N-E-W-T Ascending

Now it’s time for Newt. Just a few months ago, legitimate pundits and illegitimate people like me had written off Newt Gingrich as the Republican nomination for the President. His staff quit. He was broke. Press generated pseudo-scandals were swirling about him. No he is for all intents and purposes the front runner. He has jumped to the front of the pack in national polls, and is even money in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

Newt Gingrich is the intellectual guardian of the modern conservative movement. He is a brilliant man, and it drives the liberal establishment crazy. Back when he was lost in the pack as his staff deserted him for Rick Perry, Newt said at the end of the day it would be ideas that would win out. He dutifully showed up for all of the debates, and put in stellar performance after stellar performance.  He was right.

Newt has always been my personal favorite, but I honestly felt that he couldn’t beat Obama. Not because he isn’t talented, but because the main stream press would obliterate him. They don’t like him because he is able to tear liberal philosophy to shreds. In simple terms he exposes the fallacy of a nanny state government, and why it hasn’t worked other places, and why it won’t work here. He expresses himself in clear and concise terms, and refuses to take any guff from any of the smart ass reporters that try to give it to him. He does what Ronald Reagan did…maybe not as good…but he’s close.

Gingrich says that this is the most important election in the United States since 1860. I agree. Ironically, like Lincoln, it is his debating skills that are clearing the path to his nomination. I wondered how he could beat Obama flying into the headwind of a vindictive cut throat main stream press. He answered the question himself today. He said tell Obama I want to debate him, and he can bring his teleprompter. If Gingrich is standing at the debate podium with Obama next fall, the emperor will truly have no clothes.

If Newt is nominated, can he beat Obama? I don’t know. Pundits galore are still singing Romney’s praises, which should be a red flag to conservatives. Romney is trying to win the nomination with a 25% solution as the other 75% of the party look for someone other than Romney. From Bachmann to Perry to Cain… each of the candidates has had a turn at the front only to be shot down. Time will tell if the same thing will happen to Gingrich.

What Gingrich has going for him is more debates where he is a star. Then there are the primaries. If he does well in Iowa and New Hampshire coming in at least second in each of those states, then all bets are off. Gingrich may have a shot at the whole enchilada. More likely, the nomination will be thrown into flux and the Republicans will host a brokered convention with Romney having maybe 35% of the delegates and the rest lined up behind the conservative candidates opposing Romney. That opens the way for a Chris Christie, a Rudy Giuliani, and dare I say it…Jeb Bush.

Meanwhile, I hope that America listens to what Gingrich has to say. He is proven politician with the skill to get things done, and the ideological moxie to go with it. His voice is the voice that can save America.

Penn State and College Football

The Penn State sex abuse debacle keeps getting worse. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the swiftness of the demise of Joe Paterno football and the magical Penn State story is staggering. While things looked great on the surface, underneath the veneer it was rotting away with a secret few could comprehend, or chose not to.

We all operate within the box of our life experience which sets the parameters by which we react to things. If events don’t fit in the box of understanding and experience, folks tend to ignore them because to them it is irrelevant or unbelievable. It couldn’t happen here. Only when the truth hits them on the head like a hammer do they experience an “ah-ha” moment, and the gravity of the situation finally breaks through.

Knowledge of this event had been festering since 1998, at least on current available information. Jerry Sandusky retiring from Penn State as he was investigated by a grand jury is too coincidental for university officials and his close friend and confidant Joe Paterno NOT to have known. Even then, Sandusky was made a professor emeritus, and was allowed full access to Penn State facilities and football program. He made road trips with the team and his boys. The Drudge Report even stated he was recruiting for Penn State as late as this past year…even after new allegations arose in 2002 about which Joe Paterno had full knowledge.

The press has missed the focus. Paterno did what he was supposed to do, he notified his superiors in 2002 of the allegations of the molestation in the shower. The press is focused on the point that Paterno didn’t follow up and call the police under some sort of moral obligation. I am focused on the fact that apparently there was still some kind of ongoing relationship between Sandusky, Paterno and school even after the 2002 allegations. What were they thinking?

