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Morning Joe: Newt’s a Flip-Flopper of Romnetic Proportions

Leslie Savan

November 30, 2011

Newt Gingrich is riding high right now, surpassing Romney in most polls, and if Herman Cain drops out because allegations of a thirteen-year extramarital affair on top of a bunch of sexual harassment charges are just too much for any fledgling pseudo-candidate, what’s left of the Cain train will probably hitch onto Newt’s caboose. (TPM: “among Cain supporters, Newt Gingrich has clearly been favored over Romney as a second choice.”)

But to Joe Scarborough, who served loyally in then-Speaker Gingrich’s 1994 “Republican Revolution,” Newt is one of those joke candidates, like Cain, who “should not be running for president of the United States.”

The Morning Joe host said Tuesday that he just thinks Gingrich is a flip-flopper of Romnetic proportions. He could barely stop laughing at Newt’s claim in a radio interview that he’s “a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney.”

Scarborough, who’s been scorching Newt for two consecutive days now, says that back in ’74 and ’76, Gingrich “ran as a Rockefeller Republican,” and even bragged about it. And while Scarborough assures us “this isn’t personal. I think it’s kind of funny,” Joe goes on to recall, “In 1994, he actually came into my race [in Florida] to endorse the moderate in my race, and said I was quote too conservative to get elected. Of course, I got 62 per cent of the vote.

“But that’s always Newt. Is it in fashion to be moderate this year, or is it in fashion to be conservative this year?…

“I’ve got nothing personal against Bachman, I’ve got nothing personal against Cain. I’ve got nothing personal against a lot of these people. But a lot of them should not be running for president of the United States.”

The segment ends with a quiz, Who Is the Real RINO?

 

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Leslie SavanLeslie Savan, author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers and The Sponsored Life, writes for The Nation about media and politics.


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