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Newt Gingrich unquestionably has the talent but I saw him in person about two years ago and his appearance was not good. He was bloated and looked like he might have been hitting the sauce too much. He is really overweight and at his age it is becoming a threat to his life span.

Gingrich clearly has gravitas and forensic skills and he comes the closest of any living American politician to what we might legitimately call an American Churchill. In my view, his conservative credentials are adequate because I am willing to accept his explanation for his flirtation with Nancy Pelosi on climate change. I'm not sure that it is a conservative position to accept or to reject a scientific theory. Can we really say that one is not a conservative if he accepts Darwin? Is there a conservative theory on the extinction of the dinosaurs? My point is that a reasonable conservative can accept the science for global warming but not the remedies proposed by Al Gore. Gingrich's argument is that he tried to find free-market solutions to a real scientific problem to avoid the imposition of a left-wing solutions. Not Gingrich's finest hour, but there it is.

There is also his personal baggage which weighs on a conservative much heavier than it would a liberal.

Yet as I look over the field while so acutely aware of our desperate need to mount a credible attack on Obama, I am willing to overlook these deficiencies to get someone in there who has a chance of morally destroying Obama. When one considers the array of factors against the Republicans, one comes to understand that nothing less than the utter moral destruction of Barack Obama will turn the tide. I don't think that Mitt Romney has the courage to risk his nice guy image to really turn the screws on the Democrats. It is almost as though it might mess his hair. I know of no one but Gingrich who has a chance to do it.

"I know of no one but Gingrich who has a chance to do it."

You've made several very, very good points. But, like you, I just don't think Gingrich can do it given his "growing" stature, physical not intellectual. Plus, his personal problems make him a non-starter for the SoCons.

I would add Haley Barbour to your very short list. Sure, he comes off initially as a good ole' boy, but he is equally as intellectual as Gingrich, without the personal problems. And, yes he was a lobbyist. But, it's been less than 6 months into Barry's administration and he has COMPLETELY walked back all his self-imposed exclusions of lobbyists working in his administration. It would be tough to criticize Barbour when he has now surrounded himself with quasi-Wall street lobbyists in his entire economic team.

I'm going to wait until the primaries to pick a horse, as my original pick decided to go on a south-of-the-border love fest. But, with or without Palin, I don't believe things are nearly as dire as some would pretend, or hope.

one comes to understand that nothing less than the utter moral destruction of Barack Obama will turn the tide. ...I know of no one but Gingrich who has a chance to do it.

You're one of the few I've seen who really gets it. Obama must be taken apart with precision, point by point, with a a scalpel and forceps by a skilled rhetorical surgeon. Only Newt can cut through the politics and BS to do it, and enjoy it while he does.

Like I've said, Newt has a penchant for always being on the verge of thinking about considering perhaps throwing his hat into this ring or that one, but never quite committing.

But as you said Newt is the closest thing to an American Churchill, and so lets hope, like Churchill, he will step forward to turn our nation's darkest hour into our finest.