Then there is the suspicious disappearance of the county prosecutor…the smell of smoke and the presence of ashes in his car…his computer found at the bottom of a river with the hard drive removed. Rumors are swirling that Sandusky’s foundation was acting as a clearinghouse for pedophiles looking for boys…big money pedophiles. Could some of those people also have been big money contributors to Penn State? Murder is lurking in the background.

This is a mess. Meanwhile, the NCAA is continuing to hound Ohio State taking away 5 scholarships because an alumnus gave some football players $200.00 each for walking around money…so they could afford to buy a lousy pizza. Does the NCAA have its head in the sand?

It’s time for Congress to investigate the operation of the NCAA, and examine what has become a business as big if not bigger than the NFL. It needs to look at its tax exemptions, and set regulations as to how this entity can operate. It needs to standardize procedures for sex abuse allegations so that a situation at Penn State, which followed the letter of the law, does not happen again violating the spirit of the law. And this is important, it’s not clear whether Penn State actually violated any NCAA rules.

Big money breeds corruption. If the NCAA can’t regulate itself and the use of slave labor from football players which generates millions upon millions dollars for the schools and the NCAA itself, the government will have to. If the NCAA can't differentiate moral equivilency between tatoos and child molestation, it has to be done for it. Penn State players praying in the middle of the field before a football game for the “victims” just doesn’t cut it.

It’s time for someone to figure just what is going on here.

Defeat of Issue 2: The Canary in the Coal Mine

The defeat of Ohio’s Issue 2 should give warning to the Republican Party not to count their chickens before they hatch. If the unions were able to defeat a bill which by all calculations should have passed, they can do the same thing in next year’s presidential election. The extreme left and public employee unions play hard, they play dirty and their guns are loaded. Republicans have never been able to compete with those kinds of tactics. They better learn how if they expect to defeat Obama next year.

Issue 2 highlights the weakness of the Republican approach to politics. Senate Bill 5 which went down to defeat as Issue 2 today, should have passed. During the campaign, most polls showed Issue 2 continuously behind in the polls by as much as 22%. Yet when broken down item by item, Ohio citizens were overwhelmingly in favor of everything that was in the bill. How can an issue go down to defeat when citizens are in favor of what’s in the bill?

It’s not hard. The anti SB5 folks ran a campaign based on lies, threats, and emotion. And those in favor of SB5 ran the single worse political issue campaign I have ever seen in my life. You can’t win by rolling over resting on the false assumption the public knows what it is voting for.  Whoever was in charge of this campaign should be fired....and now!!!

Television ads were relentless from the anti Issue 2 folks showing nurses claiming you would die in the hospital corridors if Issue 2 passed. Your house would burn down with you in it if Issue 2 passed. The police would be unable to respond if Issue 2 passed. Your children would not know how to read if Issue 2 passed. Granny would be unable to buy medicine if Issue 2 passed. And all of our firefighters and police would die on the job if Issue 2 passed. Tell the lie long enough and often enough, and people will believe it. That is extreme politics’ oldest trick in the book.

Had the Republicans made half an effort to explain to the public what Issue 2 did, and broke down the components parts in a meaningful fashion, Issue 2 would have passed easily. Even after defeat, Ohioans support what is in the Senate Bill 5 when asked about each item on an individual basis.

Ohio Republicans have handed over to Barack Obama and his leftist cadre their first victory in the 2012 presidential campaign. And it was achieved by using the usual leftist playbook. Lie to the public. Play on emotion. Do it often with feeling. That is going to be the playbook for the next election.

Republicans be warned. The economic mutilation of America by the Obama administration will look like sweet cakes and sugar in the campaign. Republicans can’t assume the public will vote against Obama simply on the disastrous economy and massive debt. Expect more of the Occupy Something movement which is rooted squarely in Obama’s White House and Obama’s training. That is what he did before he became President.  He knows how to turn a sows ear into a silk purse. 

Ohio’s Issue 2 was the canary in the coal mine. Republicans should take heed.