Posted on 04/12/2005 11:40:25 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) will spend two days in New Hampshire next week to meet editorial boards and conservative activists, convincing several of his former House colleagues that he will run for the presidency in 2008.
Gingrich will spend Monday and part of Tuesday in the Granite State and has packed his schedule with events calculated to boost his profile and woo influential Republicans whose support would be critical in a presidential primary. New Hampshire is the site of the first primary.
Gingrich will attend a $50-per-person fundraiser for the New Hampshire Republican State Committee and meet a coalition of conservative activists. He has also scheduled meetings with the Concord Monitor, Union Leader and Valley News and an appearance on New England Cable News, said Rick Tyler, his spokesman.
The former Speaker will also visit the Dartmouth College Republicans and participate in two signing sessions for his new book, Winning the Future. High-toned books are classic markers of a politician’s blossoming presidential ambitions.
Gingrich will also travel to Iowa on May 12 and 13 for visits to Sioux City, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and will likely participate in events for the local Republican Party and attend one or two book signings, Tyler said. The Iowa caucuses are the first election of the presidential nominating process, followed by the New Hampshire primary a few days later.
News of Gingrich’s foray into the presidential battleground and the array of politically significant activities have prompted enthusiastic responses from House Republicans. All GOP lawmakers who spoke with The Hill said he would be a top-tier candidate who could seriously challenge the early front-runners, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Although McCain and Giuliani lead early national polls, some conservatives view them with deep skepticism. McCain has often sided with Senate Democrats in key legislative battles, such as last year’s over the budget, and Giuliani supports abortion rights.
Gingrich is a hero of conservatives, whose influence will be heightened in a presidential primary.
“Apart from Ronald Reagan, there has been no voice more clarion in the conservative movement than Newt Gingrich in the last 25 years,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of about 100 conservatives in the House. “I know that conservatives because of their respect and affection for him are going to take a real hard look at Gingrich.” Pence said conservatives would also consider carefully Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) should they decide to run for president, as many political observers expect.
Pence recalled his days as a House candidate, driving around the district listening to GOPAC tapes of Gingrich explaining how to communicate the tenets of conservatism.
“The man has a genuine gift for inspiring passion for conservative ideals,” Pence said. “That used to come across on tape.”
Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who came to Congress as part of the Republican revolution of 1994 that Gingrich led, said, “I think Newt would love to be president. I don’t think there is any question about it. He’s already met the criteria; he’s already written a book, or several books. This is right up Newt’s alley.”
Though LaHood said Gingrich hasn’t told him either way, he added, “I have no doubt that he’s exploring the possibility of running for president.”
When asked recently at a lunch at the Princeton Club in New York if he would run for president in 2008, Gingrich responded, “You never know,” the New York Post reported.
During a March 24 speech at the Four Seasons Hotel sponsored by the Wednesday Morning Club, a group of Hollywood Republicans, one attendee asked Gingrich to run for president. Gingrich didn’t rule out the possibility, saying merely that he would “stay focused on issues.”
Tyler said his boss is not planning on running for president “but he hasn’t ruled it out, so I shouldn’t rule it out for him.”
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who was a freshman lawmaker when Gingrich led the 1994 revolution, said Gingrich “comes into it as a top contender.”
“I say that because he is a prodigious fundraiser and a brilliant strategist and he’s brilliant on the issues,” said Kingston, who compared Gingrich’s political skills to those of his one-time nemesis, former President Bill Clinton.
“Newt is a brilliant guy, like Bill Clinton in many ways, complete with some tragic flaws of his own,” Kingston said. He said that Gingrich had a knack for calling a meeting when factions of the Republican caucus were at loggerheads and making peace.
Mark Foley, who came to Congress as part of Republican revolution, said that Gingrich “probably has the best political Rolodex of anyone in the nation.”
“He is the best known of any of the potential candidates,” Foley said. “I think he is seriously considering it and positioning himself to be considered seriously.”
“Think of how many candidates like myself he’s helped in the past; think of all the Lincoln Day dinners he’s attended,” said Foley. “Who can access such a network instantly? Even senators don’t have the kind of reach that the Speaker had in his heyday.”
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who served two years as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, said Gingrich’s skill set may be better suited for the White House than it was for the Speaker’s office.
