There’s a rumor making the rounds that Newt Gingrich is not only on Donald Trump’s short list of VPs, but that he is the favorite. He certainly has been making the rounds of the talking head programs talking up his buddy Trump. Trump could do a lot worse than Newtie. Of course, Newt comes with some baggage that might not set well with some women voters. So, let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of a Gingrich vice presidency.

On the plus side, Newt is really smart. He’s formally educated. He’s literate. He’s the anti-Trump in this regard. He was the architect and prime mover behind the Contract with America which gave control of the House of Representatives to Republicans, providing balance to the Clinton profligacy, forcing him to balance the national budget, implementing welfare reforms and any number of good things whose successes Bill Clinton took credit for.

Newt knows the ins and outs of getting things done in Washington. He will surely make mincemeat out of anyone the Democrats can dig up in a VP debate. And Newt is fully qualified to assume the Oval Office if, God forbid, something should ever happen to the president. In his presidential bid in 2012, after standing up against a biased media, there was a time when it looked like Newt might take the lead, but it was short lived.* Newt would have been, IMHO, a better candidate than Mitt.

Now the negatives. Newt is not the best liked of politicians. I mentioned a week or so back that a friend of mine from high school demonstrated a visceral hatred of Newt at the mere mention of his name. She repeated the liberal narrative, that Newt had callously handed his first wife her divorce papers while she was laying a hospital bed, racked with disease. And while I don’t believe the narrative is true, nonetheless, I doubt her disgust of Newt has moderated any over the years.

Then, there’s the question of trade agreements. Newt mentioned just this week that he was the whip that drove NAFTA through the House. Last I heard, NAFTA was still anathema to union guys on the Left. Supposedly there are Bernie voters who talk about gravitating to Trump should Hillary prevail as the Democrat candidate. Now imagine them being asked to hold their nose and vote for a ticket with the father of NAFTA on it? That could prove problematic.

Newt is a brilliant man but he has image problems. Even though in an ideal world that shouldn’t matter, in the United States of Kardashia, JFK trumps a Nixon, Reagan trumps Carter and those guys from Air Force One and Independence Day inspire confidence with their square jawed manliness. Newt looks like the kid who gets his lunch money taken away from him.

Will a ticket of two, old white men prevail over the first woman president and a designated minion to be chosen later? Ya pays your money, ya takes your chances!





*Newt and his wife Callista flew off for a vacation in Hawaii in the wake of a very successful debate, reminiscent of Evelle Younger, who, after debating Jerry Brown during his first California gubernatorial re-election bid, flew off to Hawaii with his wife, while Gov. Moonbeam stayed behind, and took to the airwaves of Sacramento radio stations to lie and misrepresent what Younger had said the night before. Both the Gingrichs and the Youngers came back sun-kissed and kissing their elections goodbye.

   Seen in its natural habitat on an approach to a George Washington Bridge toll lane   The Chris Crizzlie Bear, Ursus Omniverae Horribilis , is found in New Jersey, ranging from Cape May to Newark. Sometimes mistakenly called “big boned”, the Crizzlie could easily hibernate two winters in a row without breaking a sweat! Population estimates based on hair-snagging, DNA-based inventories, mark-recapture, and a refined multiple regression model put sightings of the Crizzlie as far west as Iowa and as far north as New Hampshire.

The mainland grizzly is widespread, and is representative and archetypal for the whole subspecific group. Even so, classification is being revised along genetic lines. The Crizzlie bear has evidence of rhino DNA in its ancestry.

On interspecies competition, the relationship between Crizzlie bears and other predators is mostly one-sided; after severe storms, however, the Crizzlie has been known to cozy up to such as the Mid Atlantic Weasel, Obamanicus Daemocratus, to mutually scavenge any carrion washed up by the storm.

The Crizzlie is known for its occasional surly interactions with humans. It is best avoided in the wild. In captivity, it is easily distracted with food.

Exotic Animals: Collect the whole set!
Joe Bydena
Donald Trumpetfish
Bernie Panders
Hillarymadillo
Mike Huccameleon

By Proof

There are some incriminating emails floating about, according to the NYT: Top Christie Staff Sought to Disrupt Traffic as Revenge.

The mystery of who closed two lanes onto the George Washington Bridge — turning the borough of Fort Lee, N.J., into a parking lot for four days in September — exploded into a full-bore political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday, when emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings to punish the town’s mayor after he did not endorse the governor for re-election.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, emailed David Wildstein, a high school friend of the governor who worked at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge.

…Mr. Christie denied knowledge of the emails and said his staff was to blame.

