LOL! I think he's more like the King David who sent another woman's husband off to die in battle so he could sleep with his wife.

More like Moses--that cracks me up.

I want to see conservatives telling fellow conservatives that they should support the guy with three marriages over someone like Brownback or Huckabee. Should be entertaining!

Gingrich's own epiphany about a presidential run dates back three years, when he picked up Harold Holzer's "Lincoln at Cooper Union." The book tells the story of how Lincoln's lengthy 1860 speech in New York City - an intellectually rigorous rebuttal of slavery's legal grounding - wowed the Eastern establishment and transformed a gawky, badly dressed Western politician into a leading presidential candidate. Gingrich saw himself in this story of the underestimated outsider making good, despite the seeming hubris of comparing himself to Lincoln, and it now underpins his unorthodox quest for the presidency.

hmmmmm...

;)

I believe that Newt Gingrich will be the Republican nominee.

He can play the "I'm a REAL conservative" card with the Party base, he will have the "I'm a thinker, not a mope like President whatz-his-name" advantage at a time when Republican voters are looking for somebody who isn't, well, stupid.

Having led the "Republican Revolution" and then been hurled into exile BEFORE that so-called revolution turned corrupt and sour will add to his so-called "aura."

He'll claim to be an "outsider" and be believed by the faithful.

I put my bet down on Newt!

Aside from Brownback would be me worst nightmare as President, but that ain't gonna happen either way. So to that end, I think Newt would be a very strong candidate and we can't overlook him. wink, nod

Oh please, let this be true.  Because a campaign against Newt would be a "target-rich environment".  Lest we forget, this is the guy who dumped his wife during cancer surgery, then cheated on his next wife.  This is the guy that Clinton, for all intents and purposes, ran against in 1996.  And Newt's the guy who resigned his office in disgrace.

But like Guliani, Romney and Huckabee, Gingrich wasn't around for the votes on Iraq and all the crazed spending that occured under Dubya.  There's no vote to tie him into Bush's disasters.  Of the potential candidates fot the GOP nod, its only this group, the outsiders, who have any chance in the General Election.  If Gingrich runs, he affects this group more than Brownback, and that's a good thing.  Because Romney and Huckabee scare the hell out of me.

He's not doing the legwork that the other probable candidates are doing.  Get to it, Newt.

With the exception of House wannabes (Tancredo and Hunter), there isn't a down-the-line conservative in the race.  Brownback's a heretic on immigration, Huckabee is heretic on tax cutting, Romney is a flip-flopper on social issues, McCain's a heretic on campaign finance reform and immigration, and Giulliani is a heretic on gays and abortion.  It'll be beautiful to see the landslide if a true representative of the GOP gets in the race.  Of course, it'll also be beautiful to see the possibly larger landslide if a wing of the GOP sits out of the race due to the lack of ideological orthodoxy (and due to the other liabilities of the supposed moderates).

1. As someone already mentioned, this GOP primary is going to be dysfunctional and while they may not love McCain or Mitt, they will never vote for Rudy in places like South Carolina. And you can print it!
   
2. All three have endorsed Bush's wildly unpopular "surge" idea. At this point, it would be foolish to think that Iraq ISNT going to be a huge issue in '08, cause it doesnt seem like GWB is in any hurry to get us out of that mess. That absolutely kills all three of those candidates. Thath position may fly in the republican primaries, but not in the general electorate. If we run a competent campaign, we'll kill any of these guys.

Please, let this happen.  Newt, while he has his strengths, wasn't popular even when he was popular.

Thing is, Newt isn't perceived as gawky -- he's (quite rightly) perceived as an asshole, and not the least bit endearingly. He is also badly miscalculating the impact on his funding, as far as i can see. He will not be taking the GOP nomination.

IMHO, the most germane question for handicapping the 2008 election is going to be: "How strong is reality?"

The M$M will do its darndest to make the GOP race seem like a contest of mighty men, and the Dem race seem to be a piece of slapstick comedy.  But if reality is strong enough, their efforts will fall flat.

And Iraq should certainly be key to keeping reality in play.

If reality is strong, then running against any GOP candidate is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.*

Newt's adultery will probably hurt him more than the fact that he's batshit crazy, for example.  But it's still a fact that he's an adulterer.

Say, maybe they could run Ann Coulter.  Bat-shit crazy, but not an adulterer.  Suddenly, a campaign slogan starts to take shape....

*Except, of course, some of the fish will be playing Russian roulette, just to make things more interesting.

