I don't know what to make of Newt

He's slippery.  He's flip flopped a lot over the years, like Romney.  He has the biggest ego in Washington D.C., and that's saying a lot.

And he brings the hammer to the Progressives like nobody else:

Chris Byrne has a set of videos up on his site that are worth your while. It's Newt Gengrich giving a speech on how the Republicans can not just win, but sweep the coming elections. Chris comments:

I think he's brilliant as a political writer, and political commentator (which is fitting, because his background is as a history professor), but as a politician, he and I are probably below 50% in agreement on major policy issues.

But we're above 75% on major issues of principle; and that's what this speech is about. Taking principles, and making them into politics.... Something it seems most politicians are too cowardly to do.

(*cough* Mitt Romney *cough*) You should click through to Chris' place, where he has all the videos up, but here's one:



Newt gets the Big Picture.  As I said back then:

Focus gives you a more interesting, more valuable product for your target market. But focus isn't free. To gain something, you have to give up something. As Napoleon said, on any battlefield there will be a single decisive point. What happens there is more important than what happens everywhere else.

But Newt's slippery.  As Chris said, we're probably aligned on 75% of the issues of principle.  Probably.  How do you tell?  DancingCzars brings Newt's interview by Glen Beck (also not my favorite tele-personality, but may cover the 75%).  It's long, and detailed, and Beck asked tough questions about flip flopping.  Newt was somewhat slippery.  Somewhat.

Huey Long was famous for his saying that to get anything done in Louisiana, you had to pay him 10% off the top, but that was the best deal you'd ever see.  I can actually go along with that, if it buys be that 75%.  But will it?

I don't know.  But I do think that Chris' old post (from two years back) is well worth reading, as is mine, as is another of my posts on Newt from then.

All politicians are flawed, and to expect otherwise is a fool's errand (or a child's).  Newt may be fatally flawed; the jury's still out, at least with me.  But it's possible that his flaws are transparent, and that he would be the anti-Obama: entirely, thoroughly, and viciously vetted by the MSM, but one who can set priorities that count, and get them executed.