» posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 9:31 pm by Andy D
A Letter to South Carolina
Dear Voters of South Carolina,
You have a very important weekend ahead of you. The eyes of the United States will be on you this weekend. You will cast your votes to help select the GOP nominee who will hopefully defeat President Obama. I think the best candidate to do that is Newt Gingrich.
Is Newt perfect? No, not even close. No one is. There have been a lot of articles written about Newt’s personal life going back to the Clinton years. As Thomas Sowell has written, “If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.”
Gingrich isn’t the perfect candidate. He’s not the most conservative politician in the United States. However, he is at least as conservative as the other candidates. He also has an impressive list of accomplishments. I think most political observers would say he is the smartest person in the room among the presidential candidates from both parties. He deserves credit for engineering the Republican take over of the 1990′s. He deserves credit for the “budget surplus’s” and the welfare reform of the Clinton years. I think he is more knowledgeable on domestic and international issues.
A general election would stack up Newt’s record against the President’s record. If you boil President Obama’s record down two or three issues, they’re 1) Obamacare, 2) a terrible economy, and 3) an abysmal foreign policy. On issue 2 and 3, I honestly believe the GOP candidates that are left will all be a great improvement over the current president. That leaves Obamacare.
If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee, then Obamacare is entirely off the table. ”Romney-care” from Massachusetts share’s many similarities with Obamacare. The White House is going to say in a general election that they based Obamacare on Romneycare. Mitt Romney has failed to distance himself from his Massachusetts health care plan, and has defended his plan over and over. The American people deserve a debate on Obamacare, and the president deserves to be held accountable for his health care plan, one way or another.
Newt Gingrich isn’t a good candidate for sainthood. He is a great candidate for President. He should be your choice for the GOP primary.
Gerrit said:
Jan 20, 12 at 6:59 amSo basically perfection can only be reached through conservative thinking if we follow the first part of your post? The more conservative, the better? If that is your opinion, then I’m surprised you’re not going for Santorum, who has actively used his image as a strong conservative in his campaign so far.
I think health care and a welfare state are a necessarity, and that Obamacare doesn’t even go far enough, but it’s for sure a vast improvement compared to … well, the whole history of the nation. The foreign policies are not bad nor good. I think it’s great Obama wants to reduce the American involvement in foreign affairs and chooses diplomacy over military action ; I’m disappointed with his attitudes over Palestine, Korea and Cuba though, although granted, if McCain had won the previous election it wouldn’t have been much different.
That leaves the bad economy. You have to realise that Obama inherited a lot of dirt to clean up from George W Bush. In fact Obama took over when the country was in a very bad state. It takes a while to clean up things and restore the economy, one man cannot do miracles. He would at least need a second term to try to fix what’s broken to a decent extent. So it seems to me judging Obama on the bad economy (I realise Obamacare and the foreign policies are a matter of personal ideology, but the economy is a different issue) is a bit unfair. He earned a country in bad economical state and people are expecting miracles from him. He needs time to fix what’s broken. It was not Obama who did the damage, it was Obama who was brave enough to step up trying to fix the damage done. People may have expected too much, but then maybe it was unrealistic in the first place to think Obama could just turn things around and fix all damage done in a very short time?
I am not saying Obama is perfect. Here in Europe, we would consider him center right. In my books, he’s far too right wing. However, in the US there is no real left wing candidate except for some very tiny parties who don’t even get a candidate on the voting papers. So trying to look at the things as they are rather then Obama is still not left wing but he is the least right wing choice available. He does seem to genuinely care about the people’s wellbeing, health, education, … rather than protecting the rich and the elite. I think he did some great things, such as Obamacare and the plan to rise taxes for the highest earners. He however has his flaws too: his attitude towards Cuba and Palestine are disappointing, Guantanamo Bay is still open, it took a whole lot longer to get troops out of Iraq than promised, and meanwhile another war got started in Libya. And indeed, the economy is in a bad state but that one issue mainly predates Obama’s election, so I’d say he may need just a bit more time to realise all of his promises. One term isn’t much when you earned a lot of problems left behind by the person who was in charge beforehand ; 4 years pass by very rapidly and Obama had a lot of problems to take care of. I’d say, without saying he’s “my” prefered type of politician (for that the real left wing in the US is too tiny), he deserves some more time to try to finish his work.
From the Republican front I can only see some promising things coming from Ron Paul. Is Paul perfect? Far from perfect. His liberal attitudes towards the economy and his unwillingness for a stronger federal government are not exactly my cup of tea. His foreign policies however sound very promising. I do hope that if he would not win the nomination on Republican side, that he’ll run as a third party.
PS: I read earlier today that Mitt Romney spent an entire chapter of his own election site to … a competitor, trying to get all types of scandals about mainly Gingrich up. Is the private life of a politician really that important that it deserves to be the headline on the campaign website of a fellow competitor? If a politician is qualified for the job as president, then does it really matter what his marriage, religion or upbringing is like? I find it very odd that some people spend more time trying to harm the image of another candidate instead of trying to defend their own political agenda.
pack04 said:
Jan 21, 12 at 12:28 ama perfect candidate is not needed, a leader is needed.
Kram said:
Jan 21, 12 at 7:32 pmI agree with Pack.
Gerritt, what is your idea of left wing if Obama is too far right?
Gerrit said:
Jan 23, 12 at 5:56 amLeft wing is socialism, communism, social-democrats (although I’m not a fan of the latter). I’m member of a left-wing party here in Europe. The ideology we follow is inexisting in the US (well, not really, but the parties who would share our ideology are so tiny in the States that they don’t have any influence)
Obama still allows a mostly free market rather than a strong government monitoring rule. Obama does not stand for redistributing wealth (yet, although his plan to have higher taxes for high incomes would be a step in the right direction). CEO’s and company boards still have a lot of power. Healthcare, education, banking, etc are not nationalised.
I can go on a lot longer, but I’d say the big picture is that there are large differences in approach between the States and Europe. What you would call centrist or moderate right, would be considered right-wing here. What you consider left, would still be moderate right or mostly centrist here. What we consider really left wing, is a fraction so tiny in the US that most people probably hardly realise its existance.
Obama by European standards would be moderate right-wing. He’s far too right-wing for me to vote for if he would be a European. He would not fit in the party I am member of. I would however vote Obama if I had to vote in the States, simply because he’s less right-wing than the alternatives. This doesn’t mean he’s my ideal politician or that he is left-wing. It just means there is no real left as I consider it, and of the candidates (who all are right wing to some degree) Obama’s the most moderate. So hence, if I were American, I would vote Obama. That doesn’t mean he’s my ideal politician. I don’t consider him left wing. He would not fit in the party I’m member of. I
Gerrit said:
Jan 23, 12 at 6:00 am(pressed the Publish button too often there)
I don’t consider him left wing. I would not vote Obama here in Europe, where we have candidates that are truly left-wing. I doubt he would feel comfortable in my party, and I also don’t think I’d consider his ideology to match the one of my party. So no, I would not say I’m a real Obama fan. However, I do say he’s the best option for a leftist when we look at American politics. Not because he is left wing, but becaise he’s the most moderate of the right wing. Which is the best choice when a true left wing is missing.
(PS: when saying “best choice” I talk from my own point of view, my own opinion. I won’t say my opinion is the only right opinion, and that other opinions are wrong. Please don’t misinterpretate that sentence, I’m speaking from my own opinion without trying to say that other opinions are wrong. In the end this is a key part of politics: there’s no real right or wrong but just many different opinions)