Topic category:  Government/Politics

It behooves Republican caucus goers and primary voters to be wise instead of wishful and to focus on character and substance instead of to be distracted by absurd name calling and insidious encouragement of class warfare and envy.

On December 12, 2012, Laura Ingraham called Rick Perry a "jackel" for his comments during the ABC debate last Saturday about marital infidelity and untrustworthiness, but not a deceiver for misrepresenting Mitt Romney's latest book, No Apology, during the ABC Republican presidential candidates debate last Saturday.

During that debate Romney proposed a $10,000 bet to show that Perry was misrepresenting.

Unfortunately, the size of the bet played into the perception that he's an out-of-touch elitist and Romney did not follow Ingraham's example when she put her money where her mouth was and propose that the bet be made for charity.

In 2010 Ingraham enthusiastically bet Bill O'Reilly that Christine O'Donnell would be elected a United States Senator from Delaware.

Ingraham bet with her (good) heart, not with her head.

O'Donnell was walloped in the general election by Leftist Democrat Christopher Coons.

O'Donnell had proven herself yet again capable of becoming a Republican nominee, but in Delaware the only Republican who could have won was the man she beat for the nomination, Mike Castle, who had been winning statewide races in Delaware for decades, as lieutenant governor, governor and Delaware's only United States Representative.

Castle's hardly a conservative Republican, but he was viable in the general election and much better than Coons.

The passionate Fox star who lost the bet was Ingraham, not the much older O'Reilly.

These days Ingraham seems to be dreaming that 2012 will be a Newt year instead of realizing that it would be end up a nightmare.

But...Newt Gingrich is the one Team Obama hopes to face...and that because it wants to win, not to take on the strongest challenger the Republicans can nominate.

Rick Perry is no jackel for pointing out that a man who can't be trusted to keep his marital vows to God and his wife can't be trusted.

Republicans have plenty of apparently faithful spouses from whom to choose: Romney, Santorum, Bachmann, Paul, Perry and Huntsman.

Perry has a plethora of problems, but his marriage and view of marriage and the implications of marital infidelity are not among them.

Unfortunately, Perry can't be trusted to accurately describe what Romney wrote and would have lost that bet.

Fact-checking website PolitiFact.com rated Perry’s claim about Romney’s book edits “Mostly False."

PolitiFact: “Among other things, a line that advocated the Massachusetts model as a strong option for other states was replaced by a shorter, more generic sentence. But that line was preceded by an argument for state-level solutions, exactly the argument Romney extends now. That's not how Perry characterized it. So he did win that bet — by not betting. We rule his claim Mostly False.”

ABC's Fact Checking on the dispute between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry that led to Romney's $10,000 bet challenge that Perry ducked provides details:

"Perry first accused Romney of altering a line in his book in September, when he said that a line referencing Obama’s healthcare plan in his first version of his book was different missing in a later version.

"In the first version of 'No Apology,' a line is included that reads: 'We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.' The line is not, in fact, in the later paperback version, which according to the campaign was removed because there was more information when the second version of the book came out. The line was originally written, according to the Romney advisor, before Obamacare was on the books.

"The first edition of Romney’s book was published [o]n March 2, 2010. Obama’s Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010. The paperback version of Romney’s book was first issued in February of 2011."

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.