WSJ's Take On Newt Gingrich's Presidential Bid... Even Though He's Not Officially In The Game

Personally, I am a huge fan of Gingrich's (in spite of his mistakes with his marriage). He was the visionary that got the the House for the Republicans using Reagan's foundation. I believe that the Contract With America was one of the most significant documents and movements in modern politics because everyone signed off on it and Bill Clinton took credit for it.

He is currently heavily involved with bi-partisan programs like reforming the health care system, reforming Social Security and much more... even though he hasn't held office in quite a few years.

He's got what it takes to bring the parties to the center in the best interest of the US. He has also got a vision that none of the professional bureaucrats are capable of seeing or relating to. I don't see anyone on both sides of the aisle that can do a better job and can actually purpose solutions (versus pointing the finger of blame).

Brad
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He's Back

Newt Gingrich left Congress in disgrace but now
he ponders a presidential run. Rallying the right

By JUNE KRONHOLZ
March 10, 2007; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- The queue for Newt Gingrich's autograph started forming at 3 p.m. at the Conservative Political Action Conference here earlier this month. By the time the former Speaker of the House of Representatives took out his pen two-and-a-half hours later, the line snaked across a hallway, around a corner and down two flights of stairs.

Halfway back in the line, Deborah Reppenhagen, a retired Defense Department controller, held four of Mr. Gingrich's books that she was determined to get signed, and explained her enthusiasm. "I want him to be my president," she said.

President Gingrich?

Newt Gingrich

Nine years after a spectacular fall from political power, Mr. Gingrich's name still triggers winks and eye rolls among many people who remember his budget showdown with Democrats that closed the federal government, his moralizing and his snit on Air Force One, when he complained that President Clinton didn't talk to him on their way home from the funeral of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Even so, without forming an exploratory committee, cajoling an endorsement or raising a campaign nickel, Mr. Gingrich ranks third in national polls for the Republican nomination and second in a few state surveys. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani led in the Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll taken last week of likely Republican primary voters with 38%, followed by 24% for Arizona Sen. John McCain, 10% for Mr. Gingrich and 8% for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Mr. Gingrich, 63 years old, says in an interview that he has no campaign staff, isn't raising any campaign money and is "consciously not showing up at any presidential cattle calls" like debates, forums or photo ops. He may not even want the job, he adds. "The Oval Office isn't big enough" to do everything that needs doing, he told the CPAC audience, which responded with whoops of encouragement. But he's keeping his options open. He keeps up a heavy speaking schedule -- nine speeches last week alone, including California and Alabama -- and occasionally pops into Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

"We thought it would be too cute" to go too often, he adds.

He's churning out books -- eight since 2005. And in September, he plans what he calls a "national workshop" to mark the 13th anniversary of his Contract with America, the legislative agenda that catapulted Republicans into power on Capitol Hill. And for that he's drafted a 21st Century Contract for America that proposes tax reform, math education and "recognizing the Creator in public life."

Gingrich volunteers wear T-shirts proclaiming "Countdown to September 27," the possible trigger date for his campaign. If the other candidates have picked up his ideas and have launched what he calls a civil dialogue by then "there will be no reason for me to have to run," he says. And if not: "Then we'll seriously take a look."

"All the candidates will resemble bad reruns of 'Survivor' by August," Mr. Gingrich predicts. "And it's not like my name recognition is going to go down over the next seven months," he adds.

Newt Gingrich hasn't made a formal announcement, but he's got plenty of people talking about whether he'll run in 2008. WSJ's John Harwood explains.

Whether he runs or not, the very notion of a Gingrich candidacy says as much about the glum mood among Republicans and the seeming weakness of the current crop of candidates as it does about Mr. Gingrich. Within the party's powerful conservative base, Mr. Giuliani is tainted by two messy divorces and his generally moderate stands on social policies. Mr. McCain is openly reviled for his support of campaign-finance reform, his previous criticisms of the religious right and his support for easing the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Conservatives view Mr. Romney's Mormon faith and shifting social positions with suspicion.

