Free Republic

. August 28, 2014 Newt Gingrich : What Would Reagan Do? ===================================================== Instead of criticizing President Barack Obama's lack of an effective national security policy as the terrorist threat of the Islamic State grows in Syria and Iraq, it might be helpful to imagine the speech President Ronald Reagan would have given in response to the videotaped beheading of James Foley. There are many things a great power can do if it has leadership. This fictional speech is an effort to describe a Reagan-like grand strategy, clarity of moral purpose and emphasis on effective actions. This is not a speech...

. August 22, 2014 Newt Gingrich : President Obama and the 500 British Terrorists ===================================================== Traveling in Europe this week, I had a chance to see the world through the eyes of the London Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. The view from Britain was startlingly different than the view from Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing. There is a consensus in Britain that at least 500 young Brits have gone to the Middle East as jihadists. There is a clear belief, stated by Prime Minister David Cameron, that the ISIS fighter who executed journalist James Foley...

In case you haven’t been watching cable TV, two former House Speakers named Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich are having a bit of a fracas related to all that Gingrich baggage about which GOP primary voters in Iowa appear to be blissfully ignorant. Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat and now House minority leader, promised to release records that are public but haven’t seen much sunshine lately about the congressional ethics investigation of Gingrich back in the day.Gingrich said that would be foul play and promised to retaliate, claiming Pelosi was threatening to disclose non-public information. But Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill...

. July 11, 2014 Newt Gingrich : The Bad Neighbor Policy -- Playing Americans for Fools ===================================================== Guatemala and Mexico agreed this week to make it even easier for people to show up at the American border. That's right: EASIER. After all the public outcry against thousands of foreigners crossing our border, you might have thought the Mexican government would help stop the wave of people traversing Mexico to get to Texas. That would be a good neighbor policy. On Monday, however, the presidents of Guatemala and Mexico met to announce a new policy of making it easier and more...

. July 27, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Bigger than President Obama ===================================================== A Fox News poll this week reported that 58% of the American people felt the Obama Administration was incompetent. That sense of incompetence included 32% of Democrats, 67% of independents and 84% of Republicans. As president, having your political opponents believe you are incompetent is not a shock. Having two out of three independents find you are incompetent is a shock. Having one out of three of your partisan supporters consider you incompetent may mean it is time for the Obama team to panic. This survey on incompetence...

. July 18, 2014 Newt Gingrich : The Tranquility of President Obama's Mind ===================================================== When new White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that President Obama had "substantially improved the tranquility of the international community" many observers reacted with disbelief. When the President refused to go to the border to see the crisis of young people flooding into the United States because "he's not interested in photo ops," lesser mortals noted he had played pool with Governor Hickenlooper, dropped by a brewery to have a beer, and shook hands with a man wearing a horse head mask. When he went...

. August 30, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama’s Right -- He Has “No Strategy” ===================================================== Americans might be inclined to roll their eyes at this admission from their president given that he spent weeks on vacation while a terrorist group swept away eleven years of work to stabilize Iraq. As I wrote in this newsletter last week, however, the problem has never been the rounds of golf President Obama is playing. It is what has been happening--or rather, what has not been happening--between them. If a month’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard was the price of our Commander-in-Chief realizing at last...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

. August 21, 2014 Newt Gingrich : President Obama's Golf: The Real Problem ===================================================== A lot of people have commented on and made fun of the frequency of President Obama’s golfing. The more I watched President Obama, however, the more I concluded the problem was what was not happening between golf rounds. Two earlier presidents, Eisenhower and Reagan, golfed frequently but their presidencies were stunningly successful. The difference seemed to be that Eisenhower and Reagan were really effective when they weren't golfing. President Eisenhower was a very serious golfer who had been a varsity football player at West Point. Eisenhower...

