Free Republic

RICHMOND, Va. -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday he would tell his caucus to get "noisy" if he were trying to game out the dispute on a payroll tax cut with President Obama. Asked about the standoff by a voter, the Republican presidential candidate also called the senators "arrogant" over their refusal to negotiate. “I would have all of my members on talk radio back home demanding the senators come back. And I could say 'How can the senators arrogantly go home." Gingrich, who has previously said he doesn't know what John Boehner is going through because President...

The Des Moines Register has a nice Candidate Tracker where you can see where a candidate is in the state on any particular day and even which counties they have visited. Importantly, the also sum up the total number of days that a candidate has spent in the state and how many events they had. It's understood that candidates who don't spend time in Iowa usually don't win the caucuses: It's pretty clear from this graphic that Bachmann and Santorum are really, really focused on Iowa, with Santorum spending over full 3 months (94 days with events) campaigning in the...

(CNN) - Former President George H.W. Bush has joined the ranks of former Republican associates of Newt Gingrich coming out against the White House hopeful. Bush, who occupied the Oval Office from 1989 until 1993, a time when Gingrich was the House Republican whip, told the Houston Chronicle Thursday he was no promoter of Gingrich. "I'm not his biggest advocate," Bush said. In the interview with the Texas newspaper, Bush backed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. Bush relayed an anecdote from his time as president when Gingrich failed to show up at an important White...

Newt challenged Mitt Romney to debate him on the lies Romney's attack ads are spewing out over the airways in Iowa. America Live, on FOX News, just now (1:08 p.m. CST), questioned Romney about it and asked if he would accept the Speaker's challenge to debate. Surprise, surprise; Romney said that as long as there are still other candidates in the race, he must respect them and not debate without them. WHAT A LOW-LIFE, LYING, SCUMMY COWARD MITT ROMNEY IS!!!

RICHMOND, Va. — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says Mitt Romney isn’t showing leadership or courage by refusing to detail his position on a payroll tax issue roiling Congress. Gingrich told reporters in Virginia that presidential candidates must be prepared to talk The former House speaker has gone into greater detail than Romney in discussing the tax matter. Gingrich sharply criticized a proposed two-month extension of a temporary cut in payroll taxes passed by the Senate. House Republicans want a one-year extension. President Barack Obama and the Senate have embraced the idea as the only workable compromise for now. Gingrich...

Eight days after a super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unleashed a $3.1 million media blitz in Iowa, the group launched attack ads in Florida costing one-tenth that amount. But the ads are arguably just as significant in beating back rival candidate Newt Gingrich’s surge. Consider the domino effect of the earliest nominating contests. Just as a Gingrich win in the Jan. 3 caucuses in Iowa could threaten Romney’s longtime edge in New Hampshire one week later, a Gingrich victory in the next major contest — South Carolina — would give him a leg up heading into Florida’s...

First: Absolution does not perfect character, and even a sincere penitent may have demonstrated, by his past behavior, characteristic weaknesses that could lead to a repetition of the offense. Gingrich has said that his adultery resulted, at least in part, from getting so caught up in his work for the American people as speaker. If that is true, then high office would seem to be an occasion of sin that Americans have a reason of charity to spare him. (If there are stronger reasons on the other side of the case — for example, we think that he’s really the...

Watching the last few GOP debates will have had one of two effects on you. Either 1) your love and admiration for Newt Gingrich has been cemented, or 2) you now despise him. I personally fall into the second category. As Peggy Noonan's article title says, "Gingrich Is Inspiring—and Disturbing." While at times his ideas seem brilliant, it's the other times that are problematic. As Noonan later said, "Ethically dubious? True. Intelligent and accomplished? True. Has he known breathtaking success and contributed to real reforms in government? Yes. Presided over disasters? Absolutely. Can he lead? Yes. Is he erratic and...

Newt Gingrich is not our "Next Reagan," the leader for whom we have pined since 1989, but could he be our next Churchill? Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator has made the comparison, and it deserves more attention. Consider all the baggage that Winston Churchill carried with him when he first became prime minister in 1940. His personal life was far from normal. Clementine Churchill had a brief affair with Terence Phillip, and she offered her fourth child with Churchill to a friend. Sarah, the Churchills' eldest child, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Is this a perfect parallel...

