Wow, this is just awesome:
Gingrich: I wouldn’t accept debate versus Obama moderated by reporters
Newt Gingrich threatened Monday to skip any debate as the Republican nominee versus President Obama that’s moderated by a member of the media.
“As your nominee, I will not accept debates in the fall in which the reporters are the moderators,” Gingrich said at a rally in Pensacola. “We don’t need to have a second Obama person at the debate.”
… Gingrich has made his debating prowess a central selling point of his candidacy, promising fantastical showdowns with Obama in the general election. A frequent applause line for Gingrich, for instance, is his promise to challenge the president to seven, three-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debates….
I am so very, very sorry this guy won’t be the Republican nominee. The only thing that would be more advantageous for Obama than getting to stand on a podium and watch Gingrich unleash hours of obnoxious, self-important cockamamie rhetoric in debates would be Gingrich engaging in a divaesque refusal to debate Obama unless the presidential debate commission changed all the rules that have applied to debates for decades, just to accommodate Newt.
And, really, what an idiot: doesn’t Gingrich realize that, without debate moderators as foils, he’d be back home right now, as much of an also-ran as Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry? His insults of debate moderators have been the only real high points (although I don’t think that’s the right expression) of his campaign.
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But it occurs to me that we may be getting a glimpse of Newt Gingrich’s possible future.
I could see him riding the rails from town to town, with nothing but a portable lectern and a cardboard valise, offering to take on any and all comers in … a series of Lincoln-Douglas debates! Three hours! No moderator! Come one, come all! Step right up! Do you think you have what it takes to out-pontificate The Mighty Newt?
He could be like an itinerant pool hustler — except he’d be an itinerant pool hustler of civilization-altering transformational change! It would be awesome! Maybe he could even do one of these debates on the moon!
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
And if we install enough space mirrors, he can have these debates in back alleys and the crooks won’t be able to lurk in the shadows.
This is good news. For John McCain!
Everything’s coming up Willard.
that Lincoln Douglas style debates would be a vast improvement in our discourse, and that it is unserious to begin debates with panty-sniffery about someone’s private life (very hypocritical form the G, of course, but still corrrect). I think unbounded bloviation from the Newt can only end in hilarity, but would be very interested in what Obama would have to say in such a format. Sticking up for our stupid debates because that is how it’s always done is wrong. How it’s been done is clearly stupid, so, should he become the nominee, let’s use Gingrich as an opportunity for some improvement. Picture how past debates would have looked in LD format: Obama/McCain, Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, Clinton/Dole, CLinton/Bush/Perot, Dukakis/Bush: all would have been better than what we had, and some might have produced better outcomes.
I’ve always said that life imitates Monty Python. In this case it’s the Argument Clinic, 5 minutes for a pound. But I don’t know if anyone would care to pay Newt’s “consulting” rate for a three-hour
argumentdebate.So all these polls have Romney with 15-20% leads over Gingrich in FL. Anyone else getting a de ja vu of New Hampshre in these numbers???
Wasn’t candidate Obama in the leads in the polls going into NH primary in ’08? Then what happened…Hilary C actually won NH. Now I don’t think that Newt’s gonna win FL, but I would not be at all surprised if Newt closes the gap on Romney tomorrow. Especially since the Palins are now in his corner (Todd reportedly gonna be making robo-calls, Sarah all but endorsing Gingrich on FoxNews the past few days) and with the numbers out that say that Mittens has spent 15 million so far to Newt’s 3 millions in negative advertisements (negative ads do work, but they also tend to bring down the numbers of the opponent using negative ads) and what you have is a pretty perfect storm for which Newt can comeback from.
I’m guessing the people in attendance celebrated Newt’s latest bit of media-bashing. My old hometown never ceases to be an embarrassment.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Again…if as I say the fix is in with Romney/Obama the two-headed PermaGov candidate of win/win choice, and if as I have further been saying the mainstream media are the enforcers of this fix, then Gingrich has a perfectly good political point. Should he somehow overcome the Ratpublican side of the fix in the prelims, then why would he offer himself up as some kind of passive sacrificial lamb to the custodians of said media fix in the main event?
I am no particular fan of Newt Gingrich and if offered a choice between him and Obama I would hold my nose and vote for Obama, but really, folks. After the way the media has demonized…regardless of relative merit …each and every candidate with even a ghost of a chance of winning except Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, how else would you expect a master politician to act?
Get real here.
AG
“A frequent applause line for Gingrich, for instance, is his promise to challenge the president to seven, three-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debates….”
They were dueling speeches, really, of considerable length.
Maybe one.
Maybe two.
Seven?
Who the hell would watch?
Why should he debate at all? He’s entitled to the office you see. He shouldn’t have to dirty his hands and work for it.