Newt 2012?

American Thinker ^ | May 22, 2010 | J. Robert Smith

[neverdem]

He was a brilliant but flawed man. He spent most of his political career as a bomb-thrower in the lower House. He was despised by his party's establishment. After a debacle, he fell into disfavor with the public. He was discounted as a politician and stayed so for many years. Then came a crisis, which he had warned was coming and which the nation's leadership bungled grossly. He became his nation's leader not because he was loved, but because he was right and had the pluck to carry the fight. 

He was Winston Churchill. 

Churchill's time came. Could Newt Gingrich's time be coming?  

The parallels between Churchill and Newt Gingrich aren't exact, of course. Churchill faced greater adversity than Gingrich has. And unlike Churchill's Britain, there's no external threat, no Hitler bent on world conquest, menacing the United States (though the ongoing terrorist threat against America shouldn't be discounted).

But as conservatives know, and as a growing number of Americans are learning, there's a potent internal threat to liberty. That threat is occurring in the context of a gathering economic catastrophe. The nation may be facing a decade of tumult, a decade in which the forces of liberty struggle against the left for what sort of nation America will be. 

This week, Gingrich launched his new book To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine. In interviews, the former House speaker acknowledges that he's weighing a presidential bid in 2012. Churchill was sixty-five when he became prime minister in 1940. If Gingrich becomes the nation's forty-fifth president in 2013, he will be sixty-nine when it happens.

Of all major Republican politicians, Newt Gingrich has been the strongest ideas man and strategic thinker in the past thirty years. By the former House Speaker's own admission, though, he wasn't quick to grasp the Obama threat. Yet he certainly has since, judging from the focus of his new book. Gingrich has generally been adept at course corrections.    

Gingrich's House career began in the late 1970s. He won his seat in 1978. His west Georgia district was heavily Democratic. Showing grit, it took Gingrich three attempts to finally capture his congressional seat. His pursuit involved both financial and career sacrifices (Gingrich was then a history professor at West Georgia College, now the University of West Georgia).   

From the outset of his congressional career, Gingrich's aim was to break the lock that Democrats had enjoyed on the House since the late 1950s. He did so by railing against Democratic corruption and cronyism and publicizing the failures of what he termed the "Liberal Welfare State." He spoke persuasively of a "Conservative Opportunity Society" as an antidote to liberal welfare statism. 

Outspoken and aggressive, Gingrich earned few, if any, points among Republican leaders. The young congressman was the bane of House Minority Leader Bob Michel, a Illinoisan whose clubby approach to the majority Democrats Gingrich and other back-benchers argued only helped perpetuate Democratic control of the House. 

In the early 1980s, C-SPAN was a new phenomenon. Gingrich and like-minded Republican back-benchers readily grasped C-SPAN's value as a platform to communicate directly with voters, hammering at Tip O'Neil's leadership and flailing "tax-and-spend" Democrats.

The West Georgia congressman's approach won enough support among the GOP House rank and file to bump him up the leadership ladder. He led the fight to bring down House Speaker Jim Wright in 1989. Wright had ethics problems. The publication of a book in an apparent sweetheart deal was fodder for Gingrich's broadsides against the speaker.

With Bob Michel's retirement, Gingrich won the Minority Leader post. Along with Dick Armey and other key conservatives, Gingrich devised the now-famous "Contract with America." The contract is rightly credited as vital in coalescing voter support for Republican congressional candidates in 1994. President Clinton's missteps on health care and taxes fueled voter backlash. But Gingrich and GOP House leaders deserve kudos for positioning the party to successfully exploit Clinton's fumbles.

After securing the speakership following the 1994 elections, Gingrich was immediately caricatured and vilified by the left and the mainstream media. Time magazine issued its "Uncle Scrooge" cover. The tarring and feathering damaged Gingrich's public standing throughout his speakership.

During the 1990s, Gingrich sparred often with the cagey Bill Clinton, sometimes winning, sometimes not. But despite after-the-fact Democratic and mainstream media spin, Gingrich and his lieutenants forced the president to accept balanced budgets -- the first in years -- and landmark welfare reform. 

Bill Clinton's involvement in the Whitewater scandal proved to be a political dud for Republicans. Clinton's impeachment likewise fell flat with voters. Despite Gingrich's predictions of Republican gains in the 1998 midterm elections, the GOP lost seats. Shortly thereafter, facing a certain challenge to his leadership, Gingrich resigned his speakership and his House seat. 

Gingrich's personal life has been turbulent. He's been married three times, and his divorces are rumored to have been messy. In 2009, the former speaker converted to Catholicism. Gingrich works with his third wife, Callista, in his film production company. Their work has touched on the importance of faith in history, especially in Nine Days that Changed the World.

Always the ideas man, Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future has been a conservative ideas engine. 

The former speaker has a reputation for occasionally straying from the reservation. When Gingrich teamed up with Nancy Pelosi in a commercial about the dangers of climate change, he earned sneers and brickbats from conservatives. The ad was sponsored by former Vice President Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection. Gingrich has since backed off his collaboration and made explanations.

A critical question Gingrich has to answer if he declares his candidacy is this: Does he have the temperament and executive experience to be an able president? How well does an old bomb-thrower and ideas man translate into the nation's chief executive? 

