I first recall being impressed with him in the nineties, in his fearless willingness to take on the lies of the Clintons. He was devastating, to anyone who paid attention.
It’s interesting that even some of the folks at Think Progress like some of Newt’s SF policy. I don’t think this is as wonderful a weapon against him as Romney seems to. Speaking of which, he doubled down yesterday:
That article also includes a clip of a video interview with Romney on Monday where the former Massachusetts governor again raised the issue when asked about differences between himself and Gingrich. “The idea of a lunar colony? I think that’s going to be a problem in the general election,” Romney said about two and a half minutes into the clip. “So you’re suggesting he’s a little nutty?” asked POLITICO’s Mike Allen. “I’m suggesting he has differing views than I do on very important issues,” Romney responded, but later added, “I’m not going to characterize the Speaker’s views on science.”
Emphasis mine. That Romney thinks that this discussion is about science just demonstrates how completely out to sea he is on the topic. One of his advisers really needs to explain things to him. He’s going to turn off a lot of people needlessly, and probably already has.
Dan Foster and Rich Lowry have some thoughts on why there is so much hostility to the openly Christian quarterback.
As a non-believer (but not a fundamentalist atheist), I think that he raises hackles in two different groups of people — those who are bigoted against Christians in general (and they are legion — it is the last acceptable bigotry in our society) and those Christians who feel guilty because he sets the bar too high (and there is actually a non-zero intersection of those two sets). I would think of him as the Ned Flanders of the NFL, the completely unironic guy who is made fun of because in living up to his beliefs rather than down to his impulses, he makes everyone else look bad. And because he’ll continue to do so, he won’t care. Which will just make them all the angrier.