Posts on Newt Gingrich

The imaginary Newt Gingrich presidential campaign is an idea that just won’t die. Now that John McCain has earned enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination for 2008, Robert Novak is taking Gingrich 2012 seriously:

Newt Gingrich's efforts to restore his standing among Republican conservatives for a possible future presidential bid have suffered a self-inflicted setback because of the former House speaker's support for liberal Rep. Wayne Gilchrest's unsuccessful attempt to save his seat in Congress representing Maryland's Eastern Shore. …

But even if the prospect of Gingrich running for president is illusory, his bid to be the GOP’s futuristic guru—with a steady stream of book deals and media appearances—seems to be progressing just fine. Gingrich’s “527” advocacy group recently announced it will be opening an office in Menlo Park, California to focus on “[o]nline political technology.”

If Gingrich is hoping to make inroads in Silicon Valley, he would be well advised to cool his over-the-top rhetoric on domestic spying and telecom immunity. Gingrich has focused on the issue in his online commentaries over the last few weeks, accusing Democrats of tendering a “declaration of unilateral disarmament in the War on Terror” and of perpetrating “the most amazing anti-national security action by Congress in decades.”

How finicky were the activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference? Romney, McCain, and Huckabee each bent over backwards to cater to the far-right sentiments of the audience, but the speaker who got the most “presidential” reception was Newt Gingrich.

 “Hillary and Obama talk about real change—Newt Gingrich delivers real change!” trumpeted David Bossie of Citizens United in introducing this “one-man think tank.” Bossie’s “only regret,” he said, was that Gingrich was not a candidate for president. (Bossie, incidentally, was forced out of his job investigating the Clinton Administration for House Republicans by then-Speaker Gingrich in 1998, but the two have apparently made up, working together on Gingrich’s “Rediscovering God” DVD.)

Rather than take the podium immediately, Gingrich spent about five minutes shaking hands with the cheering audience as bombastic march music blasted in the background. The only thing missing was a balloon drop.

“Run, Newt, run!” someone shouted. “Run for president!” cried another.

No, Newt Gingrich was not jumping in to save these poor right-wing activists from John McCain. (Sorry, Michael Reagan.) In fact, Gingrich said they have an “absolute requirement to support the Republican nominee this fall.” Instead, Gingrich played the role of a medicine-show man—telling the crowd they have a serious condition and he has just the elixir to cure what ails them.

The wide-open Republican presidential race narrowed a bit with Fred Thompson’s withdrawal, but some pundits are speculating that the primaries will be inconclusive, and that the various camps will choose a consensus nominee at a brokered convention. Indeed, the desperate hope that a dark horse could seize such an opportunity at the last minute appears to be the campaign strategy of Alan Keyes. But right-wing commentator Michael Reagan is counting on another spectral candidate: Newt Gingrich.

Who, then, could conservatives end up backing? Well, who recently has come out with a new book? Who's doing all the shows talking about his new book? Who is advocating common-sense solutions to the most pressing problems America faces?

Newt Gingrich, that's who. He was out of the race for a long time, he toyed with the idea of running until Fred Thompson entered the race, and then he more or less pulled back.

… I wouldn't be surprised if he was out there quietly working the phones and hoping for a wide-open convention where the delegates -- not the primaries that selected many of them -- decide for themselves who they want to carry the GOP banner in the presidential election in November.

If Newt throws his hat in the ring he knows that in the blink of an eye he will have the grass roots behind him. … As a result, if the nomination gets thrown open in a brokered convention, the person who comes out of the struggle the winner will most likely be Newt Gingrich.

There’s no question the former House Speaker wants to be thought of as a contender. Gingrich teased the Right with his candidacy for months before laying it to rest in October, blaming campaign-finance laws that would have prevented him from maintaining control of his 527 political group (American Solutions) and its unrestricted funding. Nevertheless, he soon came back on the scene, showing up in Iowa before the caucuses to tout his dopey “Platform of the American People.”

