Unlikely, but he’s making noises yet again.

From C-Span via Politics Daily:

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.”

Here’s the thing…Newt knows he’d never win. His personal skeletons are simply too numerous and he doesn’t have mainstream appeal.

Still, as a VP candidate? I could see a Romney/Gingrich ticket being compelling to fiscal moderates.

See, Gingrich is like Cheney and Biden in that way. You’d never put him up for the top spot because he couldn’t win, but having that brain power behind the top guy/gal? All of a sudden his personal skeletons melt away…even though he’s still a heartbeat from the Oval Office.

What do you think?

“In LaCrosse, Wisc., the Gundersen Lutheran Hospital system is, according to the Dartmouth [Atlas of Health Care], the least expensive place in America for the last two years of life. They have an advanced directive program, and over 90 percent of their patients have an advanced directive. They have electronic health records, so everybody on the staff knows what the advanced directive is. They have a very strong palliative care program for using drugs to manage pain. They have a hospice program. The result is today, the last two years of your life in costs are about $13,600. The last two years of your life at UCLA are $58,000. Now, why should Medicare pay $58,000 for the same outcome if it could pay $13,600?”
- Newt Gingrich responding to a question from PBS

So, sounds like a pretty fair broker, right? After all, the biggest issue isn’t quality of care, it’s how we can contain costs so everybody can get in the system. And if the majority of costs are found in the last two years of your life, there are certain things you can do to make sure you have a say in those decisions.

However…

Compare that Newt with the Newt who was on This Week recently and was asked him about Sarah Palin’s death panel Facebook posting…

Okay folks…I realize that politicians sometimes feel obligated to defend their side, but why would Newt engage is such obvious mental gymnastics to defend something that’s clearly a lie. Especially when he purports to believe the exact opposite!

Consider me disappointed, but not surprised.

Looks like I’m not the only one.

From Huff Post:

“Of course this disturbs me,” said Lionel Sosa, one of the more influential Hispanic media advisers in the GOP. “I’m not surprised at Rush Limbaugh but I’m very surprised at Speaker Gingrich because he is one of the key people who knows the importance of the Latino vote to the Republican Party. He must realize how his rhetoric, if it does influence any Hispanics, how damaging it could be. This [confirmation] is something that is going to happen anyway. For a senator to have strong opposition to her, they are either not aware of the impact Latinos will have on the next election or they don’t care.”

Ultimately, I don’t really know how much play Newt’s comments are getting among Hispanic voters, but if he runs for President, they’ll definitely be part of the debate.

(NOTE: I misread the poll results. The poll is among ALL voters. I’ll strike what isn’t relevant anymore, but most of my comments weren’t about the Republican nature of this poll anyway. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to Simon for pointing this out.)

This was a bit of a surprise, especially considering that only Republican voters were polled, but it shows who’s leading the pack in a couple years.

Basically, Huckabee is in a surprisingly good position, but Romney, Palin and Gingrich all have double digit deficits.

From Public Policy Polling:

Huckabee fares the best of the top Republican contenders at this point in time, trailing Obama 49-42. That margin is basically the same as what Obama won by against John McCain in November. Huckabee also has the best favorability numbers of the Republican quartet at 42/34. Even after running for President last year a quarter of the country doesn’t have an opinion about him one way or the other.

Sarah Palin’s numbers are an interesting conundrum. She easily has the best favorability among Republicans voters, with 76% saying they have a positive opinion of her. The other three range from 60-67 with the party base. But she also has the largest percentage of GOP voters- 21%- who say they would vote for Obama if she ended up being the party nominee. So for the folks in the party who don’t like her that feeling is strong enough they’d rather vote for a Democrat. It adds up to a 12 point deficit for her, 53-41. Overall the electorate has a negative opinion of Palin, 42/49.

The low 60% favorability rating among GOP voters belongs to Mitt Romney, certainly an indication that securing the nomination is likely to once again be a struggle for him. He is viewed favorably by the largest numbers of Democrats for any of the Republican candidates in the survey, at 27%. He trails Obama 50-39.

