Laurens County Tea Party

by Keith Tripp, Laurens County Tea Party

Though Newt Gingrich is not a perfect man, nor a perfect candidate (neither are any of the others) I believe he is the conservative with the best chance to beat Obama this year. I have described each of the things I’ve written about as “something to think about”, which is what I hope you will do with this. After all, if we don’t think, how are we different from the horses, cows and pigs?

I want to begin by asking you to think back six weeks. Conservatives were by and large paying attention to the campaign—watching the debates and comparing the candidates. Newt was way up in the polls. This was not based on spending millions in advertising or being embraced by the Washington political and media establishment but by his performance in the debates, his ideas and past accomplishments. A very high percentage of republicans said he was the man they would most like to see on stage to debate President Obama. He held a 38% to 17% lead over Romney nationally and 38% to 15% lead in South Carolina.

Fast forward to today, Newt as of January 10, 2012, is four points behind Romney nationally according to a CBS poll and roughly the same in South Carolina. So, here is where we need to really think. What happened between November 2011 and now? Did Newt become a stumbling, bumbling debater? Has he lost his ability to articulate America’s founding principles, his ideas for tax reform, etc.? Has he lost his experience from the US House of Representatives, of working with Reagan, and of leading the Republican Party to a majority for the first time in decades? Has he forgotten the experience of leading us to prosperity and four balanced budgets in the 1990s? The answer is obviously NO!

Has Governor Romney suddenly become a real conservative? Does he have an even better head of hair? Is it the endorsement of people like John McCain and Bob Dole who have made him rise in the polls? Has the endorsement of the beltway political and media establishment made him smarter and better? Again, the answer is obviously NO!

So, what has changed? Millions of dollars of mostly false and misleading advertisements by Mitt Romney and Ron Paul supporters have filled the airwaves against Newt. Many have believed the charges put forth by these advertisements. But why do we tend so easily to be influenced by such? OK, here we go again, let’s think it through. Most of us don’t have or take time to investigate each of these charges so we fall back on the old saying, “where there is smoke there is fire.” But, is that true? The fact is smoke may be seen miles away from the fire and usually it’s a small or almost dead fire that causes the most smoke. Do these vicious ads of Romney and his partner Ron Paul really shed light or do they just deceive and confuse us with a huge cloud of smoke? Just notice the strange black and white pictures in some of the ads where the scenes shift rapidly from one thing to the other before you have time to focus on the attack with an ominous voice in the background. The whole purpose of these ads is not to have you think about the facts but to evoke a negative feeling in you.

Let’s realize that all this smoke doesn’t change the facts! Don’t be blinded by the smoke or we may lose our way and make a fatal wrong turn. Who can debate Obama, paint a conservative vision of the future based on understanding of the history of our founding. I believe it is Newt Gingrich.