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Washington (CNN) - Newt Gingrich tops the list in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new national survey. And a CNN/ORC International Poll released on the eve of a CNN presidential debate focusing heavily on national security and foreign affairs also indicates Republicans consider the former House Speaker the most qualified GOP candidate to be Commander-in-Chief. See full results (PDF) Programming note: GOP presidential candidates face off at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, November 22, in the CNN Republican National Security Debate in Washington, D.C. According to the survey, 24% of Republicans and independent voters who lean towards...

Newt Gingrich’s comment about Occupy Wall Street protesters and personal hygiene during the Family Leader “Thanksgiving Family Forum” sent MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski into a tailspin this morning. She called Gingrich’s statement to protesters (”get a job, right after you take a bath”) arrogant and disgusting. Brzezinski was so disturbed by his quip that she said she was “sickened” and that it made her skin crawl. Adding to what can only be described as disheveled and scattered commentary, fellow “Morning Joe” cast member Willie Geist then handed some belts to Brzezinski in the middle of her rant. She then paused to...

At our sister site Townhall.com, Greg Hengler has curated a series of stand-out responses from newfound frontrunner Newt Gingrich at this weekend’s Thanksgiving Family Forum, a non-debate discussion that elicited refreshingly thoughtful and unexpectedly revealing answers from all the candidates in attendance (i.e. the field minus Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman). Of Gingrich’s answers replayed in Hengler’s videos, this is my favorite, an elegant differentiation of the general ideas of the Enlightenment and the specific (and damaging) ideas of the French Revolution: I knew it was about to be a brilliant answer as soon as Gingrich mentioned Arthur Brooks, whose...

I can’t understand why Newt Gingrich is getting such a pass on his Freddie Mac consulting. He claims to have been a historian for this outfit? FHLMC needs a historian like the U.S.A. needs a Department of Education, like Europe needs a common currency, like … like … I dunno, like Michelle Obama needs another $12,000 accessory. I sputtered about this on last week’s Radio Derb: Newt’s trying to ju-jitsu the thing, telling us that his experience as a shill for Freddie Mac gave him valuable insider understanding of governmental affairs. Isn’t that what we want in a candidate, valuable...

Of all the Republican presidential hopefuls, none has been a quintessential Washington figure longer than Newt Gingrich. After serving 20 years as a member of Congress, including two terms as House speaker, he did not go back home to Georgia, where he had been a history professor. Instead, he kept his hand in the political game, making lots of money in the process – much of it consulting for (or, as others suggest, lobbying on behalf of) major corporations. In recent days, the list of Mr. Gingrich's big-name clients has continued to grow: mortgage giant Freddie Mac, Microsoft, General Electric,...

George Will really doesn’t like Newt Gingrich. On the This Week round table this morning, Will began his comments on Gingrich, now a frontrunner, by stating that his candidate “embodies everything disagreeable about modern Washington,” going on to laugh at the idea that Gingrich was hired by Freddie Mac as a “historian,” and, as a final blow, speaking more glowingly of even Rep. Ron Paul than of Gingrich.

Gingrich's support on the rise this month by Jeffrey M. Jones PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are most likely to name Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as their first choice for their party's 2012 presidential nomination, with Herman Cain close behind. Among all Republicans nationwide, Romney is the choice of 20% and Gingrich 19%. Among Republican registered voters, Gingrich is at 22% and Romney at 21%. Mid-November 2011 results: Next, I'm going to read a list of people who are running for the 2012 Republican nomination for president. After I read the names, please tell me which candidate you are most...

Newt Gingrich could very well be the GOP nominee for one very simple reason: He doesn't give a damn. He doesn't care what the media says about his campaign. He doesn't care that you shouldn't say Barney Frank should be arrested. He doesn't mind telling a CBS debate moderator he's lying...He couldn't give a flying fill-in-the-blank! I've been saying for more than a year that the person who defeats the Billion Dollar Democrat will not do it with great speeches or flashy ad campaigns or by delivering a glib line on Jay Leno's couch. It's not going to be about...

Reagan and Gingrich (from 1980) In his 1980 debate with President Carter, Ronald Reagan famously said: "...I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as...

Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, goes on Meet the Press and calls Newt Gingrich a political "sociopath." Does moderator David Gregory call her out? Nope. To the contrary, Gregory proceeds to play a clip of convicted felon Jack Abramoff accusing Newt of "corruption." View the video here.

