you're going to have a huge union factor (and thanks to CU they too can spend unlimited cash) in 3 critical swing states, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.  And one thing that unions have that PACs don't is the ability to turn out lots of people, not only for the election, but also for the campaign work.

You've got a highly polarized and clearly split electorate, but two factors seem to help the Dems.  One that their basic demographics skew lower in age, (which means more Dems than R's over the long run as the Tea Party types tend to die off).  Second is that states themselves are becoming more red or blue as time goes on.  And it's the richer, more educated states (those with an industrial base) that are going more blue, and the poorer ag states that sink deeper into the red.  And though there is a nation-wide two-party system, on local levels its' becoming much less that way.  And when you have to toss the two largest electoral states (California and New York) as highly-unlikely to ever go red, then you need to run the table on the rest.

The single biggest problem that Obama faces is one of the easiest to deal with - that he hasn't unified the country at all.  And where that might be an issue in normal times (and should be) in fact it won't be any sort of issue at all.  Because the GOP can't campaign against that without admitting they're part of the problem.

Add to that, folks could consider voting for Mitt, but they will never vote Newt.  But If Mittens wins the nomination, he will be Palin'd.  The GOP will force him to take Santorum or one of those as his running mate to appeal to the base, and that will scare the moderates away. An electable GOP candidate doesn't appeal to the nutjobs, and a nutjob scares away the middle 40%. It's kind of hilarious.

I don't think so.   And polls are not so reliable.  I think it is completely different because Obama is black.  There is a huge amount of white guilt in the US and many people I know voted for him simply because they didn't want the chance to have a black president to come and go.  They didn't want to be the person who let it go.


The rest of what your post says I do agree with.  He hasn't unified the country at all.  And the reason I mentioned Reagan wasn't about his politics but about his likeability.   That's what I'm pointing out.   His charisma.   The fact that in all their candidates they can't find one neutral guy that tows the party line without trying to make a noose out of it is scary.  They have no one to really run.   If they did  Obama would lose.

So the only reason he even stands a chance is because of how screwed up the Republican party is.   Also please try to understand what I'm saying about white guilt.  It's got nothing to do with how close or far history is.  I'm suprised that you  seem to think that people younger than 30 don't know anything about the civil rights movement because they don't remember it.  ??  Do you have an education?  I've never met a person that doesn't know about it.  It's part of common education.

Beyond that those white guilty people who voted just because they wanted to vote for a black candidate are really disappointed about how Obama handled things and I think that the Republicans could snag their vote if they ran someone really charismatic and leader like.   But sadly for them  they can't seem to conjure one up.

mixie,

I interact with people from all over the U.S. from Wisconsin to the East Coast to Florida to California of mixed race from lower class to upper class and I can honestly say that not one of them voted for Obama because he is black (he is only half black by the way). Also, out of all the people I know under the age of 30, very few of them know anything at all about the 60's political environment and civil rights movement. It is one thing to have a few hours of public school instruction on the subject as a teenager, but it is entirely different to have lived in that era and watching daily news coverage of protests and riots and Vietnam war body counts and witnessing first hand the discrimination and personal quest for freedom (civil rights) and the resulting carnage.

I do however know many people who did not vote for Obama simply because of his race. White guilt? I just don't see it.

Jennifer

What do you do for a living.  Perhaps my experience is skewed.  I educate teachers.  So I suppose they are well versed.  But I also teach entrance exams for college and I deal with many different kinds of people. I have never met a person who didn't know what the Civil Rights movement was. Or who Martin Luther King Jr. was you know his national Holiday Last week.    So I don't know what to tell you.  But if you do know people like that they are likely to be uneducated in a scary way.  Then I can see them being hicks. 

Still I don't think either of you understand what I am saying.   Racist people aren't going to vote for Obama this time around again any way.  Neither are strong Republicans.  When you work with an incumbent elected official,  your concern is not winning over people who wouldn't have voted for him anyway.  It's about LOSING the votes he got last time around.

I am saying that Obama stands to lose the votes of white people who voted for him out of wanting to vote for a black president.  And believe me there are large numbers of people who did.   He stands to lose these voters.

And I am also saying that if the Republican party ran a strong charismatic candidate,   those voters might switch.

There are also large numbers of people who think he is doing a terrible job.    He stands to lose those votes as well.


If the Republican party ran a strong charismatic candidate,  those voters might switch as well.


However the Republican party doesn't have a strong charismatic candidate.  It shows how messed up they are.  They could win this election very easily with the right candidate.  They have had 4 years to come up with one.  And they haven't.


I am not talking about any other people who voted or didn't vote for Obama.  Those people have absolutely nothing to do with the point that I am making.

Hope that makes it clearer.

I'm proud to say that except for my private college-prep HS (salutatorian), my BS (Phi Beta Kappa/Dean's List/President's List), my Master's Degree (Phi Kappa Alpha) and My PhD (Phi Kappa Phi), that I'm completely self-educated.

And I also know that after a decade of teaching history at a major university that history affects people a lot less than current events do.  Obama's anti-war stand helped him out last time a lot more than the number of people who thought it would be 'cool' to have a black President.  Those who felt it was - at long last - some vindication and validation of the Civil Rights Era, those people were over 60, not under 30.  And I'm pretty sure that this time around people under 30/35 are going to be more worried about the crippling levels of debt their college education put them under, combined with a lack of jobs that would require (and compensate for) that level of education.


