Free Republic

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editors

To many people, history is what has happened in the past few years or weeks. Regrettably, the American public is woefully ignorant of what has transpired in the past. Thus they can be easily influenced by those willing to demagogue or skew the facts to serve their political ambitions or biases. The truth about what happened nearly twenty or fifteen years ago is unknown to far too many potential voters. The recent tidal wave of criticism, re-hashing, and exaggerating Newt Gingrich's "baggage" and positions, mostly by Republican pundits and politicians, is a case in point. However, the reality of what...

Polls showing Newt Gingrich strongly ahead of Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race continue to pour in. The latest: A Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds former House Speaker Gingrich leading former Massachusetts Gov. Romney 40 percent to 23 percent among likely GOP voters. That’s the biggest lead any candidate has held in the poll this year. The other candidates trail far behind: Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 9 percent support, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann with 8 percent support, Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 6 percent, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman with 5 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick...

ANNCOULTER.COM NEWT: SPEAK BOMBASTICALLY AND CARRY A TINY STICK December 14, 2011Fellow right-wingers: Is our objective to taunt Obama by accusing him of "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior," of being "authentically dishonest" and a "wonderful con" -- and then lose the election -- or is it to defeat Obama, repeal Obamacare, secure the borders, enforce e-verify, reform entitlement programs, reduce the size of government and save the country? If all you want is to lob rhetorical bombs at Obama and then lose, Newt Gingrich -- like recent favorite Donald Trump -- is your candidate. But if you want to save the country,...

Just one year after his wife Elizabeth Edwards passed away following a difficult battle with cancer, John Edwards has asked his mistress Rielle Hunter to move into his home The National Enquirer has exclusively reported. -- As the ENQUIRER previously reported, Rielle dumped John just days before he was indicted, even though he begged her to marry him. A source said she refused because she “thought that John’s marriage proposal was just another way for him to protect himself,” and even when he cried “I don’t want to go to jail,” she didn’t budge. However, he has spent the last...

The media elite and the Republican ruling class are remarkably similar in their political projection for the coming year. Journalists spent the entire year savaging every fast-rising challenger to Mitt Romney. The GOPs power pundits became equally agitated at the sniff of a conservative anywhere near the top of the GOP pack. It's the odor of extremism that both the elites in the media and the GOP have detested -- always. So here we are, on the cusp of the election year, and both these groups have one primary target: Newt Gingrich. Both are using the same ammo: Newt is...

2:31 p.m. | Updated Mitt Romney is sharpening his warning to Republicans about the consequences of nominating Newt Gingrich, declaring in an interview on Wednesday: “Zany is not what we need in a president.” “Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it makes for fun reading,” Mr. Romney told The New York Times. “But in terms of a president, we need a leader, and a leader needs to be someone who can bring Americans together.” With 20 days before the voting begins at the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Romney is intensifying his forceful...

The race for the Republican nomination may be coming down to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but in the contest for the Iowa caucuses, their high-profile battle might still turn out to be a sideshow. The national party has spent the last two weeks resigning itself to a choice between the former speaker and the former Massachusetts governor. But Iowa Republicans may end up choosing between Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul. In every post-Thanksgiving poll but one, Paul has been neck and neck for second place in Iowa. In most of them, he has lagged well behind the soaring speaker,...

GOP presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich is extremely susceptible to negative ads and drops behind Mitt Romney when hit with charges he pushed for a health care mandate, took money from Fannie Mae and backed other non-conservative issues, according to a new poll provided exclusively to Washington Whispers. Gingrich's support is "decimated" when voters are exposed to just one negative ad, said polling firm Evolving Strategies. "The percentage of respondents picking Gingrich as their first choice in the primary falls more than 15 points, from 42 to 26 percent," they said. [See pictures of the 2012 GOP candidates.] In the innovative...

