Newt Gingrich's Campaign Kicks Press Off the Plane
If you un-invite the press corps to travel with you on your campaign, what obligates them to cover you? As outlined in Yahoo News, Gingrich has been crisscrossing the State of Florida campaigning for Tuesday's primary. Ordinarily the reporters covering a candidate (or more likely their bosses) chip in for a chartered bus to follow the candidate's entourage, and when flights are used, the campaign arranges a charter flight and reporters buy a ticket on the arranged charter.
But Gingrich had an outlying dinner that required reporters to go from West Palm Beach to Orlando, but then back again to West Palm to cover one dinner and then immediately off to Tampa after the dinner. Reporters did the math and decided to skip the dinner to save charter flight costs -- but that meant the reporters who DID want to fly to the dinner split more of the cost per seat. They then tried to cancel, and the Gingrich Campaign said no.
Now some of the reporters on the plane cancelled their credit card charge for the flight and now the media has been uninvited from flying with the candidate.
Apart from all this press acrimony, the crazy travel arrangements show a lack of campaign professionalism from those amateur remainders who didn't leave the Gingrich campaign last April. Hopping from one city to do one dinner and then leaving immediately from a dinner, being back in City Number One by the next afternoon? Travel arrangements like that serve no purpose except to exhaust the candidate and irritate the press and the staff. You have to say "no" to some events if you are in charge of a campaign, or at least call the shots so that one dinner does not blow a hole in your travel timeline.
Then you fight with the media covering you, over costs they incur while covering you? This travel kerfuffle is a sign Gingrich is overextending himself in Florida, and no one is in charge of logistics at Newt HQ.
No one from Gingrich's campaign would say on the record why the reporters were no longer invited to travel with the candidate. "I don't have to give you a reason," R.C. Hammond, a Gingrich spokesman, said.
Okay, if I were Romney I would pay the press myself at this point to follow Gingrich: buy all the plane tickets it takes and hand out free sandwiches. Gingrich must be so tired, it is likely he'll blow up between here and Nevada, maybe right in front of his sugar daddy millionaire sponsor, Nevada resident Sheldon Adelstein.
But yeah Romney should just pay the press, call it a bailout and let the cameras roll.
Because this is not going to end well.
Considering the amount of free publicity reporters are giving the campaign, and the stupid amount of money PACs can give, why are the reporters expected to pay for anything anyway? Is paying the way of reporters actually something that is still illegal in these pathetic campaign finance regulations?
This is a perfect example of how Pig Newton is not emotionally mature enough to be the POTUS. He might be a grown ass man, but, he is only about 7 years old emotionally.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
7 year old LIBEL!!
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
It was never going to end well for Newt. The staffers who quit were right, he doesn't want to work towards being president, he just wants to be the president - much like his spiritual next-of-kin, Second Place Sarah. Getting there is too much actual work, far better to just yap from the sidelines, raking in cash from your deluded dupes.
I bet Newt is just hoarding the $5 mill from Adelson, so when his campaign finally fizzles out, he's got a nice little down payment for wife #4.
have forked over $10 million total in two installments.
He also has the only two non-union hotels in Vegas, being the Venetian and Palazzo.
"that's the secret password that we use down at the club"
That was probably just cover for getting rid of witnesses so Newt could let down his hair and noisily devour kittens and puppies on the plane.
Pay for all the travel for reporters to follow Newt, on the agreement that:
1. If there is a negative angle, report it.
2. Every article has to include a thank you to the Romney campaign for travel expenses. Preferably at the start.
Plus, at the next debate Mitt can come across all magnanimous and say "I always feel that competition is healthy. That's why I pay for coverage for Newt, so that we can all get a fair share of air-time..." Okay, maybe not mention the "riders" he has on that coverage, but people can't complain he's killing Newt's sacred Free Speech Rights!
the press he so despises to subsidize his air travel.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Newt could travel in an economical used Mercury Capsule available for cheap at Cape Canaveral if he didn't have to tote the press around in a space shuttle.