Since the collapse of the campaigns of former senators Bill Frist of Tennessee and George Allen of Virginia, there's also no prominent Southerner in a race that Southern voters largely shaped for the past generation. While former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is courting conservatives, Mr. Gingrich, a one-time congressman from Georgia could better fill the void.

Mr. Gingrich's nomination would depend on the campaign of one or two of the current leaders stumbling, or "rolling off the highway," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform who is uncommitted in the campaign but has worked with the former speaker in the past . Mr. Gingrich "is next in the door if it opens," he says.

A huge share of Mr. Gingrich's appeal to the Republican base is his pivotal role in the 1994 congressional elections when he returned the party to power after four decades in the minority. Mentions of that sweep and of the Contract with America that fueled it draw huge applause from his audiences.

"They want to return to 1994. They remember when politics was about ideas," says Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, currently unaligned but who helped Mr. Gingrich craft the message of the 1994 campaign. But Mr. Gingrich would also enter a presidential race sure to be dogged by the controversies that brought him low in 1998, after Republican losses in the mid-term elections; ethics investigations into his use of tax-exempt funds, two divorces, and the revelation that Mr. Gingrich conducted an affair with a young staffer -- now his wife -- while seeking President Bill Clinton's impeachment for, among other things, his affair with a young staffer.

"It's the marriages and the girlfriend problem," says Phyllis Schlafly, founder of Eagle Forum, a traditional-values group.

Mr. Gingrich admitted his marital indiscretions this week in an interview with James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, saying he had "fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

Mr. Gingrich eventually was cleared of the ethics charges, although he agreed to pay $300,000 from his personal funds to cover the cost of the investigation.

Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank, says he hasn't decided whether to endorse Mr. Gingrich. But he believes his members will accept Mr. Gingrich's contrition.

"He says he has gone down on his knees to ask God's forgiveness for his weakness. Our people are very oriented toward accepting that," says Mr. Weyrich.

Still, polls regularly show Mr. Gingrich with high negatives, even among fellow Republicans. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 14% of potential Republican voters said they "would definitely not" vote for Mr. Gingrich for president; only Sen. McCain's negative vote was higher.

Against this, Mr. Gingrich brings vast name recognition, a torrent of ideas and what Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who's uncommitted in the race, calls "an insurgent personality" that impassions his supporters.

At the CPAC conference, which acts as an early casting call for Republican aspirants, attendees gave a polite reception to Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Romney's detractors passed out flip-flop sandals -- a comment on his changing positions. Mr. McCain skipped the meeting.

Mr. Gingrich -- his silver hair easy to spot on the conference jumbotrons -- waded to the stage through a cheering, chanting audience, many of whose members were in grade school when he last held office. Supporters passed out wonkish policy statements rather than buttons and placards. And Mr. Gingrich devoted much of his speech to calls for "an idea-oriented campaign" and health-care reform.

But the biggest cheers -- and much of his popular appeal -- were for his red-blooded appeals to patriotism, religious faith and a muscular foreign policy. "Why is it we don't have a law?" making English the language of government or enshrining "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, he asked to roars of approval. How dare the North Koreans test an atomic weapon, and how could New Orleans remain a moldering mess, he demands.

"He's got wisdom, and I think he listens to God," Susan Mason, a telecommunications program planner, said afterwards

Mr. Gingrich says he'll spend the next seven months talking about those ideas -- he has hundreds of them on everything from the judiciary to an electromagnetic-pulse attack by terrorists -- and offering his policy advice to the candidates.

Vin Weber, a former congressman and a policy adviser to Mr. Romney, says the Romney campaign is "in active and direct discussions" about policy with Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich says he has been in touch with other Republican campaigns, and will make the same offer to Democratic candidates too.

Mr. Gingrich rates Mr. Romney "a competent businessman" who is off to a reasonable start. He says Mr. McCain's campaign will right itself soon, though based on polls, he predicts Mr. Giuliani will be the candidate.

Both the Giuliani and McCain camps claim they relish the idea of Mr. Gingrich in the race. They say he'd split the conservative vote and weaken Mr. Romney, whom both men see as more electable than Mr. Gingrich in a general election. He'd also "soak up the hard-right vote," freeing Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani to stake out the party's more-populous moderate center, gloats a McCain strategist.