Check the price of silver today, and the price of Newt shares on intrade. Newt started falling yesterday and still is. Anyone got ideas as to why silver is collapsing? Or Newt?

Newt Gingrich — the friend of his detractors, to whom he offers serial vindications — provided on Monday redundant evidence for the proposition that he is the least conservative candidate seeking the Republican presidential nomination: He faulted Mitt Romney for committing acts of capitalism. Gingrich did so when goaded by Romney regarding his, Gingrich’s, self-described service as a “historian” for Freddie Mac, which paid him more handsomely than anyone paid Herodotus. Romney was asked by an interviewer about the $1.6 million Gingrich earned, or at any rate received, from Freddie Mac, the misbegotten government-backed mortgage giant. In the service of...

"A good portion of the right-wing punditocracy, Beltway sorts especially, appears to harbor a deep dislike of Newt Gingrich. They can’t believe he is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and are doing everything in their power to enlighten the great unwashed about the multiple inadequacies of this man and knock some sense into them (us) before it is too late."

The media elite and the Republican ruling class are remarkably similar in their political projection for the coming year. Journalists spent the entire year savaging every fast-rising challenger to Mitt Romney. The GOPs power pundits became equally agitated at the sniff of a conservative anywhere near the top of the GOP pack. It's the odor of extremism that both the elites in the media and the GOP have detested -- always. So here we are, on the cusp of the election year, and both these groups have one primary target: Newt Gingrich. Both are using the same ammo: Newt is...

Not just some offhand comment... GOP court-jester Ron Paul is now working the remark hard in Iowa as he attempts to sow doubt in the hearts of Newt-intenders... while the rest of us scratch our heads and wonder what ever possessed Gingrich to put it out there in the first place. After seeing the Ryan budget's approval rating tank in the polls for a month, Newt came out in mid-May stating he didn't find 'right-wing social engineering' any more palatable than ObamaCare's 'left-wing social engineering'. The former House Speaker then attempted to nuance that criticism of Ryan's Path to Prosperity in...

Title and link only per copyright complaint. Gingrich aide is out after blasting Mormonism

Almost all political commentators agree on one thing. The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the last 3 to 4 years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. (snip) (So) what kind of candidate is most likely to make sense of the terrible events and forces that weigh down our country; be capable of vividly describing our plight and what needs to be done; and convince the public that he or...

Want to know the key to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney winding up as the Republican presidential nominee? Two words: Ron Paul. The Texas Congressman’s strength in Iowa — there is a legitimate case to be made that he will win the Jan. 3 caucuses but more on that later — coupled with his willingness to go after frontrunning former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in often quite personal terms make him perhaps the critical x-factor in Romney’s winning calculus....

BOSTON—Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney blasted rival Newt Gingrich Tuesday as an “extremely unreliable leader in the conservative world” who has taken positions in this campaign that should give GOP voters pause as they consider their choices for the party’s nomination. Romney, in an interview with The Washington Post, offered some of his toughest criticism to date of the politician whose sudden rise in the polls has made him, at least for now, the front-runner for the nomination. He also had tough words for President Obama and his campaign, saying he would not let them portray him as a tool...

Two GOP presidential hopefuls traded their debate podiums for a conference table Monday in a debate straight from the 19th century. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman took part Monday afternoon in a traditional Lincoln-Douglas-style debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The one-on-one session, the first of its kind during the New Hampshire primary campaign, allowed the candidates to address foreign policy issues in greater detail, giving them five minutes for each response. By contrast, traditional debates allow candidates no more than 90 seconds to detail their positions. “One of the great weaknesses of...

Actual Headline: Charles Krauthammer To Bill O’Reilly: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Victim Of His Own Creative Intelligence’ As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to gain a lead in the polls, much of the talk surrounding his run is the apparent opposition to his nomination from the Republican establishment. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly asked Charles Krauthammer precisely this, and before getting a serious answer on Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel, received a bit of a ribbing on the definition of “establishment.”