I'll be Voting for Newt Gingrich here in Florida at the end of this month. There are many reasons why I came to believe he can handle the enormous weight of pulling us out of the abyss, not the least of which is the fact that in another office in another time he faced similar challenges and helped make our country better, safer and stronger. My first choice was Herman Cain with no one as a distant second, but after Herman was forced from the race I did not find any of the candidates remarkable. Among them Paul, Newt and Perry seemed most likely to remain calm under fire. Paul was closest to my views until he blundered on Iran and convinced me Israel would be as alienated with him in office as with Obama. When Perry withdrew there was Newt.
On Why I'll Vote For Newt
The thing that had kept me from picking Newt from the beginning was not the divorces or the contract with Fannie and Freddy or the myriad pundit anecdotes of his volatility. The reason I am voting for him now has nothing to do with his shredding the CNN moderator in the South Carolina debates. It is because I also had a military father and in the 1950's lived in the small town of Ambares on the outskirts of Bordeaux , France. Like Newt, I saw the skeletons of bombed out buildings not yet rebuilt even ten years after the most devastating war in history.
No, the reason I'm voting for Newt Gingrich is that I read about why he got into government service in the first place. He wrote about visiting a huge American cemetery in that far off country and how the experience of seeing the graves of young Americans who gave everything they had or would ever have moved him so deeply
that he dedicated his life to serving this nation. Which I am finally convinced in no small way he has. Furthermore, at the age of ten I stood alongside my father on the coast of Normandy peering down the seemingly endless row of white crosses and Stars of David beneath which rest the best America had to offer in a second war. I remember what went through my ten year old mind then as surely as the thoughts and feelings I had while burying young kids and old Colonels in Texas during the Vietnam War. It's why I trust Gingrich. It's why I'll vote for him.