If he had given out prizes the press would have rented the Spirit of St. Louis and flown from Orlando to West Palm and back in record time.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
being trreated like the rest of the airline travelling public to me.
Substitute someone you like for Newt and read the article again folks.
My favorite line:
"Travel arrangements like that serve no purpose except to exhaust the candidate and irritate the press and the staff."
It is evident that the press cannot handle the stress of criss crossing a moderate sized state like Florida.
I scratch my head at what to expect when they get to Texas. But I truly shudder when I think of them trying to cover President Newt campaigning for his second term on our base on the Moon.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
when the speed limit was reduced after the OPEC embargo. I decided to make a career change and not drive back.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
travelling at twice the posted speed.
I, on the other hand, did press duty with a group of legislators, and in a twin engine plane
flew from Austin to San Antonio to El Paso to Laredo to McAllen to Brownsville to Houston and back to Austin in 36 hours. We only lost one legislator. Had to leave him at the ER in El Paso
after a night in Juarez.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
I sure hope he had government-provided health coverage! Private plans tend to have exceptions for conditions like attempted suicide by tequila.
Lege to $400 per month (it is now up to $600). Fortunately it did not restrict them from adding themselves to the state's group insurance plan at public expense. And for the record, he claimed it was a bout of Sinusitis. Neither I nor the hospital asked if it was a pre-existing condition.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
it's damned stupid to go from Tampa to Orlando and back again, esp by air? Air? WTF? It's only an hour hour and a half by car fer crying out loud.
But yeah, it' shows that Newt can't co-ordinate for shit.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." -- Robert E. Howard
pretenders to the crown, can all do whatever they want. They have already don't you think?
I keep thinking that Newt is so out of it that he will bring a gun to the next debate put it on the lectern and inform the media people how it is going to be this time.
He only kicked them off so he could pretend he was President.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
McCain let reporters munch barbecue in his Arizona backyard and swing on a tire. He became a "straight-shooter."
Newt tries to make them criss cross Florida in the waning days of a primary, gets a plane big enough for those who want to go, then gets pissy when they cancel their seat on the flight he and the campaign have paid for. Then they cancel their credit cards.
If only he had taken them shoppping at Tiffany's and let them use his line of credit. Then he would be the intellectual architect of the right. Wait. They used to call him that. Before he made them uncomfortable.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
If Newt can't handle the basic logistics of finding and managing people to competently run his campaign just imagine what a mess he would make of the country.
He's taking a page out of the Mitten's book; he fired the press.
Man, that sure feels damned good doesn't it?
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
credit report at F**e Credit Rep^#t Dot Com for cancelling their charges after they booked the flight.
Hope they can get back home, poor dears.
(I would have used the actual name of the credit service, but it has used a despicable spokesperson in the nast and citing it by name once got my comment deleted here)
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
not to cover this little side trip by Newt. I understand the destination was the one place where Newt might be imagined to be president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-pVhTZg0U
Hasa Diga Eebowai
proving his Presidential prowess?
Who knows, if they had gone they might have gotten a glimpse of the fourth Mrs. Newt amongst the health teen girls along the rope line.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/20...
"If you don't play the way I want you to, I'm gonna take my plane and go home."
I see he hasn't changed much!
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
1 cents to cover this grifting sociopath. But then again, USA MSM and voters are idiots.
Newt is NOTHING without the press.
The headline might just as well have said, "Gingrich Slits Own Throat".
So newt gets the press to fund his crazy poorly coordinated schedule, shits all over them when they report the facts,(this is the fair and balanced part), then has a hissy fit when they can't be bothered to follow him on his ill conceived snakes and ladders tour of Florida.
The first casualty of republicanism is the truth.
Party politics are not only undemocratic, they are antidemocratic.
Comments are restricted to registered users only.
Login - Register