BF2S Forums Rick Perry, Republican Presidential candidate

FEOS wrote:

Kmar wrote:

FEOS wrote:

No doubt. I was getting more at the public speaking aspect and the different types of public speaking. Debates are where your ability to clearly articulate your position from your knowledge, vice repeat rehearsed lines, comes through. But again, some people are simply paralyzed by the thought of speaking in public, period. That's why it's not necessarily an indication of intelligence or ability to govern.

I'm not saying that it is. But the fact of the matter, like it or not, is that it is important during an election cycle. If the GOP is to retake the WH it will need a persuasive debater in order to get votes.

Totally agree. It's why I think Romney will end up with the nomination. I also think he has the best shot at beating Obama in the general, since he's the least right-wing of those with a chance (Huntsman being the other one, but he doesn't even rate a percentage point in polling). So Romney will have a shot at drawing the independent/disenchanted Democrat vote. No way Republicans will vote for Obama or vote in a way that ensures he gets another term (Ross Perot scenario). Also think Newt is posturing himself for the VP job. He and everyone else knows he has too much baggage to get the nomination or survive the general. Even though he's by far the smartest guy in the room, even when Obama's in the room.

FEOS wrote:

Jay wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Totally agree. It's why I think Romney will end up with the nomination. I also think he has the best shot at beating Obama in the general, since he's the least right-wing of those with a chance (Huntsman being the other one, but he doesn't even rate a percentage point in polling). So Romney will have a shot at drawing the independent/disenchanted Democrat vote. No way Republicans will vote for Obama or vote in a way that ensures he gets another term (Ross Perot scenario). Also think Newt is posturing himself for the VP job. He and everyone else knows he has too much baggage to get the nomination or survive the general. Even though he's by far the smartest guy in the room, even when Obama's in the room.

Gingrich on the ticket is as bad as Palin was.

How so?

Last edited by Jay (2011-11-11 12:26:39)

FEOS wrote:

Jay wrote:

FEOS wrote:

How so?

Because the Republican Party platform is heinous, and he was the architect. He's fiscally liberal, and socially ultra conservative. He's precisely the reason why independents voted for Obama in droves in 2008. The majority of this country is unrepresented precisely because this homophobic adulterer and his ridiculous Contract With America was given a leadership position during the Clinton administration.

Certainly not coming across that way. His foreign policy and overall understanding of governmental mechanistics chops are as strong or stronger than anyone else running.

I think you are missallocating the loss of direction of the republican party to the wrong period. The neo-cons came in as a reaction to all of that, not as a result of it.

Macbeth wrote:

As far as credentials go Huntsman has the strongest by a mile.

FEOS wrote:

Jay wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Certainly not coming across that way. His foreign policy and overall understanding of governmental mechanistics chops are as strong or stronger than anyone else running.

I think you are missallocating the loss of direction of the republican party to the wrong period. The neo-cons came in as a reaction to all of that, not as a result of it.

In 2005 he endorsed Hillary Clinton's idea for mandated health insurance.
Supports ethanol subsidies, which even Al Gore admits do more damage to the environment than good.
Also likes fossil fuel subsidies
Supported cap and trade in 2007, bashed it in 2009

Believes the Paul Ryan plan for limiting government spending was too aggressive when it doesn't even balance the budget.
Wants to maintain current military spending levels.

"Congress should come back in and start by passing the repeal of the Dodd-Frank bill on day one, move to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley on day two. Go through as many federal regulations as they can and repeal them in order to let state governments, local governments, businesses focus on doing their jobs."
Ok, fine, if you're going to stop socializing losses.

Supported trying terrorists in civilian courts before he opposed it.
Supported the Libyan adventure before he opposed it.

Argued in 1995 that the U.S. should institute the death penalty for drug traffickers.
During a 2009 appearance on The O'Reilly Factor he said the U.S. should adopt a Singapore-style approach to drugs, with harsh penalties for sellers and mandatory rehab for anyone arrested for possession: "I would try to use rehabilitation, I'd make it mandatory. And I think we have every right as a country to demand of our citizens that they quit doing illegal things which are funding, both in Afghanistan and in Mexico and in Colombia, people who are destroying civilization."
Smoked pot a few times in the '60s.

Opposes gay marriage; said in 2011 that recent political victories for LGBT community show America is "drifting toward a terrible muddle which I think is going to be very, very difficult and painful to work our way out of."