Chris Christie is shocked, SHOCKED to hear that his staff misled him and committed petty acts of political revenge against a mayor whose only crime was not endorsing Christie. Fortunately, the Christie campaign bus was nearby with plenty of room under it!

My first impression when I heard this story, was that it was left over from Obama’s government shutdown- just a petty tyrannical bureaucratic thing designed to make people miserable for no apparent reason other than political payback. The kind of thing they do because they could. If it turns out that Christie’s deputy chief of staff was working at his behest, and, really, what motivation would there be for her to pull such a petty and otherwise pointless prank unless she were, then it appears that Christie is cut from the same cloth as the current occupant of the Oval Office…just ever so much more of it!



Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Cross posted at Proof Positive

Not my numbers – click for source odds.

by the Left Coast Rebel

We didn’t cover the story here but certainly were aware of it, the case of New Jersey resident Brian Aitken (pictured right) convicted to seven years in prison for the possession of two handguns that he legally purchased in Colorado.

Allahpundit provides some background:

…he’s a cause celebre among libertarians and Second Amendment fans — for good reason. In a nutshell: He bought three guns, entirely legally, when he was living in Colorado and brought them back to New Jersey with him when he moved home to be closer to his son. To make sure he had his i’s dotted and t’s crossed, he called New Jersey police for guidance on how to transport them. He had the guns in the trunk of his car, unloaded and safely locked in a case, and was allegedly en route to his new home in Hoboken when he got a call from New Jersey police asking him to drive to his mother’s home. She had phoned them because she was worried that Aitken was suicidal; when he arrived, the cops arrested him for possessing handguns without a permit.

….whether Aitken was driving home or just driving around with guns is a question of fact, not of law; there’s no reason not to inform the jury of the exemption and let them decide what happened. But then, Morley also didn’t let the jury know that Aitken had called police in advance to make sure he was transporting his guns properly. (For more on the judge, read down to the end of this piece on Aitken to see which ruling led Christie to dump him from the bench.) Left with no grounds to acquit the guy, the jury convicted him of unlawful possession and sentenced him … to seven years in prison. A perfect ending to a perfectly Kafkaesque story.

Today’s news brings a welcome and surprising end to this story of the New Jersey police state prosecution and resulting jailing of Brian Aitken. Governor Chris Christie manned-up and sent Brian home for Christmas:

Brian Aitken, who was convicted of illegally possessing two handguns that he had legally purchased in Colorado, will be spending Christmas out of prison.

Gov. Chris Christie commuted Aitken’s sentence, from seven years to time served, according to an order the governor signed today.

Aitken had appealed to Christie for commutation after being sentenced in August. According to the commutation order, Aitken will be released as “soon administratively possible.”

This is a sign of true gusto and leadership from Governor Christie. It’s too bad that George W. Bush didn’t do the right thing right off the bat in the case of jailed border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, instead commuting their sentences on his last full day in office yet sitting idly by for two years as the two rotted away in prison.

Discussion at Memeorandum

by the Left Coast Rebel

Via. Memeorandum, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie praises James O’Keefe’s new expose, ‘Teachers Unions Gone Wild’:

Gov. Chris Christie comments on ‘teachers unions gone wild’

An excerpt from the transcript, Gov. Christie gives some context on the video:

This is what I’ve been talking about. This is another exhibit as to what I’ve been talking about. The arrogance, the greed, the self-interest, the lack of introspection, the lack of standards.

And it hurts the great teachers just as much as it hurts the kids.

I think that this video makes the distinction better than I ever could. This is their leadership conference where they’re in a hotel, having this leadership conference, singing songs together about kicking the governor in his tool box. I wonder what they mean by that? But I can tell you I sense it would hurt.

Go here to view the James O’Keefe video ‘Teachers Unions Gone Wild’.

by the Left Coast Rebel

Don’t let the title scare you. Relax. Turn off the lights.

Enjoy:

This video is even better – there aren’t any lamestream reporters in the background to ruin the mood:




The boys at Hillbuzz sum up the Christie phenomenon perfectly:

Honestly, this guy should give seminars to Republicans on how to man-up and deal with crazy people.

When you watch videos of Christie, we want you to do something that you might think sounds silly at first, but we’re serious and real here.

When you watch Chris Christie in action, in a clip like this, we want you to sit back and think about how YOU can be more like him in your OWN lives. Particularly when dealing with YOUR elected officials.

Christie is always professional and, in our opinion, polite to the people he dresses down. But the man knows his stuff, is on his game, and is hyper-confident and aggressive. There is no mousing around issues. He does not let people get away with any garbage. It is The Chris Christie show wherever he goes and we wish conservatives coast to coast were just like this.

