I got such a nice reply to “What do you think?”
https://polination.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/what-do-you-think/
from the niece I wrote it for.
Thank you for that beautiful answer!
This one was something I’d not considered:
“In particular, I believe they aren’t safe having that much power if they do not know for real that they ultimately answer not just to the voters, but also to God Almighty.”
My dad has always said, “If you want to know the true heart of a man, give him a little power” and “Losing doesn’t build character, it displays it.”
BTW, her dad is the brother in Quoting Red October.
https://polination.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/quoting-red-october/
I guess those values are shared among the siblings and have been passed on! Very interesting, thanks for such a beautiful, thoughtful response!
It struck me that she quoted “Losing doesn’t build character …” today of all days.
Our dad was a coach. A really good coach. Not just a winning coach, but a man who instilled good values in his players. And his numerous kids, who clearly quoted him to THEIR kids. 🙂
Radio reception at my house is terrible (too many hills), but I figured out how to listen to Conservative talk radio through my computer via http://tunein.com/radio/Conservative-c57917/.
My jewelry beading station is right next to my computer, so I expect I’ll get a LOT of jewelry made this campaign season LOL.
Anyway, I listened to the Florida primary coverage yesterday evening after the polls closed. Lots of pundits had an array of factoids about demographics and opinions about what it all may or may not mean for the future. All interesting.
But the ONE thing that jumped out at me above all else was that
Newt did NOT call Mitt to congratulate him on winning Florida.
Mitt did call Newt to congratulate him on winning South Carolina.
I really respect my brother’s opinion, so his concerns about Newt’s ego rang a loud bell.
Bro is an historian and a good one. I only vaguely know what the Warren Commission is. He can talk about it for hours without notes. He didn’t just pay attention during the Reagan Revolution. He was teaching it as it happened. (And if you think being a Conservative teaching American History and Economics in a public school is easy, think again.)
I heard the bell, but I still liked Gingrich more than Romney.
I’ve been praying all week that God’s perfect will would be accomplished. So I listened to the primary coverage more to hear what happened, than to find out if “my” guy won.
Obviously, he did not. But I was less concerned with that … only a small percentage of the electoral votes are assigned, after all … than with the fact that Newt was not gracious in defeat.
I don’t care how your opponent behaved during the competition. If you are gracious about losing, you win.
Besides, we already have a petty little worm in the White House.
We’ve seen how he treated Governors Jindal and Brewer on the tarmac.
I do NOT want a Republican president who acts like that!
I have no idea what my dance card will look like in coming weeks. I fully intend to give my top 3 guys lots of attention and am most grateful to Mafia Rose (and anyone else) who adds to the candidate pages here. The videos and articles are very, very welcome.
As always, I hope and pray the tone of our discussion here at PoliNation will continue to reflect not just our opinions, but also our respect for others. This is a great community! Visiting the garden is the highlight of every day.
polination.blog 
I did a lot of skimming and contemplating on this one and it’s an interesting story. Again, something that each person will have to decide how they feel about it. As a counselor, I’m trained to see both sides of every argument, so here goes.
Apparently, Newt has not called Romney in any state since he “won” Iowa. He has, however, called the other candidates to congratulate them. So, this is clearly not a misunderstanding of political etiquette (though, to be quite honest, I always thought this to be a silly, unnecessary tradition), but rather a clear indication of his feelings about Romney and his campagin.
In sporting events and other competitions, competitors generally congratulate each other after a match-up. In fact, we often “force” it on our children, much the same way the left pushes the “there are no losers” mantra. At the end of a game, you shake hands with the other team, regardless of whether you won or lost and how you feel about it. But that’s not really how this tradition originated. A congratulations is meant to be an honest acknowlegement of “you beat me fair and square.” You acknowledge that you were bested by your oponent.
For whatever reason, Newt obviously doesn’t believe that Romney is playing an honest game, like the other candidates are. Under these circumstances, should he congratulate the “winner?” Would it not be dishonest and deceitful, the very qualities we rail against in politicians, for him to congratulate an opponent that he believes “cheated” in some way? Or should he have made the call anyway? The obvious answer is “yes,” because it will look really bad for him if he doesn’t. Again, we’re caught in that same catch-22 where we want our politicians to behave certain ways, but we also want them to be honest with us. So, which one is it?
Let’s look at it from another perspective…Mitt Romney is all over TV and radio blasting Newt Gingrich for not calling him. A bigger man, the one we really want, but can’t seem to find, would have kept his mouth shut about such petty things. Why is he telling everyone? Because he wants to show off and brag that he’s the better person. However, that leaves me wondering whether he makes his own personal phone calls because it’s the right thing to do or because of how it will appear to the rest of the world. In fact, this only feeds further into the perception that I already have of him, which is that he’s fake…Shaking hands, kissing babies and all that.(No real person smiles as much as Mitt Romney does.)
I’m all for politeness and decorum, to a degree, but sometimes we take stands on things based on what we believe our principles to be. According to each person’s standards, Newt may be right or wrong. I certainly don’t think he’s perfect and this may prove to be a fatal mistake for him. But, I do think he believes that what he’s doing is the right thing. It really wouldn’t have influenced me one way or the other, because Mitt was really never a serious contender for my vote. For me, Mitt has a lot of secrets and likes to keep things hidden. Newt has all of his flaws out in the open for us to decide whether they are acceptable or not. But…this is certainly something worth consideration for each person.
