Being in favor of ethanol subsidies should be a disqualifying offense for a GOP prez candidate.

If conservatism is the way forward, how can it's so-called standard-bearers be for such big government concepts?

Shame on Newt for endorsing such a top-down, centralized solution. He must believe that the great thinkers in Washington really do have the answers.

This from a man with a book out titled "To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine."

Which I have not read, and don't plan to. But hey, here's an idea. If the federal government were to mandate that all Americans bought Newt's book, the book would be able to stand on its own.

Similarly--but ten times more awesome--if the federal government were to mandate that all leggy Brazilian supermodels date me, I'd be a real ladies' man.

Thanks for playing Newt, but you can save the environment by not wasting time and petrol pestering the poor folks of the Archer Daniels Midland state and spare some trees not printing up campaign propaganda that will go unread by the very people you hope will vote for your ego trip.

Any politician, especially one claiming to be a conservative, who sits on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in the name of a trillion-dollar scheme to frighten people into supporting real economic harm to prevent a fictitious, man-made scam; then panders so hard to Iowa that even the locals are saying, "Whoa, buddy! We usually wait until marriage before letting anyone kiss us there," should be deemed ineligible and viewed as possibly deranged.

At a moment where the people are trying to regain control of the country and steer it away from the falls of economic oblivion, that Newt is snarling at anyone who opposes his sucking up to the first primary state indicates a tone-deafness combined with a sheer arrogance and sense of entitlement that should steer anyone not snorting Kool-Aid powder away from supporting such madness.

Newt can't win against Obama; now he can't win against Republicans. He needs to go away and not waste our time and tax dollars.

Republicans cannot be taken seriously until they pledge to abandon their support for grain ethanol. As public policy it makes about as much sense as high speed rail and solar shingles. As long as we have people like this running the government, federal fiscal problems are going to get worse and not better.

Like I have always said, most moderate Republicans are Democrats and most of the so called Conservative Republicans are really just moderates. Newt was known as a Conservative Republican. My point made.

Winning at all cost is not the Conservative way. We should boycott Newt. This kind of Republican cannot be tolerated anymore.

You guys don't know the half of it. Maybe in the purest form of thought, ethanol would be an alternative - but few things are pure in the field of crop production and commodities trading. Do a news search with the words "corn rationing" and you will find many recent entries. Corn rationing? Here in the breadbasket of the world - corn rationing? It's a direct result of ethanol production. The following is an example, written yesterday at an agriculture web site;

"If the demand for ethanol continues to grow, and corn prices stay at the same level, ethanol plants are almost certain to chew through corn at a record pace. In addition increasing ethanol demand will certainly bring more pressure and take away corn from livestock and poultry production."

It means - higher prices for food.

But not only that - ethanol producers are in the business of making money with ethanol as a by-product. Unlike an airline (say Southwest Air) who buys jet fule in advance at a low price in anticipation of using it later, ethanol blenders buy corn at a low price on the commodities exchange markets in anticipation of selling it later at a higher price (as opposed to using it). If the highest return on investment means selling what you have in the raw form at a higher price than what you paid for it, that's what ethanol producers will do.

I'm from Iowa, my brother is a farmer and I was raised on a farm - and the whole business of burning food as fuel stinks!

Newt is not a conservative, or a Repbulican, He is a Newt-onian. We saw this fast and loose imperiousness when he was Speaker, and no amount of wing-walking will change him.

One of the few things I liked about Bush was during the first campaign, when he gave a speech in Iowa, he said that "Ethanol is good for America because,.. it .. puts Iowans to work!" [I loosely quote from memory.] He just couldn't bring himself to lie.

Newt sits up nights pouring over district charts and will now spend his days checking off boxes.

Below, I meant to say "they could go"

The Tea Party was wise to work within the GOP last year, and it should continue to do so, dragging the party -- kicking and screaming, if necessary -- to principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility, by working to nominate true conservatives in the primaries.

Unless it is accompanied by the mass defection of conservative office holders at every level of government, an attempt to support a third party is the surest way to secure political power for the radical statists that must be defeated.

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About Newt, I thought that his latest book was a step in the right direction, AT LEAST in his diagnosis of Obama leading a "secular socialist machine." It's the closest a national politician has gotten to seeing things as they are -- a diagnosis of the Leftists who control the levers of power that eschews the blinkered belief that we're all friends who love this country, one that fits more with the thesis from Kurtz that Obama's a stealth radical within a Leftist movement that, as McCarthy documents, shares with the "Grand Jihadists" a common enemy in our traditional institutions of liberty.

But Newt has also been iconoclastic, never more so than on environmental matters. Even when his proposals are somewhat novel, they still seem to accept the assumptions of the Left: the dire diagnosis of our situation and the propriety of a statist solution.

Here, Newt suggests that energy is an issue of national security, and it is, but we have at least 30 years' worth of domestic oil reserves and A HUNDRED YEARS' worth of natural gas, the production of which doesn't raise the price of food by diverting grain or other agricultural commodities.

And to suggest that ethanol's opponents are "very sophisticated, big interest groups [who] have set up a myth and are busy actively propagating the myth" is antagonistic to say the least -- as if ethanol isn't being pushed by corn producers (ADM comes immediately to mind) and a lobby that is willing to fudge facts to make the product seem like a panacea.

--

I've heard some argue for MUCH more flexible fuel cells for automobiles, which would allow power from gasoline or ethanol or a variety of other sources. If that's what Newt is talking about, that's a little better than a regime ONLY of gas or ethanol, but even so I'm not sure that the government needs to mandate such flexibility because the government already regulates ENTIRELY too much. The mandate suggests the big-government conservatism of Huckabee, a different face in front of the same old statism.

And, even in that best-case scenario, Newt is making a populist appeal to Iowans on how government mandates will benefit them specifically. It's not that much different from the supposedly conservative Romney promising to save the auto industry, just to win the Michigan primary. It's unseemly politics as usual: it's selling out before even reaching the convention.

There are the questions of his character in light of his personal life. And, against his experience as a leader there are the mixed results of that leadership: an impeachment that backfired on the party, a resignation in ignominy, and the beginnings of feckless corruption that would result in losing Congress under Bush.

Newt needed to prove himself to be a clear-eyed warrior for limited government, and I think he has failed or is failing that test. I think he has his moments, but I do not think I can support his apparent bid for the nomination -- not if he's capable of such craven compromise to win that nomination. I don't think the move will work with the base, I don't think it would make an already flawed candidate any stronger against Obama, and I don't think that it SHOULD work, on principle.