I educate teachers.  So I suppose they are well versed.
Ummm, in most colleges and universities the Department/College of Education have the lowest test scores of all the departments.  They also have the lowest combined GPA at most schools.  The highest SATs/cum GPA at my school were the College of Veterinary Science,¹ followed by the College of Engineering and then the hard science majors.

1. It's much harder to get into a VetMed program than a human based medical school.  For starters, there are a lot fewer of them.

tekla if you were really all these things,  you wouldn't be trying to present your personal opinion as the truth.  I am presenting my opinion.  Your ranting is still only your opinion.  Also I note that you don't source most of what you say.  So that is a noticeable thing to me that shows a real lack of debate and discussion skills.   

I don't think you understand the point I am making. 

Also the question is not who is the most intelligent.  The question is are people aware of the 1960s and the civil rights movement.  I would argue that it is so well known in the media that it is a part of current events.  It is not history.  I find it suspect that you are a history teacher and would even propose this.

What kind of history did you teach?


More white voters voted for Obama than either Kerry or Gore.     

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/ansolabehere_stewart.php


Also Master degrees are a dime a dozen these days.   You can get one online for crying out loud.  Unless your degrees are from high falutin school and you received full scholarships color me not impressed.   

I'm not even impressed with my own full Scholarship for my second masters at Columbia University.  I dropped out because it was annoying.


Also do you realize the irony in your post.   You state that teachers are basically the dumbest people academically and then point out that you were a teacher for a decade.   So maybe you weren't a very good teacher and people were not interested in your classes.  And so you think this means that across the board people don't like or care about history.

The civil rights movement is alive in the minds of Americans.  That is for sure.   People do know who Martin Luther King Jr. is.  It's not some dated thing like the Korean war that no one cares about.  It is part of the American tapestry.


Also I don't "teach"  I teach teachers.  Big difference.      

Quote from: Felix on January 22, 2012, 10:54:41 PM
Gingrich is why I know the word "monogamish," and for that he will always hold a special place in my heart.

Serial monogamy is healthy.

Serial monogamy is healthy.

Serial adultery on the other hand is considered poor form with the family values folk.  And it's public record that wife #2 was his hose-beast while he was still married to wife #1, and that wife #3 was his penis parking place while still married to wife #2.

Quote from: tekla on January 23, 2012, 08:53:21 AM
No worries, he'll leave us for a younger, hotter nation in no time.

Newt has shown (time after time) signs of chaos in his personal life, outright instability, poor impulse-control, and callousness toward others - and he's this weeks front runner?

Sounds a lot like Bill Clinton or any one of the Kennedys.  I am surprised you have not jumped on the bandwagon.

And everybody going to get on-board with his whole educational policy, which seems to be "kids need less education and more training being janitors."  How's that going to work at private schools?  Are parents who are paying $10K a year for a private HS going to let their sons and daughters trade educational hours for a mop?

Not quite what he said.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich defended on Thursday his controversial plan to have schoolchildren from poor neighborhoods serve as janitors.

"A very poor neighborhood. You have kids that who are under law required to go to school. They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit in the clerical office, and greet people when they came in?" he said. "What if you paid them to work as an assistant librarian?"

He then discussed his proposal for having poor students serve as janitors. "Let me get down to the janitor thing, and these letters are written that janitorial work is really hard and really dangerous and this and that," he said. "Fine. So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom. And you pay them."

I like how family values is using the kids from your marriage #1, to attack wife #2 and praise wife #3.

It is understandable that the Democrat Left would seek to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and dependence on the government teat. It is how they have created a modern-day "slave" population of bloc voters.

Quote from: mixie on January 23, 2012, 09:05:06 AM
Honestly there are many people out there who only voted for Obama because he was black.  I'm not saying he didn't deserve to win.  But the baby boomer generation finally had the chance to undo the civil rights era,  to give Dr. Martin Luther King Jr his dream.  Obama ran a clever campaign that way with his "Yes we Can"  It totally tapped into the lost days of 1968, the year that King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

In some circles that effect has been termed "white liberal guilt."

One would hope we are beyond race politics, but it is much easier to play the"race card" than defend a record of abject failure.

Yes people are now saying that voters are harder on Obama because he is black.   Which is nonsense.   I see a lot of disappointment. I am disappointed myself.  The push towards socialization solutions while the country is suffering economically is a disaster.  So was bailing out Wall St.  When Obama did that I thought to myself uh oh.   

He was handed a difficult hand to begin with.  I'm not so critical of him.  I think he's as good as anyone else.  He's lacking a lot of power and leadership.  But he's not a total embarassment like Bush was.


My point is,  that I think everyone is missing.   This  shows how craptastic the republican party is.  They have had four years to come up with a Ronald Reagan  and instead they have come up with a bunch of Ronald McDonalds.   All the potential candidates are hideous disasters.  I even thought maybe Cain had a shot there for a while but then all the sexual harassment.

Don't these people VET their candidates?  Can't they find one good hero in the mix?

Sadly it seems,  no they cannot.

Quote from: tekla on January 23, 2012, 01:09:40 PM
I'm proud to say that except for my private college-prep HS (salutatorian), my BS (Phi Beta Kappa/Dean's List/President's List), my Master's Degree (Phi Kappa Alpha) and My PhD (Phi Kappa Phi), that I'm completely self-educated.

That's quite a resume. I especially like the last part.

I had hoped to do graduate study with the late Prof. Don Fehrenbacher, but my academics and profession went in another direction.