Despite the efforts of some right-wing fans to replace Gingrich’s old, unpopular image with a futuristic and brainy image, it’s still hard to imagine Gingrich as a national candidate. But one thing it has done is let Gingrich bask in the attention. And it seems to be paying off: American Solutions, which still appears to be something of a one-man show, raised $5.8 million through November. And he’s churned out four books since he set about “winning the future” last summer.

Newt Gingrich has descended upon the Iowa caucuses again, promoting a “Platform of the American People” –and, incredibly, raising the specter of running for vice president:

The timing of his appearances a month before the Jan. 3 Iowa presidential caucuses is leading political observers to suspect he's angling to be on the short list of running-mates for former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee or whoever is the Republican nominee. …

The former House speaker who flirted with a Republican presidential nomination run earlier this year said in a C-SPAN interview on Sunday that he might accept being the presidential nominee's running mate if offered.

"Depending on the circumstances, I'd be honored to be considered and under some circumstances, I'd probably feel compelled to say 'yes,' " said Mr. Gingrich, who says he will work until this summer's presidential nominating conventions "to get both parties to adopt a unity platform on a handful of things they could enact in the first 90 days of 2009."

It was just two months ago that Gingrich’s incipient presidential run was mercifully laid to rest, but some on the Right are apparently holding out hope that the former House speaker will save them, perhaps fondly recalling the “Contract with America” that he put together shortly before the Republicans took control of the House in 1995 and that served as a right-wing rallying cry after the elections.

Of course, a lot has happened since 1995. Gingrich quickly established his lack of popularity—within two years, his favorability rating was at 15 percent. His skills as a political strategist were put to the test as he pursued the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the run up to the 1998 elections, which resulted in a devastating loss for Republicans and his stepping down from leadership. Many Americans no doubt remember the hypocrisy of Gingrich prosecuting Clinton for sexual indiscretion while he himself was having an affair.

Gingrich was a key figure in creating the era of highly-polarized politics, but today he is branding himself, ironically, as a seeker of common ground, launching a campaign earlier this year of platitudes (“Real change requires real change,” etc.). Now, the Right is looking to him as its “ideas man,” gushing over his “intellectual heft.” “Newt Gingrich is the intellectual cornerstone of our modern conservative movement," said the American Conservative Union’s William Lauderback at this year’s CPAC.

While such a reputation on the Right may be hard to believe, it may ultimately doom his vice-presidential aspirations; ACU’s David Keene warns that Gingrich’s “articulateness and willingness to speak out on virtually every issue” would put candidates at risk of being “upstag[ed]” by him. That would indeed be embarrassing.

In any event, we’re sure Gingrich is enjoying all the attention, and it brings to mind the words of longtime Gingrich ally Matt Towery after Gingrich announced he wouldn’t seek the presidency. "The question is, around Washington: Was it a scam?”

It’s mid-November, and we are well into this year’s “War on Christmas,” the seasonal campaign in which a melodramatically aggrieved Right—occupying a fantasy world where we’re not all surrounded by Christmas music and commerce—claims that Christianity is under attack, pointing to retailers that say “Happy Holidays” and the decoration regimes of a handful of small-time local administrators.

Yesterday morning, for example, the American Family Association sent an alert to its members warning that Lowe’s was selling Christmas trees without using the word “Christmas” enough in its catalog. “Lowe's evidently did not want to offend any non-Christians, therefore they replaced ‘Christmas tree’ with ‘Family tree.’ Of course, if Christians are offended that is evidently ok,” sniffed AFA. (AFA retracted the alert later in the day after assurances from Lowe’s that “Christmas trees” would appear in its advertising.)

Long before 2005, when Fox News host John Gibson penned a book on how it was all a “liberal plot,” right-wing commentators have reached for a conspiracy theory that would place such petty gripes in a context they would be able to use to attack their political opponents, and this year is no different.