The speakership offered Gingrich some executive experience, but nothing close to what Mitt Romney has from his work in the private sector and in his stint as Massachusetts governor. Nor does Gingrich match Haley Barbour's or Mitch Daniels' experiences as the governors of Mississippi and Indiana. Barbour and Daniels are possible GOP presidential contenders. 

Then again, the better part of Churchill's career was spent writing and as a polemicist and gadfly. His most conspicuous executive role prior to being prime minister was as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I. The Gallipoli disaster sent Churchill's career into a nosedive.

A Gingrich presidential candidacy would likely be met with stony silence by the left and the mainstream media. Both would want to give Gingrich a chance to secure the Republican nomination. If the former speaker did win the nomination, then liberals and the fossil media would unleash an attack not seen against a presidential nominee since the days of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

For plenty of conservatives, and more Americans, it may seem unthinkable that Gingrich could be president. But who in 1930s Britain thought Churchill would be prime minister? Had Neville Chamberlin not been so out of his depth and flummoxed by Hitler, and had Hitler not been so impetuous -- had he exhibited some patience in achieving his strategic aims -- Churchill the prime minister might never have come to pass.  

This begs the old question: Do men make history, or does history make men? Some of both, it's fair to say, with the emphasis changing from event to event. Two plus years is more than a lifetime in politics; it's many lifetimes. Coming events, great and small, may conspire to make the unthinkable thinkable about Newt Gingrich. 

[AK_47_7.62x39]

not no

HELL no.

Newt is a good strategist, a fairly articulate spokesman and forward thinker. After that he falls off the chart in any area I might think of when I begin selecting characteristics I would want in a leader.

Any man who would divorce his wife for some younger woman while the wife is hospitalized undergoing chemo for cancer is a sorry bastard, I don’t care how slick he is with quotes from Bastiat.

[bwc2221]

Newt’s time has come and gone.

[TomGuy]

Chooga chooga choo choo choo

It would take a train to carry all of Newt’s baggage.

Newt would lose the general election by more EV’s than McCain did — whether his opposition was Obama, Clinton, or the fence post adjacent to Toad Suck Ferry.

[TomGuy]

Any politician whose name I could recognize ten years ago is part of the problem in my book. And if I could recognize their name five years ago they’re highly suspect.

Yes.

And therein lies the problem with the Grand OLD Party. The voters want new faces, new ideas. Not a rehash from previous decades. The Grand OLD Party is stuck in a rut.

[labette]

NEVER! - He sold out B1 Bob Dornan. Why? So we could have Loretta Sanchez, and be seen as “mainstream”.

[chainsaw]

Better prospect than Newt - Palin.

I won’t give the liberals credit for trashing Sarah. She has more on the ball then tall the liberals in congress. Sarah is Americas Margaret Thatcher.

[Jim Noble]

You will never sell Newt here, at least not yet.

I like him, a lot. But for him to be our Churchill, the Leftist armies are going to have to be forming up on the Ohio River (so to speak), while the currency loses all of its value and people are starving.

He cannot be a credible candidate without a sociopolitical disaster.

The good news for Newt is that we're well on our way.

[dirtboy]

No.

[mad_as_he$$]

In a word: NO!

[DCmarcher-976453]

Newt is all of a sudden awake to what is happening, that’s good and appreciated but Newt is an old time insider and will talk a good game then not find the intestinal fortitude to act against the establishment. He has too many flaws but is a good technocrat, save him for the cabinet.

[stephenjohnbanker]

HELL No

[stephenjohnbanker]

I miss B1 Bob!

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Speaker Gingrich is going after Obama.

Don’t see too much of that, so perhaps we should stop complaining about Newt, as long as he’s doing a good job criticizing the socialist agenda.

Just saying. If he’s right, then support him.

[bert]

Sanctimonious selfrightousists carry a grudge..... forever

Holier than thou is without end

[Mr. Jeeves]

Yeah, right. Transplant Newt’s brain into Justin Timberlake’s body, and maybe you have a viable candidate. :)

[MRBIGMUTTS]

O HELL NO,NO,NO,NO AND NO!!!!!

THIS DINO BUTT-KISSING FREAK IS PART OF THE GROUP THAT SOLD US DOWN THE RIVER SOMETIME AGO.

He will do it again, if given half a chance!

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

“NEVER! - He sold out B1 Bob Dornan. Why? So we could have Loretta Sanchez, and be seen as ‘mainstream’.”

Another good point! Newt is not just a RINO, though. He is a completely self-serving politician who is only out for Newt. Sitting on a couch with Nancy Pelosi was to support the Global Warming scam, whose only motive is totalitarian control of the economy. He was willing to sell out the entire population of the earth for one picture. But then, he sold out his dying wife, didn’t he?

Putting Newt in any position of trust is always having to watch your back.

To answer the original question, Hell No!

[kara2008]

NO NEWT - NO WAY - NEVER.

NO RINOS. NO global warming con artists. NO! NO! NO!

Newt can't hold a candle to real conservatives like Chris Christie, Jim DeMint and Paul Ryan!

[Salamander]

That’s why I have a “me” page....just like everybody else does.

One click and you know everything you need to..LOL

[ErnBatavia]

Democrats’ wet dream....totally unelectable.