Mr. Gingrich spreads his ideas and keeps his profile high through a vast media network that's energized by speculation about a presidential run. There's a daily radio address on 400 stations, a weekly online newsletter with 200,000 subscribers, newspaper op-eds, speaking tours and even a bi-monthly magazine column for clergymen. Mr. Gingrich says he'll make 300 speeches this year -- he'll reportedly make $40,000 to $50,000 each for 60 of them. He's in the eighth year of a Fox network contract for commentaries and hour-long specials.

Mr. Gingrich's for-profit health-care think tank churns out more ideas that are shared with corporate customers: how to reduce the incidence of diabetes, how to develop therapies for Alzheimer's disease, how to plan for avian flu. A staffer says Mr. Gingrich spends about 40% of his time at the think tank, whose members, including auto, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, pay as much as $200,000 each to attend meetings and seminars and, the group's Web site says, for "access" to Mr. Gingrich.

On the political side, a "movement resolutions" service helps local-level Republican clubs and legislators write conservative legislation. A "NewtTube" contest invites fans to create videos on the economic perils of tax increases. And his steady stream of books includes novels, policy tomes and "Rediscovering God in America," a walking tour of religious imagery in Washington public monuments.

Mr. Gingrich regularly tells audiences that the government shutdown led to a balanced budget and that his take-no-prisoners leadership style resulted in welfare reform. He admits the irony of his appeals for bipartisanship: "I know, I know," he says. But the man who practically invented modern partisan warfare now says today's problems are too deep for either party to go it alone.

As long as Mr. Gingrich remains an undeclared candidate, he can keep talking about those ideas, earning money from the public appearances they generate and promoting his image as the love-me-for-my-brains candidate, political strategists say.

That would change when Mr. Gingrich announced his candidacy, they add. The public glare would shift to his personal life, which many conservatives still view suspiciously.

Given his name recognition -- crowds greet him with chants of "Newt, Newt, Newt" -- Mr. Gingrich could "get by on fumes," says a former staffer. That's important because the compressed 2008 primary calendar will force candidates to buy television time in lots of states simultaneously, rather than depend on the results of one primary carrying their names into the next.

Mr. Fabrizio, the Republican pollster, calculates the cost of television ads alone in the 17 states that will hold their primaries on Feb. 5, 2008, at $60 million per candidate. "Newt could run a race with much less," he predicts.

Most Republican strategists agree that Mr. Gingrich could finish in the top three in Iowa and South Carolina, which lead off the political season. In a series of state polls this year, the American Research Group, a non-partisan polling group, found Mr. Gingrich in second place behind Mr. Giuliani in California and Alabama, and in third place, behind Mr. McCain as well, in some other early-primary states.

Strategists disagree about what happens next, though. McCain and Giuliani advisers predict Mr. Gingrich would lose steam as the campaign moved on, particularly as Republican voters come to conclude he is unelectable in a general election, where voters typically search for the political middle. "He doesn't have the crossover or moderate appeal," says one.

But Mr. Fabrizio believes Mr. Gingrich could target states that award their convention delegates proportionally, and focus on voters only in conservative districts.

"The nomination comes down to a few early states and a kind of buzz," says Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who's uncommitted in the race. Few politicians do buzz as skillfully as Mr. Gingrich. At a recent joint appearance featuring Mr. Gingrich with former New York Democratic governor Mario Cuomo, a line of ticket hopefuls curled around the block. The setting was New York's Cooper Union, the engineering school where Lincoln in 1860 laid out his measured argument against the spread of slavery into the western territories. Lincoln, running third in his party, then went home to Illinois to give Republicans time to think about his ideas. Eleven weeks later, they nominated him.

Midway through a discussion of social and foreign policy, Mr. Cuomo stopped and turned to the former speaker. "I think you would make a great candidate for president on the Republican ticket," he said.

Mr. Gingrich gave a polite smile, let it grow gradually wider as the applause grew, then finally turned to the audience to show off a happy grin.

Write to June Kronholz at june.kronholz@wsj.com