Free Republic

WINDHAM, N.H. – New Hampshire is supposed to be Mitt Romney turf, but Newt Gingrich was the one with the Granite State magic Monday night. The former House speaker locked the attention of the 1,000-person overflow crowd at Windham High School here with the serious, controlled manner of a nominee holding a general election town hall. Classic Gingrich was on full display. “You will not see me bow to a Saudi king,” he said to deafening applause. “Tomorrow morning I’ll release a letter to my staff, to any consultants and to any surrogates we have indicating our determination to run...

GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney’s decision to campaign negatively in Iowa appears to have backfired, with a new Newsmax-InsiderAdvantage poll showing the former Massachusetts governor plummeting to fourth place in the Hawkeye State -- a swift decline that pollster Matt Towery describes as “imploding.” Romney’s lead in New Hampshire is evaporating as well, Towery adds. The InsiderAdvantage survey of 517 registered likely Iowa caucus-goers shows former House Speaker Newt Gingrich the leading choice of 27 percent of Iowa Republicans. He is followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 17 percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 13 percent, Romney at 12...

Newt Gingrich has opened a major lead nationally over Mitt Romney, who is still stuck in roughly the same place he has been throughout the year, according to new NBC/WSJ poll numbers. At the same time, Gingrich has real red flags for a general election, the survey found. In the GOP matchups, Gingrich is at 40 percent to Romney's 23 percent. Everyone else is in single digits - Ron Paul gets 9 percent, Michele Bachmann 8 percent, Rick Perry 6 percent, Jon Huntsman 5 percent and Rick Santorum 3 percent.

While Gingrich was ascending to Speaker of the House on the back of the "Contract with America," Romney was waging a senate campaign with a much less conservative platform To anyone who thought GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich attacked Mitt Romney Saturday by joking he was only one loss to Sen. Edward Kennedy away from "career politician" status, think again. Compared to what Gingrich could have said, that was no attack. It was practically a Cinnabon served with cold milk. Romney remains a well-funded, well-organized candidate with a raft of supporters in many states. But he's weak -- so weak his...

As a lifelong Republican, it saddens me to have to write this letter. My parents believed in the Republican Party and its free enterprise philosophy, and that's the way I was brought up. At age 21, in 1956, I cast my first vote for Ike and the entire Republican slate. Because of frustration with the direction in which the country was going, I became a political activist and ran for the U.S. Congress in 1974. Even with Watergate, my loyalty, optimism, and hope for the future were tied to the Republican Party and its message of free enterprise, limited government,...

As the early primaries draw near, Newt Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel could be the millions he was paid by Freddie Mac. Yesterday morning, top rival Mitt Romney called on Gingrich to return the money during a Fox News appearance. For Gingrich, Romney’s request was merely the latest in series of blows since Bloomberg first reported the payments, estimated at $1.6–$1.8 million, in mid-November. “It’s a perfect argument against Gingrich because it ties him to the sleazy practices of the beltway when he is trying to run as an outsider,” observes Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University...

In the fall of 1993, 25-year-old Maury Kennedy enrolled in a new course being offered at Kennesaw State University, located 20 miles north of Atlanta. “Renewing American Civilization” was its title, and its instructor was Newt Gingrich. “Being new to Atlanta, I wanted to make friends,” Kennedy remembers, and the ten-week course was a practical option. On Saturdays, he and hundreds of other students would gather in a large auditorium to hear the congressman lecture for two hours. Although Gingrich was a notorious firebrand, “nobody dreamed he would become Speaker.” But Kennesaw was a public school, and Gingrich’s critics griped...

‘That one brief moment doesn’t define our lives.” Jackie Cushman, Newt Gingrich’s second daughter, tells National Review Online that her parents’ divorce, though painful, should not loom over her father as he pursues the presidency. But Cushman acknowledges that the story of the divorce, and her father’s 1980 visit to Emory University Hospital to see her mother, Jackie Battley, has become political lore. Cushman sighs when I mention the November 1984 issue of Mother Jones. For more than a quarter century, the magazine’s profile of her father has haunted Gingrich’s reputation. In the piece, her father’s associates claim that he...

ewt Gingrich holds a substantial 35% to 21% lead over Mitt Romney among Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters who say they are very likely to vote in the GOP primaries or caucuses, according to the latest national survey conducted Dec. 7-11 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. But clear majorities say there is at least a chance they would vote for either Gingrich or Romney in Republican primaries in their state. None of the other Republican candidates draws nearly as much potential support.