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“Mitt Romney is all over TV and radio blasting Newt Gingrich for not calling him. A bigger man, the one we really want, but can’t seem to find, would have kept his mouth shut about such petty things.”
YUCK. Thank you for sharing this, Rose! What a schmuck.
I think my concern about the call vs not call is that the president has to make nice with heads of state. Obummer has done a crappy job of this. I mean … even the Queen of England can’t stand him.
I’d prefer Newt had made the gesture, but I can’t stand that Romney has turned it into a reason to crow about how much better he is. REAL winners don’t do that.
I listened to a Santorum interview last night and was impressed by him all over again.
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Just to be clear…I think Gingrich should have called him. That’s what I think I would have done, but then perhaps he’s privvy to some information that I’m not. I don’t know. I was having this conversation with a friend and said, “If your child came home from school with an A on their math test, you’d congratulate them, right? But what if you found out they had cheated? Not so much.” Even so, Gingrich should have known this would come out eventually and just made the call. I don’t what’s going on inside his head.
As for Mitt talking about it, you can google it and come up with a bunch of articles from various news sources quoting direct interaction they had with him about it. Funny thing is, these pieces go all the way back to Iowa. So, apparently it’s been known about since then, but is only just now being discussed. I’m not sure what that’s all about. Also, someone I mentioned it to yesterday laughed and said, “Well, what goes around comes around. That’s what Mitt gets for not calling McCain during the last election cycle.” I don’t know anything about this, but they seemed to recollect Mitt being chastised after some primary for not calling McCain. (I should do a websearch. I haven’t confirmed this.)
Personally, I suspect they’re both just being pigheaded and childish (but don’t let that get out!) and, therefore, equally culpable in this whole thing. I know I’m not the only one who wishes they would just STOP IT! If anyone else here has signed up to support either of their campaigns, I know they were asking at Newt’s website for suggestions from supporters about how to proceed in the campaign. I, along with some others, put my two cents in. You could give it a try, too.
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On first try, this is all I found…not much information there…
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2008/02/07/4425208-sources-romney-didnt-tell-mccain
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The more I hear Mitt, the less I like him. His trashing of Newt in FL was relentless. I forget what the ratio of adds was, but it was not surprising that Newt sank with the bombing he got.
I hope Newt and Rick and Ron stay in it a long time. If Mitt starts to run away with it, the elitists in the GOP who are pushing him will say there is no tea party and then not put our agenda on the convention platform. The tea party movement needs to be taken seriously at the convention, and by staying in, Newt and Rick will make sure we have a voice. The lefties who embrace Ron Paul need to be taken into the fold as well, and their voices need to be part of the GOP platform as well.
I personally want to see Ron Paul put in charge of overhauling healthcare reform and the Gestapo -FDA. His support is from people who are furious about things like mandatory vaccines, flouride in drinkng water and freedom to choose alternative health treatments. If any other republicans would take this seriously, they would have lots of new supporters.
One of the things I am going to try to convince republicans to do is to embrace holistic health. THere is a huge electorate out there who are furious with Obama that he has allowed farms to be raided for selling raw milk and that Obama has put a former Monsanto exec at the helm of the FDA. They voted for him last time, but will not again. I think they will just stay home if Ron Paul is not on the ticket.
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I actually heard one calling into a radio show saying he’d stay home or vote for Ron Paul. The host said, “Well, that’s a vote for Obama.”
It’s hard for me to understand anyone who would let Obama win because their guy didn’t get the nomination. Maybe the differences between Santorum-Romney-Gingrich and Paul seem big to them, but they really need to pay more attention to the Mariana Trench between ANY GOP candidate and the Alinsky-Soros Leftist crew Obama represents.
I think this is a good plan! “I personally want to see Ron Paul put in charge of overhauling healthcare reform and the Gestapo-FDA.”
Dearest keeps saying, “Whoever wins, I hope he gets his competition involved in his administration.” And not just because it would bring their supporters. They also have real strengths in certain areas, as Paul clearly does or he wouldn’t have such rabid supporters.
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I just flashed on an old memory of my liberal college roomie. I bumped into her some years after college, when the GOP president was getting trashed for something or other, and she just sniffed with her maddening superiority and said, “Well, I didn’t vote for him.”
I thought then and wonder now about those who won’t vote for anyone for Ron Paul. Is that their root motivation? To always back the loser so they can act all superior when the President doesn’t magically do everything everybody wants every moment of his term?
This has crossed my mind before as a reason to not be totally depressed about Obummer winning. If he’d lost, McCain would’ve had the Left fantasizing about how BARACK the MAGIC NEGRO would’ve done everything perfectly, if only this country hadn’t been so RAAAAAACIST!!! that it wouldn’t elect a black man.
So we elected a black man and they STILL call us RAAAACISTS. Drives me nuts, since there are a bunch of minority Conservative candidates I’d happily vote for. I don’t care a bit about the brown of Obama’s skin. It’s the red in his head and the black in his heart that make me want him gone.
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