Newt and Mitt

Ann Coulter eviscerated Newt Gingrich on the Mark Simone radio show Saturday morning, and everything she said was right. She even defended John King and his opening question in the debate about Newt's second wife's claims (talk about strange bedfellows.) There is an endless horizon above the territory where Newt can be criticized. With that being said, he has also done great things for the country and conservative causes.

Now there is no bigger fan of Ann than I. She has repeatedly pointed to liberal hypocrisy, failures, lies, distortions, and about everything else despicable that liberals do. And she does it with humor, facts and logic, presenting common sense and irrefutable evidence.

However, when she criticizes Newt while advocating for Romney, she leaves half the relevant facts in the file. Mitt is not conservative, or if he is we have no evidence pointing to it. The problem is knowing, really knowing Mitt. He has been on both sides of every issue, past and present. If you watch him closely you will see he is willing to go either way on the most trivial of issues. Politics drives him even more than Obama. Did you see the news clip of the CNN debate when he was asked if he would release his tax returns. He said, "I will check with advisers and"....then there were boos from the audience, and instead of finishing as he intended, that he would make the determination after checking, he switched gears and said "and I will release them." My point is the boos made him change. He has no core convictions, and since everything he says is tailored to what he thinks will garner the most votes, we can't determine what he believes or for that matter how much he really knows.

His claim to "understanding how an economy works" rings hollow in the light of his economic plan. The sign of a genius is to make a complicated thing simple. Unfortunately, his plan has 59 points. But the single most frightening part is that he raises taxes on the rich. His explanation is that the middle class have been hurt in recent years and the rich can afford more taxes. The rich create most of the wealth in the economy, and that creates most of the jobs. His plan is Democratic light, and would undermine wealth creation and job creation. Does he not understand this, or is he "only" pandering?  His defense of his totally failed (by every metric) health care plan in Mass. seems to indicate he just doesn't get it. It is as if he is saying, "Government is the answer if we just do it differently than the Democrats."

The question voters must ask themselves, is who is most likely to pursue conservative principles. Santorum actually meets that qualification more than Newt or Mitt. However, he too has a few economic blind spots. He relies too much on the government, and thinks government sponsored rewards and penalties will promote prosperity. He believes that manufacturing, the primary beneficiary of his reward/ tax system, is key to economic success.He is wrong, but that's for another day.

Mitt and Newt could both learn a lot from the Gipper. Anyone who watched Ronald Reagan should know that the principled is also the political. Reagan was eviscerated by the pundits, press and even moderate Republicans every time he made his point in "bold colors, not pastels," but within days the positive public response silenced the critics and made him even more loved and respected than he had been before.