Discussion over at Memeorandum.

by the Left Coast Rebel

It’s not an emperor, or Mid-east king, a communist leader, or even a mayor – for a first.

And it’s not a photoshop:



Hat-tip Weasel Zippers. Paging (or bowing to) Chris Christie. Like I said, it’s not a photoshop:

President Barack Obama laughs as he is greeted by N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, center and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, left, after exiting Air Force One at Newark Liberty International Airport, N.J. , Wednesday, July 28, 2010. The President is in the area to meet local business leaders in Edison, N.J.

SisterToldjah has a great correlating post up today as well, “The rise of the strong Republican Governor.” Two of my favorites are on her hit list as well.

by the Left Coast Rebel

(Editor’s note: Leslie Eastman wrote on a similar topic as my Daily Caller piece, San Diego “Rulers” Use Boy’s Death for Tax Grab – it’s a must read.)

I have a little bit of news here and some background. C-Gen and I have been bantering back and forth recently, earnestly licking our writing-chops as to how-to-get published at some of the big sites. C-Gen has been on American Thinker twice with great material and we both wanted to ‘break in’ to the Daily Caller to increase our street cred.

After all, the Daily Caller is still on the up-and-up and positioning to be the Puff-Ho (Smitty’s term of endearment) killer of political talk on the net. Wes Messamore from THL (designer of my site and libertarian friend) had just gotten published at the Daily Caller too so the need seemed to be all that more urgent.

I digress, recently C-Gen wrote up a brilliant piece that we were both editing and adding to and got a bit frustrated with the endeavor. From this perspective I awoke early and refreshed and came up with a random thought to write a piece about California for DC that Mrs. LCR had emailed me, in the email she sent the subject line was ”Calling Chris Christie” in reference to the clear need in CA for tough leadership to fight the union-cabal that controls the state. So right off the bat I had at title (that I changed a bit for the Daily Caller) that later changed to “Paging Chris Christie“.

In about an hour and a half I wrote up a fairly decent opinion piece and then subsequently spent nearly two hours editing and re-editing the darn thing. It was a lot of work but I was proud of the final result. I’ve learned a lot writing so much in the last year and half and covering (typically with dismay and outrage) the body-politic around us.

So please pass along my first (of hopefully many) Daily Caller pieces, it’s titled, “Ringing the bell at the top: Paging Chris Christie”

Please ‘Digg’, tweet and re-tweet this, email it and send it to your friends via Facebook. The links to do so are at the bottom of my article.

Updated: The federal budget deficit will exceed $1.4 trillion in 2010 and 2011 according to a report in the Washington Post, not to mention the Obamanation’s push for permanent unemployment extensions. Does the nation really need my piece in the Daily Caller to point them to where this nation is heading?

Can you say Greece?

Updated x2:Links so far (7/23) to the Daily Caller piece:

• Weasel Zippers links in the Zip Wire, thanks!
• Right Klik also links too, keep up the great work with TBF!
• Robbing America links, thanks!
• Smitty links via. The Other McCain (explained below), thanks!
  
• Landshark links too, much appreciated.
• USA Partisan links as well – props!
• The ever-lovely MAinfo tweeted to 3,000 people, thanks a million.
• Dan Riehl over at RiehlWorldView links as well – THANK YOU, Dan!
• Fellow San Diegan Leslie Eastman at Mut links on a piece that she wrote that mentions Bell, CA as well. Thanks, Leslie!
• I got Caught with a Corndog, too!
• American Power links too, thanks!
  
• RightGuy links too, (away from a hopefully brief respit) thanks!
• Professor Jacobson goes an extra step and makes the Daily Caller piece, post of the day, thanks!
• Proof Positive along with Rational Nation, Allied Liberty News, War Planner help with cross posts.
• War Planner has a bourbon-laden evening in celebration.
  
• My Thoughts on Freedom links, thanks!
• Graphic-Goddess No Sheeples Here links and also puts forth a must-read article on the same topic herself. Favors, spades and linky love heading your way, Carol!
• WhatMakesUsRight links, thanks!
• Pat in Shreveport linked too, thanks!
• 7/24 Saberpoint links too, thanks!
  
• 7/24, Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican links, thanks!
• 7/24 Beers With Demo links too, thanks!
• 7/26/10 Anti-Republican Culture links, thanks!
• 7/26/10 Last Tradition links too, thanks!
• 7/27 Reagan Conservatives links, nice to meet you!
  

