Free Republic

...Since Gingrich had taken control in January 1995, Republicans in the House had held together. Focused on fulfilling the Contract with America, they passed a flurry of legislation, which kept them occupied — and their divisions concealed — for the first two years. By July 1997, however, the contract was finished, and conservatives, particularly those elected in the Revolution of ’94, were growing frustrated with Gingrich’s leadership. The speaker was disorganized. “He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda,” DeLay writes in his memoir, No Retreat, No Surrender. He was erratic. “On Monday, we would say...

In a new interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, Gingrich said human life begins at implantation rather than conception, which science has established as the starting point for human life. Tapper asked him, “Abortion is a big issue here in Iowa among conservative Republican voters and Rick Santorum has said you are inconsistent. The big argument here is that you have supported in the past embryonic stem cell research and you made a comment about how these fertilized eggs, these embryos are not yet “pre-human” because they have not been implanted. This has upset conservatives in this state who...

More conventional wisdom that needs dispelling this primary season: The adulterous and thrice-married Newt Gingrich will be unable to attract evangelical voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. While it's true that the former House speaker ultimately may fail to achieve the redemption he's seeking from Iowa evangelicals, it's also a fact that he has been quietly building bridges to that important segment of the caucus-going electorate for more than a year. And, he not only built the bridges, he paid for them. That could turn out to be Gingrich's greatest secret weapon against his rivals in the Republican caucus in...

Ramesh Ponnuru is out with his endorsement of Mitt Romney. It’s a reasonable endorsement that doesn’t really try to do what so many others are doing — claiming Romney is something he is not. But one line up front made me chuckle just a bit. It happens to be the first sentence. Even though nobody has yet cast a vote in the primaries, Republicans are increasingly resigned to Gov. Mitt Romney’s winning the party’s presidential nomination. This is the real danger that Newt Gingrich poses to MItt Romney. Suddenly, to many people, Romney does not look so inevitable. In fact,...

Prior to the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia had earned an A rating with Gun Owners of America. But that all changed in 1995, after Republicans were swept to power and Gingrich became Speaker of the House. The Republicans gained the majority, thanks in large part to gun owners outraged by the Clinton gun ban. And upon taking the reins of the House, Speaker Gingrich said famously that, “As long as I am Speaker of this House, no gun control legislation is going to move in committee or on the floor of this House and there...

MERRIMACK, N.H. — Jon Huntsman has staked his presidential bid on doing well in New Hampshire. With few exceptions, the former two-term governor of Utah has campaigned exclusively in the Granite State. Two months ago, he moved his national campaign headquarters to Manchester, and he’s beginning to make some inroads there. Huntsman explained his strategy this way: He wants to avoid the meteoric rises and flameouts of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. “I don’t want 15 minutes of fame,” Huntsman told reporters at the Merrimack Town Hall. “I want a sustained rise that isn’t fickle and isn’t short-lived,...

At a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa Thursday, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said children in poor neighborhoods have "no habits of working," no one around them works and they get cash illegally.

here are many problems that conservatives should have with a President Gingrich. His personal life has been speckled with adultery. He has flip-flopped on global warming. His firm has profited, though modestly, from the housing debacle (although there is no hint of wrongdoing on Gingrich's part.) Gingrich sounds very wonky for a conservative who wants to lead a revolution; conservatism is not, in essence, detailed. Basic principles, nearly all of which devolve choice to the individual or the state government, are clear, few, and brief. Nevertheless, there is a compelling case for Gingrich as the Republican nominee. He is both...

NEWBERRY, S.C. -- Cathy Gibbons is a one-woman focus group for Republican attitudes toward Newt Gingrich. Back in the '90s, Gibbons grew tired of Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House. But this year, after watching Gingrich at Republican presidential debates, she sees him as a different man -- and the best candidate in the field. "I've heard them talk on the news about all the baggage, but I don't see that any more," says Gibbons, of McCormick, S.C. "He's not the same person. They say people can't change when they become adults, but I think Newt has." Still,...

In what has become almost a ritualistic rite of passage during the 2012 GOP presidential primary, Newt Gingrich, who has surged to the top of nearly every national and state poll, will meet with Donald Trump on Monday, the day Trump’s book, Time To Get Tough, hits stores. Gingrich has filled the populist space in the polls that Trump ushered in when Trump combined his harsh rhetoric toward Obama while embracing populist economic messages that endeared himself to Tea Party crowds. According to Politico, which first reported the story, Trump would like to endorse a candidate during the primary season.

