Free Republic

The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century— Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories— bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat. One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called "the great communicator," but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan's vision were things he...

Add Newt Gingrich to the list of Republicans coming to terms with the loss of the presidential election. On Monday, the former speaker of the House sounded reflective on the "Today" show, saying, "We need to stop, take a deep breath and learn." He added, "The president won an extraordinary victory. And the fact is, we owe him the respect of trying to understand what they did and how they did it." Gingrich said, "But if you had said to me three weeks ago Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he'll be 2...

In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost. The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie...

Video at link... While CBS This Morning asked only one tough question on the Obama administration and Libya on Friday, guest Newt Gingrich came out swinging and dismantled Democratic guest Jennifer Granholm's defense of the administration. CBS has at times been friendly to the administration over the fiasco. "I think with regard to the debate and the election, I don't think people are going to be voting on Benghazi. I think they are going to be voting on who do you trust," Granholm ridiculously argued. "You want to talk about trust? Having an American ambassador and three other Americans killed...

Newt was on CNN earlier today and said that he believes Romney hasn’t found a theme that really resonates with people yet, which is why he isn’t doing better ins states like Florida and Ohio, both of which have Republican governors. Bu he doesn’t believe it’s the candidate or anything else for that matter, he simply believes that it is message, that Romney needs to draw sharper lines between he and Obama and really hammer the differences in a way that makes sense to people. He was also critical of an ad Romney released this morning, where Romney said that...

ST. LOUIS • Newt Gingrich is coming to St. Louis Monday for a Todd Akin fundraiser because he wants “to tell the people of Missouri” that they have the right to stand by the Republican Senate candidate of their choice, regardless of what the party's leaders tell them. In a phone interview today with the Post-Dispatch, Gingrich, the former House Speaker and presidential candidate, said the controversy surrounding Akin isn't the point. “The people of Missouri picked him to be their nominee in a fair fight.” He also warned what others have said: That for the GOP to throw in...

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: What does -- well, let me talk about our ally in the region, Israel. How does Israel sort of fit into this whole dynamic of what's going on right now? NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have to break up laughing because I was watching "FOX and Friends" this morning, and it had a picture of the president meeting with a pirate who was... VAN SUSTEREN: It was dated from '09 or something. It was an old picture, I understand. GINGRICH: Sort of "dress like a pirate" day. And they were making the point...

Newt Gingrich gave this speech, which runs 44 minutes, within the past week. Haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I know it's basically about causing regime change in Iran by supporting dissident groups.

The real meaning of the violence of the last week across the Muslim world is the bankruptcy and collapse of the Obama strategy which began with his speech in Cairo. President Obama had a deep conviction that pandering to Islamic sympathies, identifying with the virtues of Islam and parroting phrases that sounded good would lead to a deeper acceptance of the United States by Muslims. While reaching out to “mainstream Muslims,” the Obama strategy would wage selective war against designated enemies. The Obama administration decided to ignore concerns of sovereignty and to kill terrorists with stepped up drone attacks. It...

Newt Gingrich suggests a connection between Libya and Egypt uprisings and attacks and backs Mitt Romney’s statement yesterday that said President Obama sympathized with attackers. Gingrich says, “This is not just about Libya. You don’t get, simultaneously, attacks in Benghazi and Cairo, in Libya and Egypt on a purely local basis. And you don’t get them on 9/11, a day we’re already honoring terrorist attacks against the United States, without a fair amount of collusion and a fair amount of planning. I think you have to look at this in a larger context…. There’s a substantial faction, particularly in Benghazi,...

Newt Gingrich says that these attacks on our embassies and consulates aren’t just coincidental, but rather there are “substantial factions” who look for opportunities to attack America: “There’s a substantial faction, particularly in Benghazi, which was sending people to Iraq to kill Americans. There’s a substantial faction in Egypt which wants to defeat the United States and destroy Israel. That faction looks for opportunities to do things to hurt the United States and yesterday was the example of an attack that’s part of a very long war that we’re going to be at for a very long time.” Exactly. This...

