Free Republic

Candidate has already proved his high office credentials as House speaker 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 past three or four years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. Really, America has been bewildered, shocked and disoriented since Sept. 11, 2001. The economic collapse and the unprecedentedly statist policies of the past three years have just compounded the anxiety. The rise...

Two weeks from tonight, the Iowa caucuses will be over. Today, Newt began to fight back, to answer the negative ads, and outright lies. These next two weeks can be the two weeks that change the world. If everyone doubles down on giving – www.newt.org/donate - doubles down on making Iowa calls from the national phone banks – www.action.newt.org - and doubles down on praying and having faith - Newt can do this. Newt can win Iowa. We need to help him starting this moment right now! AMERICA'S FIRST CHRISTMAS... In December 1776, the future of America hung on the...

Over the past few days, Newt Gingrich has stepped up his rhetoric against the Federal Judiciary, exemplified by his comments during Thursday’s debate. Over the weekend, for example, Gingrich suggested in a conference call with reporters that were he President he would feel free to ignore Supreme Court rulings he disagreed with: Newt Gingrich says as president he would ignore Supreme Court decisions that conflicted with his powers as commander in chief, and he would press for impeaching judges or even abolishing certain courts if he disagreed with their rulings.“I’m fed up with elitist judges” who seek to impose their...

Given Newt Gingrich’s rather curious comments on the judicial branch of the federal government during last week’s GOP debate in Iowa, and the fact that he has doubled – if not tripled – down on them since then, two serious questions remain. While they draw raucous applause from conservative debate crowds, are these even remotely viable proposals and, perhaps more to the point, is he even serious?As to the first matter, there’s more than ample evidence that these latest products rolling off the production line at the idea factory that is Newt Gingrich may have skipped over the Quality Control...

Newt 27% Mitt 25% Paul 7% Bachmann 6% Perry 5% Santorum 4% Huntsman 2%

National Review editors have rolled out their big gun, Mark Steyn, to take whacks at the much-whacked Newt Gingrich. Steyn's article was featured at Monday's National Review Online under the banner: "Big-Government Newt." Steyn spends four pages slicing and dicing the eminently sliceable and diceable former U.S. House speaker. But aside from Steyn's always enjoyable trenchant humor, there's really not a lot of there there in the article. By that is meant nothing groundbreaking on Gingrich. The article is a laundry-list recapitulation of the "Many Foibles of Newt." Newt is contradictory, we learn yet again -- here are the examples,...

OTTUMWA, Iowa — Newt Gingrich challenged Mitt Romney Tuesday afternoon to act on his comments that he’s opposed to Super PACs. Gingrich said his rival should disown and condemn the attack ads being run against him by the Romney-friendly Restore our Future Super PAC. “Anything short of that is baloney,” Gingrich said. “We’ve got to understand these are his people, running his ads, doing his dirty work while he pretends to be above it. He can demand that every ad be positive.” Gingrich got peeved when a man asked him about a radio ad he’d just heard that described the...

Negative voting more a factor against Obama than against either Republican PRINCETON, NJ -- Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich essentially tie President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election preferences of registered voters nationwide. Fifty percent of registered voters would support Obama in each hypothetical matchup, while 48% would give their vote to Gingrich or Romney..................

If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office. What the media call Gingrich’s “baggage” concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the coming weeks and months. But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nothing could attest to that fact more than the Israel-Arab conflict, which in reality is the Israel-Islamist conflict. This is not a territorial dispute between Israel and those Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, though it is framed as such. No, the stark reality of the Muslim war against the Jewish state is rooted in one fundamental fact; namely the unchangeable refusal by Muslims to ever accept a non-Islamic nation in territory once conquered in the name of Allah, even if that nation – the Jewish nation – precedes Islam by...

Newt 35% Mitt 22% Paul 11% Bachmann 7% Perry 6% Santorum 4% Huntsman 3%

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “Red Eye” last night, conservative firebrand and frequent courter of controversy, Ann Coulter told the panel that if the choice for the Republican presidential nominee came down to Texas Rep. Ron Paul or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich she would prefer Paul. She stops short of suggesting that she would vote for Paul in a third party bid as conservative radio host Glenn Beck​ recently suggested, but Coulter has serious reservations (like most editorial board GOPers) about Gingrich’s big government conservatism. While Coulter curries much favor among the Tea Party Republican set, not all who...