Worries that by the time his grandchildren are "my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Oh, and he prosecuted Clinton for adultery and then was forced out of Congress for committing it himself. Bravo!

So yeah, he's terrible.

All excellent points as to why he shouldn't be president--which I never said.

But if you listen to the man talk about foreign policy and national security, he's far and away smarter than just about everyone else (except for maybe Huntsman). Certainly smarter than Obama.

Kmar wrote:

Just when you thought the gaffes couldn't get any worse..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUA2rDVrmNg
This is why we have closed primaries.. cause u know the Dems want this guy to go up against Barry. The Dems would vote for Perry.

Newt Gingrich Is No Conservative

Has it really come to this? Newt Gingrich as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney? That's what many in the punditocracy have proclaimed as the former speaker of the House has surged recently in the polls.

Yet a look at his record reveals that Newt is hardly the "anti-Mitt" -- he's Mitt Romney with more baggage and bolder hand gestures.

Every Gingrich profile proclaims that he's a dazzling "ideas man," a "one-man think tank." It seems that, if you clamor long enough about "big ideas," people become convinced you actually have them.

But most of Gingrich's policy ideas over the last decade have been tepidly conventional and consistent with the Big Government, Beltway Consensus.

Gingrich's campaign nearly imploded this summer when he dismissed Rep. Paul Ryan's, R-Wis., Medicare reform plan as "right-wing social engineering." But that gaffe was a window into Gingrich's irresponsible approach toward entitlements.

In 2003, Gingrich stumped hard for President George W. Bush's prescription drug bill, which has added about $17 trillion to Medicare's unfunded liabilities. "Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill," Newt urged.

And in his 2008 book "Real Change," he endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance.

In a 2006 piece for Human Events, Gingrich offered House Republicans "11 Ways to Say: 'We're Not Nancy Pelosi.' " Point seven proposed a Solyndra-on-steroids industrial policy devoted to "developing more clean coal solutions, investing in a conversion to a hydrogen economy" and more. It's not clear why the former madame speaker would complain.

It's also unclear why anybody looking to distance himself from Pelosi would plop down on a love seat with her to call for government action on climate change -- as Gingrich did in a 2008 television commercial.

It was a season of bipartisan chumminess for Newt. "Kerry and Gingrich Hugging Trees -- and (Almost) Each Other," the Washington Post described a 2007 global warming event Gingrich headlined with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

On foreign affairs, Gingrich's ideas are a little less conventional, but his apocalyptic saber rattling hardly instills confidence. "We need a calm, reasoned dialogue about the genuine possibility of a second Holocaust," he told an American Enterprise Institute audience in 2007.

In 2009, he proposed zapping a North Korean missile site with laser weapons. ("Beam me up, Mr. Speaker!" as former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, used to say in the '90s.)

There's no denying that Newt is smart, but there's a zany, Cliff Clavin aspect to his intellect. At times, Gingrich, who's written more than 150 book reviews on Amazon.com, sounds like a guy who read way too much during a long prison stretch.

The former speaker's immense self-regard is evident in one of the exhibits to a 1997 House Ethics Committee report on him. In a handwritten 1992 note to himself, he wrote: "Gingrich -- primary mission, Advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, Teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who fan civilization, ... leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces." Whew!

When he's not leading the assembled armies of civilization in a Thermopylae-style battle against "Obama's Secular Socialist Machine," Newt does a little consulting on the side.

In 2009, the ethanol lobby paid his firm $312,000, and in 2006, the former speaker scored a $300,000 fee from Freddie Mac, one of the government-sponsored enterprises that helped pump up the disastrous housing bubble.

They sought "my advice as an historian," Gingrich later explained. (Maybe they were impressed by all those Amazon reviews).

Newt may be a poor fit for the role of "anti-Romney," but you can say one thing for him: He knows how to play the Washington Game.

Kmar wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

lol @ 2.26 forward

http://news.businessweek.com/article.as … Q6T524VL1C

Kmar wrote:

He isn't saying that we're currently now inferior to China in terms of Naval supremacy. There is nothing funny or false about what he said. China is building it's influence in the Pacific. That is a fact. .. and he's saying that we can't afford to be tooling around.

Last edited by AussieReaper (2011-11-25 20:10:50)