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The extent of your research into Newt’s recent activities clearly hasn’t gone any deeper than the Mitt Romney spin room. In addition to being a CONSERVATIVE commentator on FOX News since the mid-2000s (i.e. not someone who was brought on to agree with Alan Colmes), here are some of his activities, which go far beyond your nitpicky spin over a handful of incidents you think imply something that isn’t there.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271263380723514.html

On any given day, the former Speaker of the House can be found on a chartered jet headed to Iowa to train future GOP candidates through his American Solutions group, or in Phoenix discussing ways to lower health-care costs with drug makers through his for-profit Center for Health Transformation. He might also be in Philadelphia, narrating a film produced by Gingrich Productions, or in Texas, reaching out to conservative Latino leaders through his bilingual news and commentary website, the Americano.

After raising money through one of his groups, Mr. Gingrich funneled $150,000 in seed money to a successful campaign last fall to oust three Iowa Supreme Court judges who supported gay marriage.

“Newt’s role was quiet and very low key, but it was pivotal,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a well-known Iowa conservative who led the anti-judges campaign.

In 2006, Mr. Gingrich started the group American Solutions for Winning the Future, with a $1 million donation from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The group allowed Mr. Gingrich to broaden his ambitions. It was billed as a centrist policy shop that would train local candidates and promote an array of pet causes, among them Social Security privatization and what Mr. Gingrich called “patriotic education,” including mandatory annual public-school instruction on the Declaration of Independence.

In March 2009, just weeks before converting to Catholicism, he formed Renewing American Leadership, a nonprofit group designed “to bring moral leadership back to our nation.” Six months later he created the Americano to target conservative Hispanics.

Mr. Gingrich tossed off a line in a paid speech that May in Las Vegas. “Someone in this room ought to simply have a bumper sticker that says, ‘Drill more, pay less,’” he told the Money Show conference, to a smattering of applause.

American Solutions launched an online petition campaign under the title, “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” It got 100,000 signatures in a week, and more than a million in a month. Sen. John McCain made the slogan a core plank of his presidential campaign, and at the Republican nominating convention that September, it morphed into “Drill, Baby, Drill.”

Mr. Gingrich sees nothing unusual in the sweep of his many endeavors over the past several years. “This is just an institutional variation on what I have been doing since 1978, which is trying to build a permanent Republican majority,” he said in an interview. “Except now, I am reaching out to people on a huge scale.”

In the past four years, Gingrich Productions has produced three films on religion and one each on energy, Ronald Reagan and the threat of radical Islam—all done as joint projects with the conservative activist group, Citizens United. The latest project: A film on American exceptionalism, another likely campaign theme.

...the former speaker talks constantly of the need to reclaim the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage, expand oil drilling, rebuff secularism and protect against Islamic extremism.

Mr. Gingrich tossed out ideas for revamping the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing it with a joint venture between business and government that would make sure environmental regulations don’t stifle job creation. He also proposed getting the private sector to help slash regulations across other federal departments.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/print/4463516

Gingrich’s ties to the tea party movement are deep and long-lasting.

In March 2009, when tea parties were just beginning to be organized, the Georgian pledged to use his prodigious mailing list at American Solutions to publicize the inaugural Tax Day event.

He posted a link on every website he owned, sent emails to everyone in his database and produced a video while publicly announcing his support of the tea party movement — long before radio talkers like Glenn Beck jumped on the bandwagon.