Despite his promise to avoid attacking his opponents during the Republican presidential primaries, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Thursday that Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s popularity comes from “people who want to legalize drugs.” Gingrich then went on to criticize Paul’s foreign policy views as naïve. “[Paul] is a guy who basically says, if the United States were only nice, it wouldn’t have had 9/11,” Gingrich said during a radio interview, according to National Journal. “He doesn’t want to blame the bad guys. … He dismisses the danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon and seems to be indifferent to...

Citizens United, a conservative outside group, is running $250,000 of advertising in Iowa promoting a Ronald Reagan documentary featuring Newt Gingrich, The Hill has confirmed. The ad will run Thursday and Friday and then be back up after Christmas for a week, according to a group spokesperson. Gingrich has worked with the group on multiple projects and is close to its head, David Bossie. But group spokesperson David Marschner denied that they were running the ad to help Gingrich, and insisted the move was just business. "It's for movie sales — Iowans are tuned in right now," he said, and...

In an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" a few days ago, Mitt Romney was asked whether, given what we know today, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Romney wouldn't say. "Oh boy, that's a big question," Romney answered. "And going back and trying to say, given what we know now, what would we have done? Would we have invaded or not? At the time, we didn't have the knowledge that we have now." Romney mentioned intelligence before the war suggesting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. After the war, U.S. and international...

BETHLEHEM, N.H. (AP) - Mitt Romney is telling The Associated Press that he won't agree to debate Newt Gingrich one on one. The former Massachusetts governor says in an AP interview that he's not declining his rival's debate challenge because he's afraid to square off against Gingrich, as the former House speaker has implied. Rather, Romney says he doesn't want to define the contest as a "two-man race." And he says that debating Gingrich alone would be disrespectful to other candidates. Romney also is continuing to distance himself from the Washington standoff over the payroll tax-cut extension. He suggests it's...

In between his purchases of gold bullion and road flares, his attempts to put one more gallon of water in his cellar, and the addition of twenty more cans of green beans for dooms day, Glenn Beck has recently taken time to criticize and perhaps even undercut the GOP. For example, in his appearance on Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano last week, Beck said that President Obama and Newt Gingrich were both progressives, and that the only reason the Tea Party is supporting Newt over Obama is due to race. Let’s examine these claims one at a time. Why is...

When discussing his amazingness, Newt Gingrich sometimes exaggerates somewhat, as when, discussing Bosnia and Washington, D.C., street violence, he said, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 16, 1994]. What primarily stands between us and misrule, however, is the Constitution, buttressed by an independent judiciary. But Gingrich’s hunger for distinction has surely been slaked by his full-throated attack on such a judiciary. He is the first presidential candidate to propose a thorough assault on the rule of law. That is the meaning of his vow to break courts to the saddle of politicians, particularly...

John McCain has to be the biggest ingrate in Washington, which is not a town noted for its gratitude. As House Republicans valiantly try to brings some semblance of fiscal sanity to the federal budget there is the 2008 Republican presidential nominee carrying water for the Democratic Party and splashing it in Republican faces. His daughter, Meghan, is a chip off her father’s block. More on that further down. John McCain made another appearance on CNN, this time to discuss House Republican action on tax cuts, and said: “It is harming the Republican Party. It is harming the view, if...

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new record-low 11% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest single rating in Gallup's history of asking this question since 1974. This earns Congress a 17% yearly average for 2011, the lowest annual congressional approval rating in Gallup history.

Could the race in Iowa really go to a man who has spent the least amount of time in the state among all of the candidates vying for caucus-goers? Rasmussen’s latest poll of 750 likely caucus-goers show Romney with a small but statistically significant lead, 25% to 20% for new second-place candidate Ron Paul. But the big move may be from the second tier:

Economist and conservative author Thomas Sowell says voters should disregard Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s “baggage” and support the former House speaker because defeating President Obama in 2012 is crucial to America’s future. Sowell cites Gingrich’s solid record of “concrete accomplishments,” which he argues makes him a stronger candidate than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who pushed through one of the liberal healthcare programs in the nation.... He concludes: “Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich’s past, rather than on the nation’s future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: ‘If the past sits in judgment on...

Gingrich 25% Romney 23% Paul 12% Perry 8% Bachmann 7% Santorum 4% Huntsman 2%