Pat Buchanan: Reagan White House saw Newt as ‘something of a political opportunist’

Interesting article by Pat Buchanan.  When it came to light in the last few weeks that Newt Gingrich was the Chair for Rockefeller in GA against Barry Goldwater, it was a shock since President Reagan was a huge Goldwater supporter and conservative while Rockefeller was a liberal:

Reading this article by Pat Buchanan it struck me that he is correct that Gingrich is an opportunist and his attempt to try and carry the Reagan mantle is hollow like everything else he touches.  He brags about the Contract with America but then turns around and tries to get Republicans to abandon certain of its principles like raising taxes.  When 11 conservatives had the audacity to tell him no, he hauls them before the caucus to subject them to ridicule.  At the end of the day, history shows Gingrich lost the war with conservatives in Congress who were elected in 1994.  Joe Scarborough has been quite vocal that Gingrich has tried to rewrite history about what he (Gingrich) had to say about President Reagan and now along comes Pat Buchanan adding his voice to those of others on Gingrich.  

Gingrich, Palin, and others attacking other candidates and the media for negative campaigning is getting really old.  Detest the thin skin of some Republicans and looks like Rush Limbaugh has now weighed in as well. 

I am getting tired of the whining about 'negative' campaigning.  What in the world is campaigning if it is not this?  It has always been this way.  Romney is outspending Gingrich by $15million to $3million. He doesn't have a microphone like I do, but I just ignore critics.  

I am not a huge fan of Rush but in this case he is right.  All this whine about the media and the negative campaigning shows that Gingrich is another one of the Republicans who can dish it out but cannot take it just like Sarah Palin and her refusing interviews because she might get asked a gotcha question.  I don't remember Reagan complaining about the media.

Successful Republican politicians learn to use the media to their advantage instead of complaining about it.  Like Ronald Reagan.  He was a master at using the media.  Ever hear Reagan whine about the media?  Here is a pretty extensive list of Reagan quotes.  None of them are about the media.  Complaining about the media in politics is like complaining that water is wet.  Stop complaining and start swimming

When I read that paragraph above at Red State, I burst out laughing as it is so true.  Love the "Stop complaining and start swimming" part.  That was one of my biggest complaints about Palin when she couldn't answer a question was her immediate response of blaming the media which makes a candidate look weak and whiney which is what we have been seeing out of Gingrich for the last week.

Pat Buchanan: Reagan White House saw Newt as ‘something of a political opportunist’Published: 3:48 PM 01/28/2012 | Updated: 11:44 AM 01/29/2012

Over the last week, several people that worked in the Reagan administration have come forward and countered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s claim that he is a “Reagan Republican.” These people say Gingrich “wasn’t on board with a lot of what President Ronald Reagan tried to accomplish during his two terms.” 

And although that claim has been disputed by other Reagan administration officials, former Reagan communications director Pat Buchanan told “The McLaughlin Group” this weekend that Gingrich wasn’t seen favorably by those in the administration. 

“[I]n the Reagan White House, Newt Gingrich was considered quite frankly by a lot of folks to be something of a political opportunist and who was not trusted and who had played no role whatsoever,” Buchanan said. “He was a Rockefeller Republican in the great Goldwater-Rockefeller battle, where conservatism came of age.” 

Buchanan also theorized that Gingrich stumbled in two debates this week because he was caught off guard by all these people who turned on him. 

“I do think this, though. Newt has been pounded merciously,” Buchanan said. “He had people he worked with basically turn on him and dump on him down there in Florida, which somehow I think may have had some role in the fact that the great fighter and battler of South Carolina had no fight in him whatsoever in the Monday and Thursday debates in Florida.’ 

“He let Mitt Romney punch him silly. And he has lost all his momentum. And John, I’m not going to make any predictions because I thought the battler of South Carolina would win Florida, but Romney is surging and it looks like Romney may win Florida. And if he does, it’s all over.” 

Later Buchanan reiterated his criticisms of Gingrich, recalling his opposition to Reagan’s 1986 veto of a South African anti-Apartheid sanctions bill and about how Gingrich used it to score points against Reagan. 