"I said that [Newt] was running for president purely for vanity purposes — to sell books, to sell DVDs, which I still believe. Someone told him that, and he was like ‘What would she know?’ and his implication was, like, ‘dumb blond chick, get off TV, what do you know?’ And he just was so — I’m so sick of being talked to like that."

(Reuters) - Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has roared into the lead of the Republican nominating race, brushing off concerns about his work for a troubled housing company, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. Twenty-four percent of registered Republican voters would support the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives if the contest were held now, an increase of 8 percentage points from roughly a week ago, according to the poll, which was conducted on November 18-19. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has stayed near the top of most polls, garnered support from 22 percent of Republicans, slumping 6 percentage...

As Newt Gingrich has surged to the top of the polls in the Republican nomination race, fresh scrutiny is being drawn to his colorful past. While much has been made about the notorious story about his divorce to his first wife Jackie Battley, where Gingrich had her sign the divorce papers while in the hospital undergoing surgery, though the story has been stretched to apocryphal heights (e.g. it wasn’t her death bed, the divorce was discussed beforehand), less publicized has been how they first met — like how Battley was Gingrich’s high school geometry teacher. Er, what? .. In a 1998 article, Salon’s Stephen Talbot shared further sordid details of...

Jon Huntsman is running a traditional, retail politics campaign in New Hampshire. He has 55 days left to make it work. "We are working this state like no one else," he told an audience of more than 100 voters last night in Portsmouth. "We are being honest. We are being sincere. We are bringing a vision that is realistic and doable for this country. And I say, now we need some people. We need a little groundswell. And this is where we're going to get it, in New Hampshire." ......snip........ Last night's town hall was Huntsman's 100th public event in...

SAN DIEGO — Newt Gingrich got his new spot atop the GOP presidential field the old-fashioned way: He earned it. You have to give him credit. And you have to respect his remarkable climb to the upper tier of GOP candidates. After all, this is a candidate whose campaign was, just a few months ago, running on empty. Political experts all pronounced the Gingrich campaign over and done with. But the ace up Gingrich's sleeve is that he rarely has a problem saying exactly what is on his mind, and — as someone whom Republican constituents and political pundits alike...

Newt Gingrich’s campaign sought Friday to differentiate the former House speaker’s extramarital affair in the 1990s with that of Bill Clinton by noting that the former president committed perjury. “Opponents often try to delegitimize Newt Gingrich by pointing out that he had admitted to having an extramarital affair during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton,” notes a new page on Gingrich’s campaign website that is devoted to explaining past controversies involving the Republican White House hopeful. “What these accusers are ignoring is that the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton were due to the fact that the president committed perjury in...

With Newt Gingrich continuing to surge in the polls, plenty of stories are bubbling to the surface, including things from the distant past. And let’s face it… Newt has been knocking around US politics for an awfully long time, with tales of many of his exploits being told and retold until they pass into legend. Of course, you know what they say about legends. [countable] an old story about famous people and events in the past. Legends are not usually true One of the more nasty ones is the persistent tale of how Newt went to see his wife as...

The real cause of the housing bubble and collapse is very simple: An Executive Order by Bill Clinton and enthusiastically championed by George Bush, 13166, forced banks to make bad loans or no loans at all. And Newt Gingrich was championing putting an end to EO 13166 years before the collapse of the banking industry. In the late 1990s, a grand compromise was reached between President Clinton and Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm. Long ago, government types decided that home ownership was the key to fiscal stability, but too many blacks didn't qualify for loans. The banking industry argued that...

"Obama had raised about $89 million for his own re-election campaign. That's nearly 31 times the amount Gingrich raised during the same period. It's even more than 2.7 times the amount raised by Romney..." While he has surged in recent polls, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may be missing one key ingredient for making a late-stage power play for the GOP presidential nomination: money. In years past, political candidates have certainly been erroneously written off by pundits and the press. Notably, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was widely thought to have fizzled long before he ultimately surged back to life and...

But it's a little deeper than that. Take a step back, understand why Republican voters are responding to Newt now, as opposed to a month ago, six weeks, two months ago. I mean Newt's been in the race since it began. Why now? Why now is Newt Gingrich at the top of the heap in Iowa and in some national polls as well? Why? We are three years into Barack Obama's war on prosperity and I think Americans are coming to grips with the upside, if not the necessity, of limited government. And now that people understand or are beginning...