“He’s a visionary and a big thinker, whereas the primary obligation of Speaker is making the trains run on time,” Feeney said. “Some of the negative criticism of Newt is that he was busy coming up with one big idea after another and there was little follow through.”
Feeney said that few politicians are as articulate as Gingrich and that the centrist ideology of the early favorites in the race may create an opportunity.
“Newt may sense an opening based on philosophy,” Feeney said. “we have a very conservative base across the country.”
LOL
Nope. Once again, your memory fails you.
What makes you think that? I don't recall Newt being particularly strong on immmigration reform.
Not that I know of, and since I live in Indianapolis I believe I would have heard if he had made any statement.
Conservatives: Reset Your Course
by Rep. Mike Pence
Posted Jan 23, 2004
Editor's Note: Rep. Mike Pence (R.) represents the 6th District of Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives. This article is adapted from the keynote address he delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Jan. 22, 2004, in Arlington, Va.
Picture a ship at sea. A proud captain steps onto the sunlit deck as it plies the open seas of a simpler time. Its sails full and straining in the wind, its crew is tried and true, its hull, mast and keel are strong, but beneath the waves, almost imperceptibly, the rudder has veered off course and, in time, the captain and crew will face unexpected peril.
The conservative movement today is like that ship with its proud captain, strong, accomplished, but veering off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government Republicanism.
But conservatives know the cause of our republic: to "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
Fundamental Standards
By these fundamental standards, conservatives can take considerable pride in the past three years, that the ship of conservative Republican government in Washington is strong. And our movement is strong.
In promoting national security, economic prosperity and the sanctity of human life, conservatives made measurable gains in 2003.
Under the leadership of President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress, we have provided for the common defense, the most fundamental object of all. Republicans in Congress and conservatives throughout the land have stood steadfastly behind our President, whose personal courage and bold leadership has made our families measurably safer. Because of conservatism, America is defending freedom at home and abroad.
Republican governance, in these respects, has been conservative governance. But despite these enormous achievements, there are troubling signs that the ship of conservative governance is off course.
While Ronald Reagan said famously, "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," many Republicans?even many who call themselves conservatives?see government increasingly as the solution to every social ill. And let us be clear on this point: This is a historic departure from the limited government traditions of our party and millions of its most ardent supporters.
This shift to faith in government is especially clear to me. Not long ago, as I watched the children's animated movie Ice Age with my kids I realized?I am the frozen man. You remember the frozen man?born in a simpler time, slips into the snow and thaws out years later in a more sophisticated age.
I first ran for Congress in 1988. An entrenched Democratic majority controlled Congress and frustrated President Reagan at every turn. A band of heroic House conservatives were challenging Speaker Jim Wright (D.) and welfare state politics; a balanced federal budget was as much a fantasy as a Republican majority. But some of us believed. We believed we could reduce the size and scope of government and halt the slow march to socialism embodied in the welfare state politics of the left.
I lost my bid in 1988 and again in 1990. There's a saying in politics: "When you're out, you're out!" I was out for 10 years.
When I was finally elected in 2000, it was like I had been frozen before the revolution and thawed after it was over. When I first ran, Republicans dreamed of eliminating the Department of Education and returning control of our schools to parents, communities and states. Ten years later, I was thawed out, took my oath of office, and they handed me a copy of H.R. 1. One?as in our Republican Congress' number one priority.
It was the "No Child Left Behind Act": The largest expansion of the Department of Education since President Carter created it. About 30 House conservatives fought against the bill, but we were soundly defeated by our own colleagues. Our Reaganite belief that education was a local function was labeled "far right" by Republicans, and the President signed the bill into law with a smiling Ted Kennedy at his side.
Conservatives were told to bear up, that this was the exception, not the rule. So, relieved to have that behind me, I anxiously awaited a new H.R. 1 for a new Congress, an H.R. 1 I could be proud of. I was handed the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill. The largest new entitlement since 1965!
To the frozen man it was obvious: Another Congress, another H.R.1, another example of the ship of our movement veering off course.
Actually this bill started out promising. The President asked for a very limited program, extending existing welfare benefits to seniors just above the poverty level where most of the one in four seniors without prescription drug coverage reside.
Many conservatives, me included, were prepared to support this limited benefit. I told the President we shouldn't make seniors choose between food, rent and prescription drugs. We were a better country than that.