[Obama and Clinton] again perpetuated the kind of intellectual dishonesty that cripples the U.S. response to radical Islamists. This concept of “senseless violence” is at the heart of the left’s refusal to confront the reality of radical Islamists. These are not acts of senseless violence. These are acts of war. Our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans...are combat casualties... ...the president is so committed to a leftist worldview that he cannot allow himself to face these facts. It is inconceivable that there just happened to be attacks in Egypt and Libya on Sept. 11. Yet...it had clearly not occurred...

Onetime Republican presidential primary contender Newt Gingrich said that former President Bill Clinton’s rousing defense of President Obama last week was an implicit indictment of Obama’s record, a new attack Republicans are making to blunt any momentum that Clinton’s backing might give Obama. The Clinton speech at the Democratic National Convention was “eerily anti-Obama, if you just listen to the subtext,” the former House speaker said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. He added: “Here's Clinton saying, ‘I reformed welfare because I worked with Republicans; you didn't, Mr. Obama.' He didn't say it that way, but think about...

President Clinton loves to mention how he raised taxes in 1993 and generated a positive budget balance (in 1998, 1999 and 2000). But let’s take a closer look at the link between Clinton’s tax increase and the later budget surpluses. In 1993, President Clinton signed a massive tax increase that included: – An increase in the individual income tax rate to 36 percent and a 10 percent surcharge for the highest earners, thereby effectively creating a top rate of 39.6 percent. What is not mentioned by President Clinton is the 1997 Tax Cut. The Republican-led Congress passed a tax-relief and...

Going by the conventional rules of American politics, the Democratic convention this week was an unmitigated disaster. And, going by the same rules, the GOP convention was a disaster, too. So, either the rules of American politics have fundamentally changed, or at least one of the parties is taking an enormous gamble.Since the Nixon years, the GOP has enjoyed a marked advantage over the Democrats at the presidential level. Cultural issues — race, religion, abortion, patriotism — have worked to the Republicans’ advantage. Until Barack Obama’s election in 2008, no Democrat has won the presidency without aggressively adapting to...

The United States has “never had a president who behaved as much like a teenager as Barack Obama” by building up debt and spending the money of future generations, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Newsmax.TV in an interview at the Republican National Convention. America, Gingrich said, will wind up paying more interest on the debt than it will for defense. “You know, we’ve never had a president who behaved as much like a teenager as Barack Obama," said Gingrich the exclusive interview. “He’s running around with a credit card, spending our money, our children’s money and our grandchildren’s money...

Newt Gingrich Asks Chris Matthews if Chris is a racist. Must watch video.

Even those of us who couldn’t quite bring ourselves to back Newt Gingrich in the primaries hoped that he would play a big role in the general election as a surrogate. This video demonstrates why. Gingrich reacts to Piers Morgan’s suggestion that the “big flaw” in Ryan’s budget was that the rich would do well, and in two minutes teaches Economics 101, accuses Morgan of media bias, and rips the Obama economy as the “worst recovery in 75 years.” And that’s just Newt getting warmed up, as Newsbusters highlights: NEWT GINGRICH: You know, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but...

In a six-page, 2,500-word Politico op-ed (with an attached three-page, 1,800-word appendix), Newt Gingrich makes it crystal clear that he is on the side of Michele Bachmann and her four fellow members of Congress who want an inquiry into whether the government is being infiltrated by Islamic extremists. (He refers to the group as "the National Security Five.") According to Gingrich, the quick and plentiful denouncements of Bachmann's theory are simply examples "of the fear our elites have about discussing and understanding radical Islamists," he writes. "You have to wonder why people would aggressively assert we shouldn’t ask about national...

A celebration of free healthcare, the trade union struggle, the battle for women's rights and a fleeting lesbian kiss: the Olympics opening ceremony Friday did not shy away from weighty social issues. Unsurprisingly, the show devised by Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle drew accusations from the British political right that it had strayed into "leftie" issues. Aidan Burley, a lawmaker from Prime Minister David Cameron's ruling Conservative party, tweeted: "The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen -- more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?" He followed that with: "Thank God the athletes have...