We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican
establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which
continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted
the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal
destruction to attack an opponent.
We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I
have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of
thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this
week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to
Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we
are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern
conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me
make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a
heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years
ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate.
They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough
and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida
this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries.
I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary
race.
I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used
against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and
destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a
channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research
on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to
the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the
lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me.
But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.
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