Marc Ambinder reports that Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, and others plan to bring back the pre-Reagan era Citizens For The Republic in hopes of revitalizing the conservative movement.

After months of teasing—all the way up to last week—former House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced over the weekend that he would not, in fact, run for president. According to Gingrich, his plan to campaign for $30 million in commitments would conflict with his role as chairman of “American Solutions for Winning the Future” due to “misguided and destructive campaign finance laws.” Reactions on the Right ranged from relief (“there were lots of people ... who are glad that he made the decision not to run,” said Marvin Olasky) to bitter disappointment (“Was it a scam? That's what people are sort of hinting at,” speculated long-time Gingrich ally Matt Towery).

Gingrich founded the futuristic American Solutions (zen-like motto: “Real change requires real change”) as a 527, the controversial IRS category known for its use as a way to channel unrestricted “soft money” toward “issue advocacy,” occasionally—as with the Club for Growth and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth—for the transparent purpose of supporting or opposing the election of candidates. When Gingrich founded his group, it was immediately suspected as a way for him to build a mailing list and rehabilitate his national profile while avoiding the protracted primary season, which he called “stupid.” Maintaining leadership of the 527 while dropping the pretense that he was not running would have made the group’s practical aim almost explicit, despite his cheeky claim that it is “a unique non-partisan institution -- the only 527 of its kind.”

“It was a curious argument, since both the 527 group and Gingrich's apparent White House ambitions have been around for about a year. Why did it take so long for Gingrich and his crack team of lawyers to realize that he couldn't have it both ways?” asked the National Journal blog.

While Gingrich says he’s standing down from candidacy because he’s “not willing to sacrifice American Solutions” and its efforts to transcend politics through the use of hokey platitudes, it may be more likely that he’s unwilling to give up what the Washington Times called a “lucrative empire as an author, pundit and consultant” for a doomed presidential bid.

Nevertheless, Gingrich was able to demonstrate his power as a “citizen leader” on “Solutions Day,” the futuristic holiday he organized as a climax for American Solutions. Commemorating the anniversary of the 1994 “Contract with America,” which he and other House Republicans announced dramatically in front of the U.S. Capitol, Gingrich reprised the occasion in an appropriately futuristic setting: a scale model of the Capitol building rendered in 3-D in “Second Life,” an online virtual world.

Gingrich’s specter floated in virtual space before landing in front of a small audience of motley spectators, variously attired in virtual suits or skimpy outfits with purple panda ears. There was reportedly even a virtual streaker. Although its lips weren’t moving, the cyber-Gingrich lauded “Second Life” as a triumph of “the world that works,” the theme of American Solutions.

(Video via the Weekly Standard, which notes that Gingrich’s speech apparently plagiarized the magazine. Gingrich's speech begins at around 1 minute and 12 seconds into the clip.)

Would rather stay head of group. UPDATE: Is it about his "lucrative empire"?

Newt Gingrich says he will run for president if he can convince people to donate $30 million, according to the Washington Times. As hard as it is to believe, Gingrich claims that “more and more people have been approaching me about running.” (Apparently Mike Huckabee didn’t get the memo: the struggling second-tier candidate is letting Gingrich guest-blog on his campaign web site.)

The former House speaker has been dancing around the 2008 campaign for almost a year, practicing his platitudes through a project called American Solutions for Winning the Future, which has also allowed him to gather a mailing list. Gingrich threatened to announce his candidacy if the GOP’s “pathetic” bunch of “pygmies” don’t shape up, but only after Solutions Day, his futuristic holiday scheduled for this very week, when Gingrich “will outline the challenges facing our country and how to address these challenges through fundamental transformational change. Real change requires real change.”

Most of the “workshops” organized for Solutions Day appear to be house parties hosted by Gingrich fans, but at least one features a far-right celebrity: The Texas chapter of the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity will feature David Barton, a Republican activist and pseudo-historian known for promoting the idea of a “Christian nation” and the claim that the separation of church and state is a “myth.”

