Tag: Newt Gingrich

Bob Corker has withdrawn his name from consideration as Donald Trump's running mate. Newt Gingrich is up next, appearing with Thump in Ohio today.

Newt: The man who wanted to put a contract on America as speaker of the House in 1995:

The Republican version of a crime bill in 1995 was even worse. It was called the "Take Back Our Streets Act" which was part of Newt Gingrich's Contract on America (he called it "Contract With America.")

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What's your prediction for the outcome of today's Florida Republican primary?

Time Magazine says Newt Gingrich is bracing for a loss and in the process of reinventing himself as a grass-roots insurgent. It says Newt is floundering because he was outstumped and outspent.

Gingrich is unlikely to get the chance to implement this vision. But he is shaking things up within his schizophrenic campaign. After skipping from message to message in recent days, he has apparently decided his best shot at knocking off Mitt Romney is to embrace Tea Party populism. And so he has reinvented himself as a grassroots gadfly, ready to dog the GOP “all the way to the convention.”

CNN says the latest polling which includes the 600,000 voters who voted early has Mitt Romney ahead. [More...]

Newt Gingrich has taken $10 million (so far) from a PAC funded by Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelman and his wife.

What's Newt doing with the money? He's bought $6 million of ad time in Florida.

Newt, of course, pretends people power is fueling his campaign:

"Gov. Romney will have vastly more money than I will," Gingrich said, but suggested he has more grassroots support. "People power beats money power every time."

Adelson owns, among other things, the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. I'm crossing that one off my list of places to stay.

The New York Times has an article about Newt Gingrich's leadership style that voters may find very troubling in choosing a leader for the country: He doesn't take advice from others about strategy decisions -- he just marches to his own drum.

Asked in a debate here Thursday night to name one thing he might undo about his campaign, he said, “I would skip the opening three months where I hired regular consultants.”

Instead, Mr. Gingrich makes nearly all the key strategic decisions by himself, and in a manner befitting his personality — spontaneously, thinking aloud, often voicing a half-formed idea in full public view before committing to it.

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There's yet another Repbulican debate tongight. I didn't see it, but apparently Newt went off on CNN's John King for asking about the ABC News interview with his ex-wife Marianne that will air tonight on Nightline. Here's Newt:

"I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run of for public office and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that," Gingrich said.

"Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife, and make it two days before the primary a sign question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine," Gingrich said.

How clever (not.) A family values spokesman who asks his wife for an open marriage and carries on a 6 year extra-marital affair is now a victim of "personal pain." I wonder if his daughter, the one who's an expert at messaging and branding, came up with that.

The details aren't pretty. While Gingrich was clamoring for Bill Clinton's ouster due to Monica Lewinsky, here's what his ex-wife Marianne says he was doing: Asking for her permission to continue his 6 year affair with his present wife Calista. [More...]

Marianne Gingrich, the second of Newt Gingrich's three wives, is ready to unload. ABC News has the interview, which as of now, it plans to air on Nightline Thursday night. Excerpts should be available during the day. They aired a short clip Weds. night with the teaser that she says "there are things voters need to know." The only direct quote is of her saying that Newt looked directly at her and told her "Calista doesn't care what I do." The interviewer asks her what that means, and then cuts out before her answer. Guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Marianne Gingrich as spoken out before. [More...]

Newt Gingrich, via the New York Times, said in 1995, while he was weighing whether to run for the Presidency:

Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Friday that he would ask Congress to enact legislation imposing the death penalty on drug smugglers, and he suggested that mass executions of people convicted under such a law might prove an effective deterrent.

..."The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, 'Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?' the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically."

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Two fundraisers from Newt Gingrich's campaign have resigned, citing Gingrich's excessive debt. Total defections so far for the self-proclaimed candidate: 18. Unnamed officials familiar with the details of his campaign say:

the former Georgia lawmaker racked up massive travel bills but money had only trickled in since he got into the race earlier this spring.
These officials said that he is at least $1 million in debt.

Gingrich could use his own money to keep going. He is brushing off the departures as "gossip," saying "No one has a clue why they left."

I don't think the "why" matters, given the number of quitters. When 18 people leave a campaign, it's fairly obvious there's something very wrong.

Time to fold Newt. No one's paying attention to your campaign because you are old news with no recent accomplishments and a past record of taking the worst positions on policy. Do we even need to mention his personal life?

Newt Gingrich, who in 1994 gave us his Contract on America, which included a draconian ten point crime bill called the Taking Back Our Streets Act is now switching horses, joining the newly founded conservative group Right on Crime, that advocates for prison reform and reducing our reliance on incarceration as a cost-savings measure.

Right on Crime has a spiffy new website. It's a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a research institute in Austin, TX "committed to limited government, free markets, private property rights, individual liberty and personal responsibility."

The Libertarians have often been our allies in the fight to be smart about crime instead of tough on crime. When criminal defense lawyers fought Newt's 1994 Contract, where did we find help lobbying against the provisions that would have applied the good faith exception to warrantless searches and restricted habeas petitions? From the Second Amendment groups. [More...]

Marianne Gingrich, the second ex-wife of Newt Gingrich, has broken her 12 year silence on Newt, in a lengthy interview with Esquire. She characterizes him as a fraud, and not just for his "kick 'em when they're down" dealings with the women in his life, which we all knew about years ago.

My biggest gripe with Newt is still with is 1994 Contract on America.

I still think there's no way he would gamble on his history and run for President. He's probably angling for some other job he can get by appointment.

Newt Gingrich on C-Span this morning said he and his wife Callista may run for President in 2012:

C-SPAN: "If you were to run, what factors would you take into account? What would lead you to think about running?"

GINGRICH: "Callista and I are going to think about this in February 2011. And we are going to reach out to all of our friends around the country. And we'll decide, if there's a requirement as citizens that we run, I suspect we probably will. And if there's not a requirement, if other people have filled the vacuum, I suspect we won't." (my emphasis)

Blast from the past: Is Newt Gingrich About to Gamble on His History?