Professor William A. Jacobson has a must read piece up titled "Drudge vs History, where he shows the panic of the Republican establishment, who until recently thought they had the "Romeny is inevitable" meme locked and loaded and is now in full fledged panic mode after Newt Gingrich blew that meme to hell and back by rising in the polls and taking the South Carolina primaries by a hefty 12 percent margin.He clearly shows how Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Elliot Abrams and Matt Drudge are on a crusade to stop Gingrich's rise so the candidate of their choice, Romney, can gather back some momentum.
Read the whole thing, but portion below, the history, is well worth noting and passing around:
Against the anti-Newt crusade stands a wealth of counter-viewpoints of people who were in a position to know and who share very different recollections of Newt and Reagan, via Josh Painter in the comments:
Reagan Nat’l Security Advisor Bud McFarlane: http://bit.ly/zd9eAF
Reagan Economist Art Laffer: http://bit.ly/xEDETi
Reagan WH political director Jeffrey Lord: http://bit.ly/zw2ZMb
Reagan Policy Analyst Peter Ferrara http://bit.ly/zq1QxI
Reagan media consultant Richard Quinn: http://on.msnbc.com/y2sPM2
Reagan’s Speechwriting Dir. Bently Elliott: http://thedc.com/xOkDvA
Reagan’s older son Michael Reagan: http://bit.ly/yYVy7L
Reagan’s beloved wife Nancy: http://bit.ly/zrWvAw
I’ll add to that Peter Robinson, former Reagan speechwriter, who wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”:
Republican voters can be influenced if the party establishment declares all out war against a candidate as they are doing against Gingrich, but voters should also be allowed and encouraged to see both sides of the issue, all the information available and not be forced toward one candidate or another by those with the loudest voices.
As a quick point to put things into perspective, the loudest voices of the Democratic party are the hard core, extremists, the far left liberals, yet according to Gallup, among Democrats, 29 percent consider themselves liberal and only 10 percent say they are "very" liberal".
51 percent of Republicans consider themselves to be conservative and only 20 percent identify as "very" conservative.
Just as the 10 percent of Democrats should not determine what the Democratic agenda is just because they scream the loudest, the same goes for the conservatives.
The 20 percent, like Coulter, just because they screech with the loudest voice, should not be allowed to determine what candidate is better for the majority of Republicans.
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