It happened again recently.
The other week, I wrote a column describing why, in my estimation, Newt Gingrich would not suffer for his endorsement of Dede Scozzafava in NY-23. As I explained,
... Newt Gingrich is brilliant, and liberals know it. We conservatives like that. In an era when conservatives are criticized for lacking ideas, Gingrich is an idea machine.
This weekend, while thumbing through Jon Meacham's "Franklin And Winston," I discovered a quote about Winston Churchill which seems to sum up my hypothesis regarding Newt:
In 1918, Felix Frankfurter was visiting Cliveden, Nancy Astor's country house in England, and listening as she attacked Churchill, who was not there, at length. At last, A.J. Balfour, a former prime minister, told her: "Nancy, all you can say about Winston may be true, but Winston has ideas, and to a statesman with ideas much shall be forgiven."
While I do not wish to make too much of the Churchill/Gingrich comparison, it is fair to say that Newt has ideas, and, thus, "much shall be forgiven"...