GOP Will Not Accept Gingrich Apology
Newt Gingrich has apologized to Paul Ryan for calling his budget plan “right wing social engineering. Rick Santorum will be apologizing soon to John McCain for suggesting that McCain doesn’t understand torture. Tim Pawlenty has done both of these presidential aspirants one better, apologizing to the entire country for supporting cap and trade legislation.
In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s death, many predicted a bounce in the approval ratings for President Obama, but no one expected so many of the Republican presidential hopefuls to start stumbling so soon. I actually happened to see Sarah Palin on the Sean Hannity show last night on FOX as she opined on the situation Gingrich found himself in after appearing on Meet The Press last Sunday, where he sharply criticized the budget plan devised by Congressman Paul Ryan that the entire Republican Party has gotten behind.
“I don’t know why politicians feel that they have to apologize for something that they said just because they’ve gone through a twenty four hour news cycle of the lamestream media, giving them a hard time for something that they said. A politician either believes in what they just said in an interview, or they don’t believe in what they just said.”
Sarah Palin, on Hannity, May 18th 2011
The only people who haven’t apologized to anyone in the last two weeks are Mitch Daniels and Sarah Palin, but that’s probably because neither of them has committed to run for president yet. I would imagine that the GOP’s sacrificial lamb of the month, Georgia’s own thin-skinned Newt Gingrich, is probably boiling mad over the irony of Palin calling him a coward when she herself is afraid to put other people’s money where her mouth is and get in the presidential race.
“I’m saying that we should ignore the lamestream leftist media’s criticism of what it is we say in an interview if we believe what it is that we say. Don’t let them, in a twenty four hour news cycle, make us change our positions. And it sounded pretty clear to me, that Newt Gingrich’s position, because he articulated this, was that Paul Ryan’s plan would be social engineering, and he didn’t like it. So, I believe he made the apology because the media dinged him on it. Would he have made the apology otherwise? I don’t know.”
Sarah Palin, on Hannity Show, May 18th 2011
With so much time being spent on apologies, and conversations about apologies, there’s not enough left for solutions, which may be a good thing, because for the most part, aside from the Ryan budget, these candidates are all just serving up warmed over GOP platform positions from the 2008 presidential race.
The Republican leadership, which has now delivered the coup de grace to Gingrich’s campaignthat only an experienced hatchet man like Alex Castellanos can deliver, is willing to bet the farm on a reluctant Mitch Daniels to be their standard bearer, if they are ever able to convince his wife Cheri that the media won’t tear her to shreds. But the GOP’s real dark horse candidate may be Jon Hunstman, whose fresh face and lack of political baggage, combined with an ability to deliver his message convincingly and earnestly, may be just enough to separate himself from the slate of serial apologists who currently dominate the GOP slate for president.
