Free Republic

Few days ago, after running close second to Mr. Santorum in Alabama and Mississippi, Mr. Gingrich lamented that nobody and entire nation could not understand him. At that moment, I said to myself, “Mr. Gingrich, now I know for certain that I would cast a vote for you in any political election!” I have found a true patriotic visionary whose aspiration is to lead the country to her past greatness, not to run just for the grandiosity of Presidency. No one understands him. Political pundits enjoy listening to his speech and keep wondering why he did not break out as...

Gingrich is still out there fighting for the Republican presidential nomination, invoking the Bible and Abraham Lincoln as he pushes the idea that America badly needs "a visionary conservative." "I've stayed in the race because I think Proverbs is right," he told an appreciative audience at Judson University. "It warns that without vision, people will perish." Gingrich is given little chance of winning the Republican nomination, but he vows to stay in the race. He said his campaign is having a "halftime resetting of the game plan," and he plans to talk more about "big ideas" involving space, brain science,...

It was unbelievable: As soon as Newt Gingrich failed to win both Alabama and Mississippi in the GOP race for president, most members of the mainstream media and political strategists with whom I talked readily admitted, off the record, that he was the most qualified among the Republican candidates to serve as president. Now these are objective pros that have been around presidential politics for years. I have no doubt they were telling me the truth because these folks only tell you this stuff when it is relatively clear that the candidate is no longer a viable alternative. The Gingrich...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Gas prices crept to another record high Tuesday, a day before OPEC meets to discuss its planned oil production cuts in April. The AAA's survey of gas prices hit a new record of $1.753 a gallon on Tuesday, up 3/10th of a cent from Monday's average. It marks the sixth straight record for the survey, which is updated every weekday. The AAA survey, which breaks down prices by state, found Hawaii with the most expensive gas at $2.131, followed by California at $2.129, while Oklahoma is the cheapest gas at $1.612, followed by South Carolina at...

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich mixed words of encouragement with his political message in an assembly at Barrington High School Thursday. Gingrich became the third presidential candidate to visit Barrington High School in its history. With his statewide headquarters at 1000 Hart Road, around the corner from the high school, supporters turned out Thursday in force. And following John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, Gingrich on Thursday combined national politics with advice to students as he addressed the auditorium of about 350 mostly social studies students and about 350 local residents. Sometimes bordering on a commencement speech, Gingrich used examples from...

PALATINE, Ill.--Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on late Wednesday expressed frustration with both the news media and the Republican establishment for failing to understand his “large ideas” for transforming American politics. As calls for Gingrich to bow out of the race grew louder after his second-place finishes in Mississippi and Alabama--two states he said he had a chance to win--the candidate seemed to be in low spirits and offered a grumpy analysis of the state of the GOP primary to a crowd that gathered for a Lincoln Day dinner in this northwestern suburb of Chicago. “The thing I find most disheartening...

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich courted Christian voters in Elgin Wednesday as he resumed his tour of Chicago’s northwest suburbs. He started at Barrington High School and is moving to the Christian Judson University on the banks of the Fox River in Elgin. At what was billed as a “Hispanic Town Hall Meeting with Newt and Calista,” about 300 mostly white Christian college students jammed a campus chapel and applauded when Gingrich slammed President Barack Obama for what Gingrich called “Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church and other right-to-life institutions.” ...Contrasting that with Obama’s apology to Muslims after reports that...

It is hard to argue against Newt Gingrich's brainpower, skills, experience, ideas, & sincere desire to put America back in its rightful place as the leader of the free world both technologically and culturally. It would be ashame to exclude Newt Gingrich from the next administration that takes office, January 2013. In that vein, we conservatives should be willing to accept a Santorum-Gingrich or Gingrich-Santorum Ticket, denying Romney the nomination, in order to truly fix America with Conservative Ideas and Actions. This requires that both Santorum and Gingrich stay in the GOP race until the convention. Any takers?

Even in an open convention, Gingrich wouldn't have a prayer of getting the nomination. But that seems to matter less to him than blowing up Mitt Romney. Gingrich no longer says he can capture the 1,144 delegates required to wrap up the Republican nomination. Instead, he now speaks frankly about a new plan: Keep Romney from getting to 1,144 by the end of the GOP primary season in June, and then start what Gingrich calls a "conversation" about who should be the Republican nominee. That conversation, the plan goes, would lead to a brokered GOP convention at which Gingrich would...