Has the Republican primary fight become a two-man race, at least on a national level? A second national poll shows Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney tied, this time the WaPo/ABC poll, which shows them at 30% each: Two weeks before Iowans cast the first votes of the 2012 election cycle, Republicans nationally are sharply divided over whom their partyÂ’s presidential nominee should be, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich locked in a dead-even race, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.Gingrich and Romney are each favored by 30 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Running behind them is Rep....

Is a brokered convention just a fantasy? A splintered Republican field and new party rules mean it just might happen. With many (if not most) GOP voters harboring a “none-of-the-above” attitude toward the current crop of presidential contenders, insiders and activists have begun developing dreams of deliverance via deadlock and dark horses. The present state of the race, with four or more candidates drawing significant support in Iowa and elsewhere, raises the real possibility that no one aspirant will win a majority of delegates on the first ballot, creating an opening for some fresh face (Rubio? Christie? Mitch Daniels? Paul...

Newt Gingrich took pains to wrap himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan during last week’s Fox debate in Iowa. He reminded viewers that Reagan was once called “not electable,” just as he sometimes is. He went on to point out he had “accomplished conservative goals” as speaker in the 1990s, including welfare reform and a balanced budget. “I am someone who campaigned with Reagan,” he concluded. But at the same time Newt tries to wrap himself in the Reagan mantle, he also exhibits another nostalgic tic that should give conservatives agita. Newt is an unabashed admirer of the Roosevelts...

Newt Gingrich rolled out a pair of high profile endorsements Tuesday, hoping to regain momentum in Iowa as recent polls have shown the one-time frontrunner slipping back into the middle of the Republican pack. Don Wildmon, the founder and chairman of the American Family Association, announced his support for Gingrich Tuesday. The group, which promotes conservative Christian values and has a nationwide radio network of more than 180 stations, is a coup for Gingrich who has struggled to convince conservative voters to overlook a past that includes multiple divorces and admitted marital infidelity. "Newt Gingrich recognizes the threat to our...

Newt Gingrich earned some $600,000 as a consultant to a major ethanol lobbying group, not the $312,500 that the organization, called Growth Energy, disclosed last spring. When quizzed by iWatch News in April, Growth Energy spokesman Chris Thorne said Gingrich’s contract ended after 2009. Attributing the mistake to an internal miscommunication, Thorne now says that Gingrich remained on the payroll through 2010 and earned an additional $262,500. Thorne said that Gingrich continued to work for Growth Energy for the first few months of 2011 as well, but he could not say how much the former Speaker was paid. Growth Energy...

Clemson University’s Palmetto Poll Executive Summary December 2011 With only one month to go before the important South Carolina presidential primary, a poll of likely voters in the Palmetto State shows Newt Gingrich surging, Romney on a popularity plateau, and the rest of the field of GOP presidential contenders stagnant or falling behind. The second Palmetto Poll finds Gingrich with more than three times the support he had just one month ago, up from 11% to 38%, while Romney remains at 21%, virtually the same (22%) number he had last month. With the exception of Ron Paul, who has risen...

The trick to maintaining the US delusional democracy is feeding the illusion for citizens that voting and elections really matter. But when both major parties are owned by rich and corporate elites it matters less than most people think whether Republicans or Democrats win and control Congress or the White House. Their seeming differences are a clever distraction that keeps fooling and manipulating Americans. With the help of the mainstream media, making entertainment out of political races, Americans are deceived into thinking that elections deserve their respect and participation. As power shifts periodically from one party to the other partner...

DAVENPORT, Iowa – Newt Gingrich saw the enemy Monday, and his name was Ron Paul. Without speaking Paul’s name, Gingrich took dead aim at the Texas congressman who’s crept up in state polls as he’s started to tumble, and is looking increasingly likely to run strong in the caucuses. Focusing on their foreign policy differences, Gingrich painted Paul as unprepared for the presidency and a threat to American safety. “I will stand apart from some of our candidates and believe we need a strong defense, we need a fairly modernized intelligence community,” Gingrich said during a five-minute opening statement. “I...