Virtually the only national voice of any elected official which the party will be able to muster will be Sarah Palin and her qualities are not yet honed and perfected to the degree necessary to function independently as the popular leader of a great American party. She has the natural gifts which could make her a legendary politician in the years to come. I hope she spends the long Alaska winters working on and polishing her public persona so that she never again will be exposed as she was by Katie Couric. She has the purity of spirit and she has the courage. With a little bit of forensic training and a leavening of gravitas, Sarah Palin might emerge as a great Republican leader. The question is, will she also emerge as a great conservative leader?
In the same post I said this about Gingrich after looking at Giuliani:
Mayor Giuliani is disqualified by virtue of his doctrinal unorthodoxy and his personal biography from any elected national position with one exception: he would make an excellent chairman of the Republican National Committee. He can make a hell of a speech and he can debate. He's a tiger and God knows we will need a tiger fighting for the party. We will need especially someone who can get press attention and hold the public's attention. More, we need someone who can kick ass and take names There's only one other figure who can match Giuliani in this regard.
And that figure is Newt Gingrich. However, he too has disqualified himself by virtue of his personal biography and he cannot get support of the rank and file for elected office. But he is a font of ideas at a time when the Republican Party is fresh out of any new ideas. We desperately need his intellectual energy. Do not forget that of all of the potential leaders of the party mentioned so far only one has demonstrated the capacity to organize a guerrilla against entrenched Democrat majorities and lead the party to victory and into majority status. Do not fail to remember that he did that in the teeth of resistance from the Rockefeller wing of the party. Gingrich can make a speech and he can marshal arguments and he can skewer Democrats without raising a sweat. Gingrich could also head the national party but I think there would be ill considered but widespread resistance to any move he might make in that direction. We must not be foolish and fail to somehow take advantage of Gingrich's political genius.
So you tell me what I think about Newt Gingrich as president. I could easily live with him as president and I would certainly support him as a candidate but I'm not sure that he is the best possible candidate or that he can overcome the baggage which, in my judgment, unfairly burdens him. There is just something visceral about the reaction to Gingrich that is not generated by other candidates with worse biographies. For example, I received a reply from org.whodat which consisted solely of "ROFLOL" which I take to mean he is skeptical of the Gingrich candidacy. As usual, no one comes forward prepared to defend another name.
If not Gingrich as chairman of the party, who? Let Gingrich run for president and if he can generate support, he is certainly a qualified and proven conservative while in office and the party should support him. If he does not generate support, Gingrich will, in my judgment, not break from the party; he will support the nominee as he always has done unless the nominee fails to put down a marker on spending. You might recall that Gingrich led a group off the reservation against George H. W. Bush when he broke his no new taxes pledge. Gingrich was right, Bush clearly was wrong. I believe this spending is an issue which is and always has been make or break for Gingrich.