Updated x3: Burning down the house, my Daily Caller piece is headlining with it’s own Memeorandum thread!:


Updated x4: The best blogger-team evah and perhaps my biggest inspiration when I started doing this devotes an entire post: Tim Daniel Makes The Daily Caller Without JournoList Membership



Love the title – although I cringe just a bit when I see my FULL LEGAL NAME on the net (well, almost full – you still don’t know my middle name and/or full first name). Either way, thanks for the link, Smitty!

Update x5: I grabbed this comment from Weasel Zippers tonight in regards to my piece. Reader Real Bob writes:

In 1978 California was amazing. By 1988, it had dropped from the top 5 for schools to 47th. The reason? Liberals. Classic story. Once they found out they could steal all the money they wanted from the State Treasury AND raise taxes to pay for their gluttony, then sell overrated bonds they knew they couldn’t repay, they just wallowed in their new found “wealth”. It never stopped after that as they sought to regulate everything for a fee to feed their insatiable appetite for more money then more control.

Liberal states are the most regulated states in the country.

By 2000, in just 20 short years, liberals turned California from an entrepreneur’s paradise, maybe the most beautiful state in the country (I’ve been to all of the lowre 48) into a proto-communist, thoroughly repressive welfare state where pollution and environmental/agricultural poison levels are the highest in the country, illegals vote and politicians and judges skate. Now, they’re bankrupt.

It’s all Bush’s fault.

It is painful and pathetic – but this guy is spot-on. Don’t let the Obamanation force this upon your conservative states, America.

HANNITY: What impact does the president have on the state of New Jersey? Here you’re trying to be fiscally responsible — balance your budgets — but last year alone we had a 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit, this year it will be 1.6 trillion, we’ve got (according to the president’s own estimates) trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see… How does that affect a state, when the federal government has no fiscal discipline?

CHRISTIE: Well, listen. I think in New Jersey it brought the situation even into starker focus. Because I think people see what’s going on at the federal level and say, “All right, we’ve gotta at least get it together here in New Jersey and try to be an example, that it can be done.”

And so I think that while it’s certainly bad policy on the federal level, and I think most people agree with that, the fact of the matter is that we can be a beacon of leadership across the country, to show that politicians can make these hard choices, go against the normal playbook, as you laid it out earlier in the interview, and survive and thrive.

And that’s what we’re going to attempt to do. So that we can do well, and more importantly, our state can be the one where — when there is economic recovery — economic recovery is going to explode in New Jersey because we’re going to set up an entrepreneurial society up here.

HANNITY: …people are comparing you to Reagan. And let me give you a couple of similarities that I see from a distance, Governor. President Reagan came into office and early on he was challenged, and he took on the unions and he fired the air traffic controllers. Every battle he had to cut taxes, he ended up being successful at — in spite of the predictable predictions out there by the left that old people were going to be kicked out on the street, the poor were going to suffer, etc., etc. But he did end up creating 20 million new jobs…

CHRISTIE: …The thing I loved about Ronald Reagan was that whenever a problem came up, you could almost predict what Reagan would do. Because he so steadfastly stood by those core principles that he had.

by the Left Coast Rebel

No Sheeple Here (h/t for graphic too) writes this:

With the Garden State’s budget on the verge of bankruptcy, New Jersey’s new governor, Chris Christie declared a fiscal emergency and announced a spending freeze.

Read the rest here.

Clifton at Another Black Conservative, who voted for Chris Christie, although hesitantly, is impressed:

As you all know, I had some doubts about how conservative Chris Christie was going to be. While he did promise fiscal responsibility, I was never really sure he meant it. Now I know he means it.New Jersey Democrats are squealing! They are livid because, Christie did not bother going through the legislature, instead he issued the freeze via executive order. It is a good thing he did, because already the Democrats are playing the same old game of “you can’t cut that”. They are using the same old flimsy excuses for leaving their sacred cows untouched.

Read the rest here

by the Left Coast Rebel

Another election that is taking place next Tuesday is NJ’s governship. I’ve been privy of happenings in the race but haven’t spoken here on it. As of now the election is way too close to call. New Jersey is after all, a very blue state and such. Amazing however that ‘R’ Christie running against ‘D’ Corzine is within a point of so of beating him while Corzine has overspent him 3-1 and even had the big ‘O’ show up to campaign for him too. Clifton over at Another Black Conservative thinks that Christie hasn’t done nearly enough to differentiate himself from Corzine on taxes, limited government, etc.

The Corzine camp has made repeated jabs at Christie’s weight, (he’s a big guy), and Corzine has not ‘fessed up to being involved. Anyway, politics is dirty, who would have thought? On such affair, Christie had this to say on Don Imus’ show:

Via Memeorandum
Also read Another Black Conservative