“I don’t think he has a core,” Buchanan said. “I don’t think he has a fundamental, ideological and political core. I think, look he moved, he was a Rockefeller Republican, he comes up — I remember meeting him in ’78 when he came to town, you know he is knocking Reagan. … 

Reagan believed that sanctions on South Africa would cripple the economy that the Africans would inherit. So it was a tough decision. Reagan vetoed it. And he scored points off us by you know voting for the sanctions and doing that. I don’t think he has an ideological core. I think he moves from one issue to another to another.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/28/pat-buchanan-reagan-white-house-saw-newt-as-something-of-a-political-opportunist/#ixzz1kyacqnpd

Originally thought I could support Gingrich, but after talking to some people who knew him best and reading about the facts not the rewritten history by Gingrich, I cannot in good conscience support a man that I am not sure where he really stands after traveling around with Pelosi and Daschle on Global Warming and getting on board with Hillary on healthcare when she was in the Senate.  He asks us to swallow too much koolaid like he was an historian for Freddie MAC or that he was a huge supporter of Reagan when the facts speak otherwise.   

Already said that there was no way I could support Mitt Romney and feel that way as much today as I did six months ago if not more today.  He is not conservative and has flipped so much on issues not sure he knows where he stands.  

Will the Republican Party end up with brokered convention or will another candidate step forward that the grassroots can support.  I have seen more people post in the comment section that if any of the four candidates is the nominee they are staying home.  That would hurt our House and Senate candidates.  In fact, the latest generic poll shows the Dems 1% ahead of the GOP for Congressional seats.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democrat in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 40% would choose the Republican instead.  

There are two things at play here.  First is the lack of good Conservative Republican leadership in Congress and second is the way this primary season has been handled by the RNC who is owned by Bush 41 and the establishment with their surrogates like Karl Rove calling the shots.  This group took out other candidates along the way who were more conservative then any of the four who are left.  Shame on the RNC for having all those debates with liberal moderators which favored Romney and Newt and their prowess in debating.  All of a sudden the debates became the way to weed out conservative candidates.  You can lay a good part of the blame at the RNC and Fox News with their crooked debate in Orlando which started the downward spiral for debates.


For the first time in several years, Democrats are back on top the generic ballot for Congress and can understand why when you see what the RNC has managed to accomplish in this primary -- give us candidates that the grassroots don't like and basically tell us to get on board to beat Obama or we are not Republicans.  Some of the emails I have gotten frankly have made me more against the RNC then ever which says a lot.


Someone better wake up and realize that we could lose a chance at the White House and the Congress if we are not careful.  This may go down as one of the most disgusting Presidential primaries that I have ever witnessed with the RNC calling the total shots and being in the tank for Mitt Romney who is not conservative which has left us with the #2 candidate Gingrich who is only conservative when it is to his advantage or he would not have been paling around with Nancy Pelosi on global warming.  Here is the ad by Pelosi and Gingrich on global warming:





What are conservatives to do about this Presidential Primary?  One path is to vote for one of the candidates like Santorum who is the most conservative or even Ron Paul and hope we end up with no one getting 50% of the vote and have a brokered convention.  Another avenue is to vote for Romney and end this charade and move on to House and Senate races.  Frankly Romney as the candidate would make it easier to Keep the House and Take and Senate because most Democrats are no more enthused to vote then Republicans.  With Gingrich, Clintonites will come out in big numbers to vote against Gingrich and give at least one of the Houses and perhaps both back to the Democrats.  Personally I am voting for Santorum in my state hoping for a brokered convention but even then I would expect the RNC to blow it.


It is time for the RNC Chair Preibus to resign after this debacle of a primary season which we don't expect to happen but it would show that the leaders of the Republican Party understand how mad conservatives are at what we have been witnessing during the Presidential primary.  I am not holding my breath because I think the ethics at the RNC are missing in action with all these debates meant to elect Romney, or we wouldn't be in this mess!

Red State: On the Nature of the Perry Attacks

This article from Red State this morning made me chuckle because Erickson is so right.  Think the attack about the video story cracked me up the most.  The pornographic movie stores in Texas are best represented at the adult stores on the border with OK -- we have the casino's, they have the adult stores across the border on the major roads.