But instead of giving the President what he requested, Congress?the land of the $400 hammer?set sail to create the largest new entitlement since 1965, which places trillions in obligations on our children and grandchildren without giving any thought to how we were going to pay for it. House conservatives faced a difficult choice: Oppose the President we love, or support the expansion of the big government we hate.
Twenty-five rebels made a stand for limited government. When all the votes were counted, we were one rebel short, and the ship of conservative government veered further off course.
But I will always believe the stand we took mattered. Sometimes a small group can take a stand, be defeated and still make a difference. The Texas volunteers within the Alamo exacted such a horrific toll on the Army of Santa Anna that his aid, Col. Juan Almonte, privately noted, "One more such glorious victory and we are finished." And so they were. The inspiration of the stand at the Alamo fueled the victory Sam Houston led just six weeks later.
One more such glorious victory and we are finished. One more big-government education bill. One more new entitlement. One more compromise of who we are as limited-government Republicans, and our majority could be finished.
The state of our movement is strong, on the advance, but veering off course from our commitment to limited government. The time has come for conservatives to retake the helm of this movement and renew our commitment to fiscal discipline and to what we know to be true about the nature of government: Conservatives know that government that governs least governs best. Conservatives know as government expands, freedom contracts. Conservatives know that government should never do for a man what he can and should do for himself. And conservatives know that we never expand the welfare state but without reducing the freedom of its recipients and all those condemned to pay its price in confiscated taxes.
Conservatives know that if you reject these principles of limited government and urge others to reject them, you can still be my ally. You can even be my friend. But you cannot call yourself a conservative.
I met President Reagan in the summer of 1988. I was a 29-year-old candidate for Congress and he was winding down a presidency that changed the world. After we exchanged pleasantries, I told him I was grateful for everything he had done for the country and everything he had done to inspire my generation of Americans to believe in high ideals. He seemed surprised, his cheeks appeared to redden with embarrassment and he said, "Well, Mike, that's a very nice thing of you to say."
Moments later he took a minute to respond to my and others' accolades with characteristic humility and optimism saying: "Many of you have thanked me for what I did for America but I want you to know I don't think I did anything for this country?the American people decided it was time to right the ship, and I was just the captain they put on the bridge when they did it."
It's time for conservative Americans to do what Reagan did. It's time for conservative Americans to right the ship again: To celebrate our great Republican President and Republican Congress that are leading our nation's progress in national security, economic prosperity and value of human life, but also to see her listing to port, in the direction of big government, and set her right again.
This is not a sign of disloyalty, but of true loyalty to principle. When a ship is approaching a rocky coast, the life of the ship and its crew depends on the navigator with his sextant to counsel the captain and crew to steer clear of the shoals and, if need be, to forcefully oppose the captain when the fate of the ship hangs in the balance. This is our cause. To stand with our captain as he leads us well. And to right the ship where she is adrift.
And this cause will prevail.
Alright 94, whatever it was 10 years ago and it petered out quick.
So you're telling me Newt was not forced to resign in shame because he got caught with his pecker in the wrong woman?
I think it's your memory that's failing. And one thing you know for sure in DC, if somebody has one sex scandal you can garauntee that's not their only scandal, that tends to be why people resign when their first scandal gets caught, they know the hounds on their trail and things are about to get ugly.
Was it illegal? No!
Was it unseemly? IMHO, yes! I remember all the energy that Rush and other conservatives spent supporting Newt. As I saw it, it reeked of Animal Farm. Later, these were the same folks bitching about Bill & Hillary's book advances.
Newt is obviously a very smart man, but I don't see him as our nominee in 08. To beat Hillary, we're going to have to do better than that. Thankfully, we have at least two years to let this sort out.
In the meantime, how about keeping the fires stoked on our elected representatives TO START ACTING LIKE THEY ARE IN THE DAMN MAJORITY!!!!!!!!!!
Ladies and Gents in Washington, start doing what you were elected to do, and 2006 and 2008 will take care of themselves.
Today would have been a great day to unfurl a plan to reform the tax code. Instead, Frist is waffling over the constitutional option on judges.
With all the great folks that lurk and post on Free Republic, you'd think that the RNC or Rove would pay more attention. I know, silly me, we're amateurs, good only for campaign money and votes.
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