Re: What the People Who Know Newt Gingrich Say About Him

"Governor Sununu's justification for endorsing Mitt Romney was disingenuous. He had been an attack dog for the campaign for months. The fact is Governor Huntsman has a strong track record of conservative governance while Mitt Romney raised taxes, signed big government healthcare, and ran away from the Republican Party."

SOURCE: U.S. News & World Report 1 month ago

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:39 AM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:

Monday, December 12, 2011
What the People Who Know Newt Gingrich Say About Him
Posted by Robert Wenzel

Over the weekend, WSJ carried this report from Peggy Noonan:

What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington...

Former New Hampshire governor and George H.W. Bush chief of staff John Sununu told The Wall Street Journal this week: "Listen to just about anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he's inconsistent, erratic, untrustworthy and unprincipled." In a conference call Thursday, Jim Talent, who served with Mr. Gingrich in the House from 1993 through 1999, said, "He's not reliable as a leader." Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the House class of 1994, called the former speaker's leadership "lacking," and according to a local press report, he told Oklahoma constituents last year that Mr. Gingrich was "the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States."

Sen. Lindsey Graham told a reporter that Mr. Gingrich could be a historic president if he has "matured as a person and is, for lack of a better word, calmed down." That is as close as most of those who've worked with him get to a compliment...

The biggest fear of those who've known Mr. Gingrich? He has gone through his political life making huge strides, rising in influence and achievement, and then been destabilized by success, or just after it. Maybe he's made dizzy by the thin air at the top, maybe he has an inner urge to be tragic, to always be unrealized and misunderstood. But he goes too far, his rhetoric becomes too slashing, the musings he shares­when he rose to the speakership, in 1995, it was that women shouldn't serve in combat because they're prone to infections­are too strange...

Those who know him fear -- or hope -- that he will be true to form in one respect: He will continue to lose to his No. 1 longtime foe, Newt Gingrich. He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, "Watch this!"

What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon...

They're afraid he'll start saying, "John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him,"...

...this is a walk on the wild side.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/12/what-people-who-know-newt-gingrich-say.html

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