Drive down I-35 and you pass a very grand casino of the Chickasaws that has buses running from the Dallas Fort Worth Airport to the casino.  They have a new 10-story hotel and inside is all the glitter of Vegas.  Drive another two miles down the road crossing the Red River and on your right is a sleazy looking adults only store with video, etc.  Now that is a porn place.  All I know he invested $5,000 to $10,000 which was peanuts as an investor.  Used to go to Movie Gallery and remember the Adults Only section where you had to be 18 to enter.  In fact at the one we went to, there were no "R" movies on display with the family section.

We have also seen attacks in the last week where someone leaves off parts of sentences to fit their agenda, attacks by some people who if they for a candidate I am most likely on the other side, and taking his words twisting them around to report something he didn't say.  The latest Rove move to get Congressman out to tell Perry to tone it down actually brought more support to Perry.  A lot of us like the fact that Gov Perry tells it like it is and if you don't like it tough.

The part about the consultants made my day.  I remember 1980 and thinking those guys in CA know what they are doing.  One thing left out is Bush 41 is behind the curtain with Rove and wants desperately to have someone put his son Jeb on the ticket for 2012 VP so he can run in 2016.  Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard first let the cat out of the bag about six months ago when he suggested a Christie/Jeb ticket.  Until then I didn't realize that Christie was considered a Bush person and that Rove was so involved with him.  Now Rove is dropping stories that are negative and generally acting like a spoiled brat that didn't get his way.  Bush 41 and Rove showed themselves in the Texas Governor's race on what they were willing to say and do.

Now there is an article that Jeb can take out Perry in Florida  With who? Huntsman the man who dislikes today's Republicans.  Huntsman might as well have called us neanderthals yesterday for not signing onto the Global Warming 'junk science' as he tarred us with we are all against science.  It is getting wild out there but supporting Huntsman over Perry is not going to win votes in Florida.  Maybe someone needs to remind the Bush 41 people that voters choose the nominee not who they are told to support.  What next from the Bush 41/Rove crowd?  Rick Perry was a werewolf or Dracula one year for Halloween?  Maybe what Perry was for Halloween can be the next new rumor of the day right along side of the small investment in the Movie Gallery.

Just remembered something -- I can relate to the next President as I talked my way out of a speeding ticket and only got a warning several years ago when I was late going to the airport to pick up Mom.

Erickson has done an outstanding job with this article to make these consultants looks like fools just like the Reagan consultants did in 1980 when Rove was with Bush 41.  What a way to start a morning with this article that nails the consultants who are willing to put their egos over what is best for the Country.  See a negative on Perry, look for a consultant behind the attack he has beat should be the mantra!

On the Nature of the Perry Attacks
Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)
Saturday, August 20th at 11:15AM EDT

Rick Perry once tried to get out of a speeding ticket. 

Rick Perry once owned stock in a chain of video stores competing against Blockbuster, some of which also rented adult movies. 

Rick Perry once was a Democrat. 

The attacks have come fast and furious against him. But most of the attacks take on a peculiar and very telling strain. 

A reporter on television or in print will utter a sentence like this, “Privately many Republican consultants suggest Rick Perry may be too Texas or shoot from the hip too much and might turn off necessary independent voters and women.”

It sounds so serious. As Alex Castellanos said on CNN the other night on John King USA, some fear Rick Perry might have “Mad Cowboy Disease.” 

Let me sum this all up for you into what Rick Perry’s biggest problem is. 

Whether you are talking about Alex (Team Carole Strayhorn 2006) or Karl Rove (Team Kay Bailey Hutchison 2010) or a host of other national Republican consultants, Rick Perry and his Texas team have beaten a significant portion of them. 

But they did not just beat them. In many cases, Team Perry then shut the consultants who opposed him out of future business with him. 

So there are scores and scores of Republican consultants who have scores to settle with Rick Perry and his team. And for guys like Karl Rove, if Perry were to win the White House, Karl and a few others would see themselves shut out of White House business for at least four years.
Rick Perry may be the only guy in America to have beaten both Karl Rove and also Obama’s own consultant, David Axelrod. 

So there’s a lot of score settling in a lot of the attacks. Next time you hear some Republican consultant say Rick Perry can’t win because he is too much of a cowboy, understand that it is probably a national Republican consultant fearful they will be shut out of work if Perry wins and, more importantly, understand that the same dynamics were in place in 1980 with Reagan’s “boys from California” team of consultants and the national consultants back them said the same about Reagan — he’s too much of a cowboy conservative who will alienate key voting blocks. 

