Free Republic

The Republican Presidential campaign is off to a slow start, but judging by the last week not slow enough. First Mitt Romney defends his ObamaCare prototype in Massachusetts, and now Newt Gingrich has decided to run against House Republicans on Medicare. They must be loving this at the White House

Other GOPers likely to follow Gingrich’s lead in criticizing Ryan’s budget plan, say political analysts 12:04 AM 05/17/2011 Though former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been skewered by conservative opinion makers since criticizing House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan on “Meet the Press” Sunday, political prognosticators expect that other Republican candidates will soon follow Gingrich’s lead. Popular entitlement programs like Medicare, which would be drastically altered in Ryan’s budget proposal, have historically been the third rails of American politics, issues which politicians on both sides of the aisle are reluctant to target for change. While cutting spending is the...

Brit Hume trashed Newt on Fox and called him nothing less than a Bomb thrower.  That's an understatement. Brit said that Newt attacked Paul Ryan and handed a talking point to the Democrats......"vote for a Republican and Medicare will be gone."  All that on day 5 of his campaign. Brit pretty much said that Newt is going to implode even faster than he did as Speaker of the House. He complimented Ryan for his detailed plan and ridicules Newt for not offering anything but a lot of noise.

ATLANTA (AP) --- Newt Gingrich, the House speaker who led a national GOP resurgence in the 1990s before facing ethics questions and resigning, is running for president. Gingrich's announcement, made on social networking websites Monday, came after months of public flirting with a bid. He enters a slow-to-form GOP presidential field that has left some Republicans craving more options as they search for a nominee strong enough to credibly challenge President Barack Obama. The former Georgia congressman, well-known to most Republicans, brings to the race a years-in-the-making political machine with ties to early nominating states as well as a network...

As Newt Gingrich enters the presidential race the New York Times did an piece on it that had a particular interest in his wife, Calista. I know he's not a fan favorite, but his wife has my vote. At 45, 22 years her husband’s junior, Mrs. Gingrich always looks perfectly composed. She favors an almost retro look — platinum hair teased and sprayed, bold-colored suits accessorized by a triple strand of pearls or eye-popping diamond jewelry. In college, friends say, she once signed up for an 8 a.m. bowling class and rolled a 200 wearing a pencil skirt. Based...

Trust me, when it comes to the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination, I am going to be fair in assessing the candidates. Already I have polled for NewsMax, and my early polls placed former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in fourth place among announced or potential candidates. But before I go into my harsh analyst mode -- which once in a while leads to an "I'm hurt" email from Newt -- let me share my personal feelings about the man who has just announced that he will seek the presidency. Other than the man most call my "other...

Remember earlier this year when civil discourse was en vogue in the wake of Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting in Tucson? That theme has eroded somewhat over the past several months. On Thursday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski asked her co-host Mike Barnicle if former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s run would “reignite hope” for the Republican Party. And that led Barnicle, the once-accused plagiarist who resigned his position at the Boston Globe in the wake of those charges, to go off a diatribe about the former House Speaker. “Well, they better hope not,” Barnicle said. “He...

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Friday that General Electric's aggressive legal and accounting strategy, which led to zero corporate tax payments last year, was a clever and rational response to the nation's high tax rates. In his first public speech since announcing his candidacy, the former House speaker said he wanted to slash an array of taxes and bureaucracies. He denounced President Barack Obama's foreign and domestic policies, and said the incumbent can't win in 2012 without using his office to coerce massive campaign donations from people. Gingrich lived up to his combative, self-assured reputation at a Washington meeting...

Newt Gingrich, carrying heavy baggage from multiple marriages and RINO stances, is now trying to rewrite history. Lambasted over an ad against "climate change," in which he sat on a couch with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Gingrich is trying to clarify the meaning of the ad. Gingrich-spokesman Rick Tyler sent an email out to that effect (emphasis mine): "Newt does not apologize for trying to persuade his ideological opponents that his conservative solutions are the best solutions. His attempt to work with Speaker Pelosi is another testament to Gingrich's willingness to debate his conservative solutions with liberals, in this case Pelosi....