Former House Speaker and current Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised voters that gasoline will be $2.50 per gallon after he becomes president. In fact, Gingrich thinks he may even be able to get the price down to $1.20 per gallon. "His promise to go the moon is easier to achieve," says Michael Lynch, president of the oil consultancy Strategic Energy and Economic Research. "We may see $2.50 per gallon gas again, but not because of anything that any president does." Gingrich’s pitch is attractive to consumers who are confronting pump prices that average $3.83 per gallon and which...

When Mitt Romney walked into the West Virginia Republican delegate convention on Feb. 5, 2008, he had every reason to believe that he was about to notch a key Super Tuesday victory that would help spark his candidacy. The Romney campaign had been laying the groundwork in West Virginia for a year-and-a-half, while John McCain and Mike Huckabee barely had a footprint in the state. West Virginia's system that year awarded 18 of its convention delegates based on the results of a vote taken by 1,207 county delegates who had gathered that day in a giant ballroom in Charleston. This...

....Newt Gingrich is not getting out of the race any time soon. Here’s why: Gingrich firmly believes that staying in the race is the best way to prevent Mitt Romney from clinching the nomination before the convention in August. And he actually may have a point.... Gingrich knows that it is virtually impossible for him, or Santorum for that matter, to beat Romney on delegates, but he makes the case — and it is not far-fetched — that unless Romney starts winning delegates at a faster pace he won’t clinch nomination by end the end of the primaries.... “My expectation...

With his current delegate count less than a third of GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s, former House speaker Newt Gingrich is hearing a growing number of conservatives suggest he call it quits. Yet, those calls have been met with nothing but steely resistance by Gingrich, who spoke in Rosemont Wednesday of his campaign as “the kind that can go all the way.” Just hours after being bested in Tuesday’s Alabama and Mississippi primaries, the Georgia Republican was charging hard in the suburbs, kicking off a two-day trip he hopes will motivate voters to choose him over former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick...

It’s true that in reality, the “win” didn’t change the delegate count all that much. Give or take, all candidates still split the delegates about 2:1 for Santorum. And it’s true that there are clearly enough “winner take all states” that play to the Gingrich game plan that he could still get to the convention with the most candidates, none having 1,144. But it is also clear to me after analyzing the data, I must intelligently weigh the situation for what is the best prospect to beat Obama and sell conservative policies to the American people to save this Republic....

One of the great legends of political consulting is the Dog Food Problem: an apocryphal tale of a company that had the best packaging, the best advertising, the best marketing. But there was only one problem: the dog wouldn't eat it. Forevermore we should no longer call it a Dog Food Problem. We should call it a Mitt Romney Problem. In truth Romney is still probably the most likely GOP nominee. He has the most money, the best organization, the most endorsements, and the best hair. There is only one thing wrong with the Mitt Romney campaign: Mitt Romney. If...

After tonight, Newt Gingrich has to be considered finished. You don't get to be the nominee if you don't win primaries, and if Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, it's hard to imagine any other state in the country where he can win. While Gingrich may remain some kind of factor, in almost every remaining state, this race devolves to a Romney-Santorum battle. That's great news for Santorum, who has been hoping and yearning for a two-man race. It's acceptable news for Romney, who knows that party donors and insiders dread a Santorum candidacy as likely to lead to a...

Two very large numbers are essential in the American public debate today. They are so big that they are almost inconceivable. The first number is 15.5 trillion. That’s a 14 digit number. $15.5 trillion is the size of the U.S. national debt—more or less the amount the federal government owes individuals, organizations, and governments that have loaned money to it. To put this number in a more human perspective, it’s roughly $50,000 for every person in the United States. $50,000 is more than the U.S. median income, about $44,000. That means if a normal, working American worked an entire year...

Bear in mind that this comes from the same cable channel last seen making jokes about three-ways and Rick Santorum earlier in the evening, but that’s not the fault of CNBC’s John Harwood. Harwood told Rachel Maddow last night that the main funder of Newt Gingrich’s super-PAC, casino owner Sheldon Adelson, has written his last check for Gingrich in this race: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyGreg Sargent spoke with the head of the super-PAC, Rick Tyler, who acknowledged that he’s in for some rough days ahead: The key question is whether the pro-Newt...

Newt was the force behind Contract with America. That resulted in GOP win after 40 years of losses. Newt helped president Reagan balance budgets and create millions of new jobs, as Speaker of the House.

Since this is an AP wire, I believe we are allowed to post links only, right?