What made Newt ineligible for the draft?

[freeforall]

If Ron was married and had two kids why was he called to serve, but Newt was ineligible? Did he lie about that or was there another reason?

[CaptainAmerica]

Some people didn't get called ,but newt most likely avoided it with his daddies connections.

[musicmax]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...oyernewt1.html

Multiple deferments referred to about halfway down.

[James Madison]

My dad (who was drafted during Vietnam) made the comment that he served with a bunch of guys who were married and had kids. It seems Newt's connections got him out of service.

[freeforall]

Not getting called is different than being ineligible, right? I think I would like to hear him answer that before SC.

[LisaNY]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...oyernewt1.html

Multiple deferments referred to about halfway down.

Great find!!!

From the article:

In any case, Newt Gingrich was a driven lad by the time he arrived at Baxter High School, and politics was his passion --as a junior, he passed out campaign literature for Nixon's 1960 campaign. His singular determination was perhaps best seen in his first successful romance, a schoolboy crush he developed on his high-school math teacher. Lots of boys get romantic notions about pretty young teachers, but Newt Gingrich didn't let go of his. After graduation, when she moved to Atlanta, he went to Atlanta too, enrolling at Emory University. Gingrich pursued his former math teacher, seven years his senior, until Jackie agreed to become his wife. They were married at the end of his freshman year, and soon they had their first child, Kathy. Gingrich then entered that hazy passage through ambiguity experienced by the majority of young American men during the 1960s. Like most of his generation, Gingrich was moderately anti-Establishment (he tried pot, and participated in a campus protest at Tulane University) and chose not to go to Vietnam, opting for deferments available to him as a father and a student. But unlike most young men his age, Gingrich would be haunted by his decision. Later, when, as a hawkish congressman, he would lash out against the "weak-on-defense left" and espouse universal military training, his opponents would investigate Gingrich's own military background.

Sure enough, he found himself listed among a sizable group of noted conservative hawks (including George Will and Richard Perle) who had managed to avoid the war-the "war wimps," as they came to be called. In 1985, he told Jane Mayer of The Wall Street Journal that he still believed that "Vietnam was the right battlefield at the right time." Why didn't he go? "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over," he allowed. But, recovering, he added, "Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made."

[GunnyFreedom]

Pretty sure that deferments only apply to people who are actually eligible and do get called.

[freeforall]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...oyernewt1.html

Multiple deferments referred to about halfway down.

So it was his step father that served in Vietnam? And Ron could have deferred as well, but didn't?

[freeforall]

Pretty sure that deferments only apply to people who are actually eligible and do get called.

That means he was eligible and therefore his statement was false. I'm justclarifying as there will probably be a lot of discussion about this exchange.

[libertybrewcity]

maybe he was too obese.