. August 8, 2014 Newt Gingrich : ISIS, Hamas, and Boko Haram ===================================================== Grim, unyielding and violent reality is beginning to confront the American political establishment with facts from which it cannot hide. For 35 years, since Iranians seized the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, and kept the Americans in it as hostages, the United States has been at war with radical Islamists. They knew it. We hid from it. Year after year since then, radical Islamists have grown more militant, more sophisticated and more numerous. Now, in an arc of terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas...

. August 6, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama, Buchanan, and Baldwin -- The Cost of Rejecting Reality ===================================================== President Obama is in serious danger of joining a select group of disastrous leaders who put their people and their country in desperate circumstances that cost lives and risked ruinous defeat. Almost everywhere you look around the world, the situation is worse for the United States and worse for freedom than when President Obama took office—in many cases catastrophically so. There isn’t much sign that he recognizes this or is particularly concerned. Iraq is the most obvious (and potentially most dangerous) example....

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

"The World Remains Silent; It Is As If We Had Been Swallowed Up by The Night." Egypt's Maspero massacre—where the military killed dozens of Christians protesting the destruction of their churches—dominates October's persecution headlines. Facts and details concerning the military's "crimes against humanity" are documented in this report, and include videos of armored-vehicles running over civilians, a catalog of lies and deceitful tactics employed by Egypt's rulers and state media, and other matters overlooked by the West. More damning evidence continues to emerge: not only did Egypt's military plan to massacre Christians to teach them a "lesson" never to...

Another Christian Holy Day and another murderous attack by Jihadists in Nigeria. This time 38 Christian worshippers were killed by a vehicle-born explosive device driven into a crowded area near an Easter worship service in the Nigerian city of Kaduna.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in parts of the country following attacks from the Islamist group Boko Haram. The measure is in force is areas of the Yobe and Borno states in the north-east, Plateau state in central Nigeria and Niger state in the east. International borders in the affected areas have been temporarily closed. Mr Jonathan vowed to "crush" Boko Haram, which killed dozens in attacks across the country on Christmas Day. Announcing the state of emergency in a live televised address, Mr Jonathan said: "The temporary closure of our borders in the affected...

On April 16th, in Nigeria, about 250 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The story didn’t become widely known in the US for a while. However, now that efforts are being made by the United States government to assist in recovering these girls, conservatives have decided to use this time to play the blame game. Over the past couple of days, the right-wing media has focused their attentions solely on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Based on the logic they are presenting, Clinton is to blame for Boko Haram’s actions due to her not designating...

For 35 years, since Iranians seized the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, and kept the Americans in it as hostages, the United States has been at war with radical Islamists. They knew it. We hid from it. Now, in an arc of terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas in Gaza to ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, there is a clear wave of vicious religious warfare being waged against civilization by fanatics who openly promise and engage in genocidal killing. ISIS has made its murderous intentions painfully clear. It has proven in town after town that it...

Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he would like to “turn the Pentagon into a triangle.” “I always tell people I’m a hawk,” Gingrich said. “But I’m a cheap hawk.” Gingrich honored the 20th anniversary of his “Contract with America” by pointing conservatives back to a key point in his Republican blueprint, arguing that federal bureaucracy cannot simply be “fixed” but must be overhauled and replaced. The Pentagon, Gingrich stressed, must be included in this overhaul.

. July 23, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama’s Attack on Israel ===================================================== "The success of Hamas in closing Israeli airspace is a great victory for the resistance, and is the crown of Israel’s failure,” a Hamas spokesman said today. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, the United States became the first country in the world to recognize the Jewish state, just 11 minutes later. That recognition, however, came after one of the greatest foreign policy disputes in American history—a fight in which Secretary of State George C. Marshall told President Truman that “if the President were to [recognize...

Halper believes that the Clintons’ effort to in effect keep their friends close while turning enemies into friends has been a masterful and hugely overlooked part of the rebuilding of their machine: "What has been little understood in the past decade, from 2001 to the present, is how successfully the Clintons undertook a systematic, comprehensive, and sustained effort to win over leaders in the GOP, especially figures who were once the biggest critics. In return, both Clintons were able to develop a bipartisan, statesmanlike image that had eluded them through eight years in the White House."