My father, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, has been in politics as long as I can remember. And as long as I can remember, media coverage about him has contained misstatements of facts. The vast majority are simple mistakes that are easily corrected, understood and rewoven into an ongoing storyline. But one of them seems to have taken on a life of its own, and simple corrections have not sufficed to set the record straight. Why does this happen? I can't be sure, but I suspect that the narrative created by these untruths proves to be so much...

Discussion on the Sunday talk shows centered on the budget and the looming debt ceiling, with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) on CNN’s State of the Union and House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) on CBS’s Face the Nation. Domestic energy production and the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East also were addressed. Meet the Press (NBC) Gingrich: Paul Ryan' s plan is "right-wing social engineering," goes too far Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) explained that he felt compelled to run for president because "to not seek to help the country to fix the problems we have would...

This is now the mainstream press treats Republicans now. They simply default to the racist charge. NBC news anchor David Gregory interviews Newt Gingrich, GOP candidate for president, and calls him a racist since he mentioned 47 million people are now on food stamps. Listen to how Gregory mentions - twice - that Gingrich gave the speech in Georgia, clearly implying Georgia is obviously some sort of racist hot spot. Media bias on display.

Says Andrew Stiles of NRO, “Newt Gingrich’s appearance on ‘Meet the Press’ today could leave some wondering which party’s nomination he is running for.” DrewM at Ace’s site thinks it’s yet another illustration of Newt’s loose-cannon lack of message discipline, but I can’t believe that; he surely must have considered how this will play in the primaries, especially after the pounding Romney just took on the right for his health-care speech. What’s his strategy? Maybe he’s decided his shot at the nomination is so long that his only chance is by Mediscaring seniors, who famously turn out in high numbers...

Some Other Gingrich Flip-Flops: Libya, Dede Scozzafava, and Cap-and-Trade Newt the Erratic. John McCormack May 16, 2011 9:24 AM On April 20, Newt Gingrich said he would have voted for Paul Ryan's Medicare reform and praised it as just a "first step" toward fixing our health care system. In a Facebook post hours later, he edged away from his full embrace of Ryan's plan. On May 15, Gingrich ripped Ryan's plan as "radical change," "right-wing social engineering," and just “too big a jump.” Hours later, his spokesman acknowledged there's "not much daylight between Ryan and Gingrich" in the substance of...

Tim Pawlenty, after being asked yesterday about his support for ethanol subsidies, which is a key issue in Iowa. "We can't just pull the rug out from under the industry," he said. "There are going to have to be some changes, but we have to be fair-minded about it." Earlier this year, the National Review's Katrina Trinko detailed the ethanol records of Mitch Daniels and T-Paw, among others. She found that both were good friends to the industry -- an uncomfortable, ideological brotherhood, but politically-helpful in both Iowa and their own states. When Mitch Daniels was sworn in as governor...

Gingrich warns against secularism By: Kendra Marr April 27, 2011 09:26 AM EDT Speaking at the National Catholic Prayer breakfast, Newt Gingrich on Wednesday warned Catholics that Europe’s “crisis of secularism” — spawning a “government-favored culture to replace Christianity” — has seized the United States.“The American elites are guided by their desire to emulate the European elites and, as a result, anti-religious values and principles are coming to dominate the academic, news media and judicial class in America,” he said in Washington.Gingrich lashed out against the “secular pressures” that have led scientific publications to replace Anno Domini (A.D.) with the Common...

Obesity is a national health crisis ... If current trends continue, it will soon surpass smoking in the U.S. as the biggest single factor in early death, reduced quality of life and added health care costs ... Obesity is responsible for more than 160,000 excess deaths a year ... The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productivity and added medical treatment." — Scientific American, January 2011. Considering those troubling statistics, Advertising Age's headline this week is welcome news: "Weight Watchers Picks a New Target: Men." The story details how the nation's biggest diet company...

Fox News Radio just reported that Newt Gingrich will tweet on Wednesday that he is officially throwing his hat in the ring for the 2012 election.

Mike Barnicle has greeted Newt Gingrich's announcement of his presidential candidacy with a sneer, calling the former Speaker of the House "a delusional loser." The former Kennedy-clan retainer and Boston Globe columnist seasoned his attack with some snobbery, disparaging Gingrich's educational background. Barnicle spewed his bile on today's Morning Joe. View video here.