For supporters of American Solutions—aside from those who were bowled over by the “Real change requires real change” rhetoric—Gingrich may represent a conservative ideal embodied in his reputation for hard-line partisanship during the Clinton Administration. But that ideal is also embodied in the career Gingrich pursued after his growing unpopularity and scandal-ridden fall from grace—a novelist of books in which the Confederacy beat the Union at Gettsyburg. “Alternate history” may be effective in fiction, but such a strategy seems likely to be less compelling in a real political campaign, even with Gingrich’s futuristic makeover.

Which leads Newsweek’s Jonathan Darman to speculate that Republicans may nominate Gingrich as a “postmodern Goldwater”—a reference to the 1964 candidate who stuck by his far-right principles and went down in electoral flames, but inspired the Right to create the conservative movement that would elect Ronald Reagan 16 years later. Gingrich, writes Darman, may be positioning himself as “a candidate conservatives can be proud to vote for in a year when they face near-certain defeat.” But before GOP voters take that step, they may want to listen to the advice of one reviewer of Gingrich’s book: “Readers should be forewarned … they may come away from this exciting novel believing events really did happen this way.”

The idea that undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in the U.S.—while not supported by evidence—has been a mainstay of anti-immigrant activists for decades. For example, in instituting ordinances against hiring or renting to immigrants, Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta claimed that immigrants were “terroriz[ing]” the city. But defending the ordinances in court, Barletta could not back this claim up. “The people in my city don’t need numbers,” the frustrated mayor declared when confronted with the city’s own statistics showing the opposite.

Similarly, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist have been touting phony numbers on immigrants and crime.

But if statistics don’t back up their claims, anti-immigrant activists can always latch on to anecdotes. A recent multiple-homocide in Newark, New Jersey has implicated illegal immigrants, and national activists quickly descended upon the city, claiming that the crime was linked to local police not questioning suspects’ immigration status.

The "war here at home" is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

He "will not let Hillary go unopposed."

As if it wasn’t enough to have Newt Gingrich lurking around next weekend’s Republican straw poll in Ames, Iowa, look out for Alan Keyes trying to crash the party.

When we last checked in with the “We Need Alan Keyes for President” campaign, its organizers were soliciting donations to set up a booth at the Ames event. Now, the group reports, its plans are “coming together remarkably well,” and indeed, supporters of the far-right activist and occasional candidate will have not one, but two booths. Unlike Gingrich, Keyes won’t be making a personal appearance – but he will be present in spirit by way of “continuous videos.”

As if it wasn’t hard enough for Republican presidential candidates – and potential candidates – seeking the right-wing mantle, two undeclared contenders may spar over who gets to be the dark horse.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose background makes him unlikely to gain widespread support, has spent months hinting that he may enter the race if no suitable candidates emerge, all the while attempting to build a kind of grassroots structure. He recently called the GOP’s crop of candidates a “pathetic” bunch of “pygmies.”

But the likelihood of a run by “Law & Order” star Fred Thompson, who also plans a late entry, has stolen much of Gingrich’s thunder. Thompson’s rising star "would appear to shade some of the sunlight" from Gingrich, as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform put it.

Gingrich let it be known that he’s not impressed by Thompson. "I'm excited to see whether Fred turns out to be as decisive a front-runner as John McCain, or better," he said, referring to the apparent collapse of McCain’s campaign recently.

In fact, Gingrich is still making preparations, according to an article in the Washington Times’ Insight Magazine (available to subscribers):

Those close to Gingrich said that he has concluded that all of the GOP candidates, including Fred Thompson who has not yet announced his bid, would fail to ignite Republican voters and drop way behind in any race against Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Gingrich plans to let Thompson announce his candidacy over the next six weeks and gauge reaction, particularly in the Southern states.

Indeed, with Thompson expected to announce his candidacy after Labor Day, Gingrich has apparently pushed back the possible date when he would launch his campaign from September to “mid-October.”

Presidential hopeful also commends Giuliani for promising nine debates.