New Gingrich admits he is 'dumbfounded' by Obama's 'extraordinary victory' over Mitt Romney and suggests that conservatives and Republicans need "to stop, take a deep breath and learn," lessons from these big election losses.
Elyse Siegel reports that on NBC's "Today," Gingrich said:
"The president won an extraordinary victory. And the fact is we owe him the respect of trying to understand what they did and how they did it." He added, "But if you had said to me three weeks ago, Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he’ll be 2 million fewer, I would have been dumbfounded."
In a Politico op-ed published online on Monday, Gingrich wrote, "For the conservative movement and the Republican Party to succeed in the future (and while they are not identical the two are inextricably bound together) we will have to learn the lessons of 2012." He explained, "An intellectually honest and courageous Republican Party has nothing to fear from the current situation."
Asked on "Today" about what he wrote, Gingrich said, "The great thing about elections is they belong to the American people." He added, "I was wrong last week, as was virtually every major Republican analyst. And so, you have to stop and say to yourself, if I was that far off, what do I need to learn to better understand America?"
Compared to others in the GOP, the often quirky Gingrich sounds like a wise old philosopher.
Contrast Newt Gingrich's reflective observations to Grover Norquist's reaction. Grover became so carried away he cast decorum aside and charged that President Obama won on the basis of portraying Mitt Romney as a 'poopy head." I'm not kidding.
Norquist clams that the lesson to learn from the election is that President Obama does not have a mandate for increasing taxes, or any other policy changes, because he won only by portraying Mitt Romney as as "poopy head."
"The president was committed; elected on the basis that he was not Romney and Romney was a poopy head and you should vote against Romney and he won by two points," Norquist said on CBS' "This Morning" Monday. "But he didn't make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite."
Host Norah O'Donnell pushed back. "Well, I'm not sure that's what the president called Mitt Romney, Grover," she said. "That's not the debate that was had ... he said very clearly throughout the debate that the wealthiest Americans should pay more and he won eight of the nine battleground states and Republicans failed to reclaim the White House or the Senate."
Norah O'Donnell pushed back, again, noting that "exit polls show a broad support for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans."
And, to think I was worried about what I was going to do for entertainment after this election was over.
2:44 PM PT: Scottsvine brings us this funny link:
The Urban Dictionary
1. poopy head
The single most offensive thing you can call someone. It's like the atom bomb of arguments. Men fear it's omnipotent and awesome power. It it literally unmatched and all humble themselves in the presence of it's divinity. Few have survived to tell of it...
Person 1:Your such a dumbass, you stupid little fucker.
Person 2:You poopy head!
Person 1:cries
As, I said in an earlier post to this reference, I think eight grade conservatives around the nation see a rising star hero in the culture wars in Grover Norquist.