That’s not to say Perry is Reagan. It is to say the GOP national consultants have been pulling the same stuff since 1980.

If you would like to read interesting takes on what is happening in today's world of politics, please visit Red State.com to get the latest.

Someone asked me yesterday if I was having fun and with articles like this, the answer is YES!  Love having a candidate who not trying to be someone who he is not -- what you see is what you get with Rick Perry.  Shame that cannot be said about all candidates who sometimes are round and trying to fit themselves into a square peg.

Looking forward to what this week brings because last week was interesting to say the least!

Steven Hayward: Keep Cool with Coolidge

This article is a good lesson on how the new 'liberals' tend to rewrite history to suit their agenda.  One of the favorite parts of this article is this:

This should also serve as a reminder of who are the real champions of “liberal culture” today. It generally isn’t the people who call themselves “liberal.”

When Governor Rick Perry of Texas says that "Texas is open for business," there are a lot of similarities with President Coolidge and President Reagan.  He understands what it takes to grow jobs and the economy and raising taxes is not one of them.  He has demonstrated to attract new jobs you have to have a low tax structure and a tort reform system in place that doesn't reward frivolous lawsuits.  Balancing a state budget and still maintaining a rainy day fund makes a state like Texas an attractive place for new business.

History should not be subject to revision by any group or person who only want to revise it to fit their agenda or their gaffes.  This is a very good article on President Coolidge who you could say is not a friend of progressives which is actually a better term for today's liberals than liberal.

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Steven Hayward

Keep Cool with Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge was assailed as “silent Cal”—though who wouldn’t wish more a relatively more silent president these days?—and ridiculed by fashionable people everywhere for saying “the business of America is business.” I’ve got a long passage in the second volume of my Age of Reagan recalling liberal outrage when Reagan put up Coolidge’s portrait in the White House cabinet room in place of Jefferson.

Today my AEI pal Leon Kass, writing in the Wall Street Journal, gets at why liberals really hate Coolidge: he was the last serious and self-conscious anti-Progressive Republican president until Reagan came along. Kass reminds us of Coolidge’s great speech (keep in mind that Coolidge was the last president who wrote his own speeches) on the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that described the principles of natural right—the chief target of Progressive ideology—as “final.” Kass summarizes Coolidge’s full remarks because of the space constraints of the printed page; here on the internet we have no such constraint, so here’s the original text of the relevant passage:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

No wonder the left hates him. (There is one notable exception to liberal Coolidge hatred, and it comes from, of all people, John Kenneth Galbraith. In his book The Great Crash, Galbraith wrote: “A whole generation of historians has assailed Coolidge for the superficial optimism which kept him from seeing that a great storm was brewing at home and also more distantly abroad. This is grossly unfair.”)
Meanwhile, about that famous Coolidge quote that “the business of America is business.” Turns out this is not only misquote, but completely ignores, and therefore willfully distorts, the full context of Coolidge’s thought. Here’s the full quotation:

After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of our people will always find these are moving impulses of our life. . . Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, and dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. (Emphasis added.)

Saying that the chief business of the American people is business is acknowledging the uncontroversial fact that America is a commercial republic. The full comment shows that Coolidge, far from being a pro-business simpleton, was warning against exactly the worship of commerce and wealth for which he is accused of being a servant. The frequent refrain that Coolidge was “the patron saint of business” is as crude as it is incorrect.
On a separate occasion, Coolidge wrote this:

Great captains of industry who have aroused the wonder of the world by their financial success would not have been captains at all had it not been for the generations of liberal culture in the past and the existence all about them of a society permeated, inspired, and led by the liberal culture of the present. If it were possible to strike out that factor from present existence, he would find all the value of his great possessions diminish to the vanishing point, and he himself would be but a barbarian among barbarians.

This should also serve as a reminder of who are the real champions of “liberal culture” today. It generally isn’t the people who call themselves “liberal.”

Hat tip: Our friend the late Thomas B. Silver, whose great 1984 book Coolidge and the Historians helped start a wave of revisionism that has seen Coolidge’s reputation rescued from the partisan liberal historians of the 1950s.

Source:  Powerline

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