Which is a long way of saying that the best thing that can happen to Newt right now is that the conservative media vet him and do so with great vigor, anticipating every charge and debating every past apostasy and failing. Newt's personal story, marriage to Callista and his conversion are powerful walls against his past poor judgments in his life, but they serve not as all to answer Steyn's charge that Newt "hops and skips like a giddy frog across lily pads across the pond, from one, little, itsy-bitsy novelty idea to another, not awfully well thought out." "And...

Scathing ad released by Ron Paul about Gingrich: [VIDEO AT SITE] or HEREBut am I alone here in asking why no one is going after Romney? Bachmann gets hot, the media and her competitors hack away. Perry gets hot, and they hack away. Cain gets hot....bam! Now we're on to Gingrich but who the hell is hacking away at Romney? Mighty curious. As for the ad itself, it's definitely information people should mull over before pulling the lever for Newt but I'm with Ace's rant here (always long winded but well worth the read) ....our choices suck: ...We don't have...

All along, everything has gone according to Mitt Romney's plan. His strategists didn't believe that Tim Pawlenty would catch on. They were confident that Michele Bachmann would fade. They were prepared for Rick Perry. They never thought Herman Cain would pass the commander in chief test. But they didn't count on a late and strong rise by Newt Gingrich ...

Newt Gingrich, whose GOP competitors accuse him of being soft on illegal immigration, pledged Thursday, if elected president, to build a double fence along the Mexican border during his first days in the White House. “We haven’t been able to build a fence on the border because we have not been a serious country,” the former House speaker said at an event in Iowa, before he signed his name to the pledge sponsored by the activist group Americans for Securing the Border. Gingrich has maintained that the border needs securing but has also suggested that some of the 11 million...

NEWT GINGRICH is the latest unlikely figure to vault to the top of Republican presidential polls, and unlike those who preceded him - Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain - he’s likely to stick around. That’s partly due to necessity. With just a month until the Iowa caucuses, conservatives don’t have time to anoint a new savior. It’s also because, despite his copious shortcomings, he seems immune to what felled the others. An able debater, he won’t flop like Perry and Cain. He’s not a full-on nut like Trump. And his legislative record eclipses Bachmann’s, which barely exists....

Newt Gingrich specifically urged the Florida Legislature to consider projects initiated by clients of his Center for Health Transformation, an audio recording of the 2006 meeting shows. The audio raises more questions about Gingrich's claims to have never engaged in lobbying. The 2006 health "summit" was noted in a New York Times story tonight. The Buzz tracked down the audio, which was archived on the Florida House website. "We urge you look to look at a Travelocity model of buying drugs with real-time information, building with what you've already done with My Florida Rx," Gingrich told a packed audience in...

The Newt Gingrich surge has moved him to the top of the polls in Iowa, big gains in New Hampshire and now a two-point edge over President Obama in a hypothetical general election match-up. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds Gingrich attracting 45% of the vote while President Obama earns support from 43%. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. Last week, Gingrich trailed the president by six. Two weeks ago, he was down by twelve. Earlier in the year, both Rick Perry and Herman Cain followed a similar...

Jon Huntsman is rising in New Hampshire. If Huntsman comes back in New Hampshire, he is in the game. Here’s the funny thing about Jon Huntsman. His record as a Governor is more conservative than Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney combined. He is more pro-life than either of them. He is more economically wedded to the free market than either of them. He has better foreign policy experience than either of them. Huntsman should be a conservative hero in this race. But he is not because of his own campaign’s doing. The campaign made a conscious choice to give the...

Pressed in the interview about how that was not "a point of view one normally associates with conservatives," Mr. Gingrich replied that there are times "when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development." He cited electricity and telephone network expansion as similarly effective private-public purposes. "It's not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism," he said. He added, "I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today."

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday that “really poor children” have bad work habits and no knowledge of how to make an income “unless it’s illegal.” Doubling down on his argument that children in poor neighborhoods should be employed as janitors in schools, Gingrich argued that the best way to teach children in poor neighborhoods good working habits is to put them to work as soon as possible. “Start with the following two facts,” Gingrich said Thursday at a campaign stop in Iowa.