For the next nine months Gingrich intends to promote sweeping solutions to difficult issues of the day - particularly health care and national security - and then, like Lincoln in 1860, see if the call comes.

I wonder if he's considered this plan to have already begun. Cuz all the times I can think of lately that Gingrich has stood up and started voicing sweeping opinions, I'm not sure I'd exactly call the results positive for Gingrich.

Anyway, the idea of a Gingrich vs Hillary Clinton presidential race is just weird to contemplate. It would be like the zombie corpse of 1995 coming for us all, or something. How would that election go?

I was gonna mention Newt's wife, but Jim Treglio beat me to it. Remember, he didn't just dump his wife during cancer surgery, he was waiting for her to wake up, by her hospital bed, with divorce papers in hand! And not only did he cheat on his next wife, he did it while trying to impeach a guy for cheating on HIS! This may not have hurt him much in the past, but that's when he had just one gerrymandered conservative district to contend with. Now he'll have the whole country. We keep saying when the "dirt" on Giuliani gets more coverage, he's sunk - Gingrich is the same way.

Furthermore, he says if he gets in, it won't be until the fall. By then, much of the money and organizational talent will be sucked up, and many of the currently soft or undecided voters will have committed. Some of his current supporters may have given up on his entry by then, too. So I don't think he stands a chance, unless he gets in NOW with a mea culpa that-was-then-this-is-now bit on the wife issue.

The Wayward Episcopalian: Nathan in New Orleans
http://waywardepiscopalian.blogspot.com/

Newt does have some positives. He really is the one true fiscal conservative so far on the GOP side, without the baggage of pandering to the fundamentalists.  And if you look at his healthcare proposals over at the Center for Healthcare Transformation or newt.org, they are actually very sensible. He's for 100 percent universal coverage. So ideologically speaking, he could run, with veracity, as a fiscal conservative and a social moderate.  That profile has legs.

His healthcare proposals have been taken up in a reform of Georgia Medicaid last year that has not gone particularly well, though for reasons unrelated to the workability of the policies.  And in Missouri, where the governor is the son of Rep. Roy Blunt, Newt's Medicaid reforms are likely to be passed this spring. So he will have two good examples (crash test dummies) of whether his healthcare ideas work by the time the Presidential race heats up.

I find myself in the unfortunate position of rooting for his success in Georgia and Missouri because they are good ideas that will expand coverage to the poor.

However, he's still Newt.  Still with all the baggage of his personal life, and a monumental ego that makes him say stupid things.

He could make a good run for the GOP nomination, and if he gets the nomination, he will lose.

Huckabee, on the other hand, there's a guy Dems need to worry about.

I happen to believe that Newt would be a serious to contender to win should he gain the GOP nomination. He's the candidate that as a Democrat I fear the most. He brings to the  job an incredible legislative history, he united the GOP behind him, and he effectively rang in the Republican rule of Congress. On top of that he has moderate views but consistent with the Reagan Democrats.

Did anyone buy that? Good. That's the way you win. Taut their crap candidates, denounce their good ones.

I don't think he's running. If he got in now he could run an insurgent Buchanan-style campaign in Iowa then try to get the valuable uber-crazy demographic locked up in SC. If he waits until August I doubt he'll have the time and there'll be too much money around at allow him to run in that way.

He either knows that and isn't running or he's blinded by romanticism. And he's never struck me as a romantic.

Still, he has a better chance than the likes of Huckabee, who I've heard continually touted as a dangerous candidate without anybody giving a reason why he's ever going to break out of the second tier.

Does anyone know if Newt has actually taken the steps to hire staffers and state directors in Iowa and New Hampshire?

Find out more about Mitch McConnell's new 2007 ticket of corruption featuring Anne Northup and Jeff Hoover

I don't think Newt will run.  If he wanted to, he would be announcing an exploratory committee this month.  By the time September rolls around, Romney, Giuliani, and McCain will have locked up all the big money donors (and the big money), and the more conservative challengers will be better known.  He polls well now because people are unfamiliar with the other guys.  Newt is sharp enough to know he can't win the general election, and so are Republicans.

Jim Gilmore is the across-the-board conservative to watch.  Duncan Hunter could also fare well, once he gets better known.  Keep an eye on Ron Paul as well -- he is very fiscally conservative, and right-libertarian on social issues (pro-life and anti-illegal immigration, but liberal on the war, the Patriot Act, and everything else.)