Times reporter Trip Gabriel, covering the Gingrich campaign, inflated conventional pro-Israel anti-"peace process" opinions delivered by Newt Gingrich into diplomatic drama in Saturday’s ("Gingrich Suggests a Reversal of Mideast Policy.”) Does Newt Gingrich believe in a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Democratic and Republican administrations since the 1990s have adopted that framework for peace in the Middle East, but Mr. Gingrich suggested that he might break with it, calling Palestinians an “invented” people and the current stalled peace process “delusional.” He also said the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which has pledged to respect Israel’s right to exist,...

Immigration is a subject that brings out the best and the worst in Americans. As taught to my fourth-grade daughter this semester, the story of the peopling of America encourages us to celebrate our identity as the land of e pluribus unum. It reminds us of the tolerance required to coexist in a culture of many cultures. It honors the courage to uproot your life so your children can have a better one. . . . Here’s what Newt gets: First, immigration is a rejuvenation of our economy, a source of invention and investment at the high end and of...

President Barack Obama is in big trouble, with both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich leading him in a dozen key swing states, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll. Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney leads Obama among registered voters 48 percent to 43 percent in the 12 states the survey covers. And former House Speaker Gingrich leads the president 48 percent to 45 percent. Nationwide, Obama leads Gingrich 50 percent to 44 percent and Romney 47 percent to 46 percent, according to the poll. The 12 states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania,...

Members of Congress already get better health insurance and retirement benefits than other Americans. They are about to get better insider trading laws as well. Several academic studies show that the investment portfolios of congressmen and senators consistently outperform stock indices like the Dow and the S&P 500, as well as the portfolios of virtually all professional investors. Congressmen do better to an extent that is statistically significant, according to studies including a 2004 article about "abnormal" Senate returns by Alan J. Ziobrowski, Ping Cheng, James W. Boyd and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski in the Journal of Financial and Qualitative Analysis....

The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential campaign announced today the release of its latest ad, 'Selling Access', another two-minute web video aimed at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, calling him out as a corrupt Washington insider who got rich through influence-peddling. The video, which the campaign plans to promote prominently on conservative web sites, includes a clip of Gingrich calling himself an 'insider' and another in which the former Speaker brags about getting paid $60,000-a-speech. The video comes after the viral success of Paul's earlier web ad, 'Serial Hypocrisy', which criticizes Gingrich for many of the same issues.

Former VP Cheney spoke with CNN yesterday, re. his own personal experiences in dealing with him: _____________________________________________________________________ "The thing I remember about Newt, we came to Congress together at the same time, '78, and when Newt showed up, he said, 'We can become the majority. We can take back the House of Representatives,'" Cheney said on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront." He continued, "We hadn't had the House since the 1940s. And initially, none of us believed it- but he was persistent. And he was tenacious. He kept it up and kept it up and kept it up. And finally by '94,...

’m beginning to like the idea of a Newt Gingrich candidacy. There. I said it. Seven or eight months ago I would have called the nice guys in white coats if I’d even thought the thought but today it is not only thinkable it may be necessary. I was just pondering Erick’s early morning post and it struck me that this is where I am: I do know. And if I must choose between Mitt and Newt, I would choose Newt in a heart beat. It is hard to dislike a guy who can filet his opponent with a smile...

Newt: FDR Was The ‘Greatest President’ Of The 20th Centuryhttp://www.breitbart.tv/newt-fdr-was-the-greatest-president-of-the-20th-century/

Over the past few years, there’s been much talk about some talk about a kind of “Republican Civil War” between the old dog GOP establishment and the newly energized Tea Party. This past weekend though, Glenn Beck did something impressive when he managed to piss them both off during an appearance on Fox Business Network. He annoyed the establishment by saying they were filled with progressives and that the only difference between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama was that he was white and he annoyed the Tea Party by asking them if that was why they liked him. And if...

Erin Burnett, CNN: In your book, you talk about -- you knew Newt Gingrich, know Newt Gingrich. Dick Cheney: He's an old friend. Burnett: Alright, so he your guy? Does he have your vote? Cheney: I have not endorsed anybody. I've stayed religiously out of the fray on our side this year. I've been trying to sell books. And that's where my effort's been focused. Burnett: There's a conventional wisdom, though, that Newt Gingrich will cut his own legs off at some point, and that while he may sweep through the primary season, Mitt Romney's the guy you have that's...

A survey of 12 swing states that Barack Obama carried in 2008 now finds the president losing to both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich there. USA Today-Gallup -- polling registered voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- found Obama trailing Romney 43-48, and Gingrich 45-48. Because Obama is expected to hold the big states of California, New York and Illinois, he maintains a popular-vote advantage nationwide, where he leads Gingrich 50-44, and edges Romney 47-46. But the Electoral College math would deliver the White House to Republicans if...