To: Newt Gingrich’s Supporters
\nFrom: Mitch Berg, guy who really wants to like and support Newt, but juuuust can’t yet.
\nRe: No, the postscript in my “From” line really says it all.<\/p>\n
All,<\/p>\n
Loathe as I am to cite Hugh Hewitt, he did \u00a0have an excellent point for all of you Gingrich supporters last night on his show. \u00a0I’m going to turn that point into a question.<\/p>\n
I’ll get to that in a moment.<\/p>\n
William F. Buckley’s rule for picking a candidate was simple; pick the most conservative candidate that can win. \u00a0I follow this – after <\/em>doing what I can to make the candidate who can win more conservative (see Tim Pawlenty, 2002).<\/p>\n Now, let’s leave aside the troubling episodes in Newt’s career – older ones, like his creakingly convoluted personal life (and I’m disregarding everything Marianne said in her loathsome interview, by the way, and only going by stuff Gingrich has admitted to, or which is in court records), middle-term ones like his trading butterfly kisses with Nancy Pelosi, and painfully recent ones like his tossing all of capitalism under the bus and his adoption of Saul Alinkski’s tactics to try and eke out a lead in South Carolina (which is the very definition of politics in its worst form over principle); let’s even leave aside the fact that Newt is in many ways a conservative (fingers crossed) mirror of his would-be nemesis, Barack Obama – albeit with more actual real-world government experience. \u00a0Forget all that.<\/p>\n Remember Buckley; pick “the most conservative candidate that can get elected”.<\/p>\n As Hugh notes, Newt has 100 percent name recognition, and 60% negative perception.<\/p>\n Why should I support him?<\/p>\n Don’t talk principles. \u00a0Don’t talk history. \u00a0Don’t talk 1994. \u00a0Don’t talk policy. \u00a0Talk numbers. \u00a0Convince me.<\/p>\n That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To: Newt Gingrich’s Supporters From: Mitch Berg, guy who really wants to like and support Newt, but juuuust can’t yet. Re: No, the postscript in my “From” line really says it all. All, Loathe as I am to cite Hugh Hewitt, he did \u00a0have an excellent point for all of you Gingrich supporters last night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,16,13],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-25805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-conservatism","category-republicans","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25805"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33734,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25805\/revisions\/33734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}