Obama: 49%
Huckabee: 42%
Obama +7

Obama: 50%
Romney: 39%
Obama +11

Obama: 53%
Palin: 41%
Obama +12

Obama: 52%
Gingrich: 39%
Obama +13

All the normal caveats apply here that it’s too early, etc., but if Obama is under 50% and Huckabee is only 7% behind, well, the GOP will take note of that. But if Huckabee genuinely gets the nod as the candidate, I think it would tear the GOP in two for the foreseeable future since it would seem like the religious right’s candidate.

I think I’ve said this before, but the Republicans definitely run the risk of being fractured between the social and the fiscal conservatives. Because call him whatever you like, but Bush was not a fiscal conservative. And there are A LOT of fiscally conservative folks who really despise the less tolerant aspects of social conservatism.

Now Newt is weighing in on the obvious split and since I’m moderately cynical…I think he’s starting to lay the groundwork for a 3rd party run.

From CNN:

“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Gingrich said Tuesday. The speech, to a group of students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, was recorded by Springfield TV station KY3.

But Gingrich, bemoaning President Barack Obama’s “monstrosity of a budget,” acknowledged that Republicans are partially to blame for the escalation in federal spending.

“Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year,” he said. “If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months.”

Want more proof that Gingrich is thinking 3rd party? His American Solutions group is starting to get its hooks into the “Tea Party” movement.

Long story short, Newt knows a movement when he sees it and if there’s a chance he could use it to raise his profile, well, all the better.

More as it develops…

McCain did it a couple days ago when the RNC released an ad essentially trying to raise questions about the language Obama used during press conferences, and today Gingrich sounds the same alarm.

From Politico:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is denouncing Republican attempts to link President-elect Barack Obama and disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Senator John McCain Sunday distanced himself from Republican National Committee attacks on Obama, and in a letter to RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, Gingrich went further, writing:
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

The recent web advertisement, “Questions Remain,” is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.

In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.

From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.

It’s encouraging to see that some Republicans politicians are at least trying to be post-partisan. But will the RNC take the ad down? Or will they continue to wage the same old tired partisan warfare?

We shall see…

Well, it doesn’t appear that the GOP will be lacking superstars to go up against Obama 4 years for now, and Robert Novak throws a familiar name into the mix…

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Even one of his strongest supporters for president in 2012 admits it is a “very risky choice.” But Republicans are in a desperate mood after the fiasco of John McCain’s seemingly safe candidacy.

Republicans seem chastened by the failure of seeking moderate, independent and even Democratic votes. They are ready to try going back to the “old-time religion.”

Personally, I think this is a no go.

Sure, Newt is a whip smart guy, but he’s ruthlessly political. And in this new “post partisan” era I think his brand is already too badly damaged.

Also, maybe this is just me, but the guy doesn’t strike me as presidential. He’s too much of a wonk. That was perfect for the revolution he ushered in during the 90s, but I just don’t buy that he would be an effective messenger of new conservative leadership…at least not nearly as much as say somebody like Romney would.

What’s more, I think if conservatives are really interested in the “old-time religion” they will get destroyed in the next couple election cycles. People didn’t just repudiate Bush, they also repudiated his politics. Republicans need to rebrand themselves and picking a voice from the past is a surefire way to reinforce the idea that they haven’t learned from their mistakes.

One last thing…how many of you think Newt talked to Novak and asked him to float his name out there so he could test the waters? That makes a lot more sense to me than GOPers actually thinking that he can lead them out of the wilderness.

I’m genuinely stunned by the lack of understanding about Bobby Jindal on Newt’s part here.

From The Hill:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “would be far and away the best candidate” to appear on the Republican presidential ticket with Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

Gingrich, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” heaped praise upon the former congressman,
saying that he is a “spectacular” governor and predicted that Jindal would be a presidential candidate in the future.

As always, his reasoning on Jindal’s biggest question mark (his age) seems compelling at first glance…

Asked whether it could be a problem that the governor, who is 37, might be perceived as not ready to lead the country in case he would have to replace McCain, Gingrich said the case can be made that Jindal’s “experience in the executive branch and in the legislative branch is greater than” that of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

“It strikes me that it’s going to be very hard for Obama’s campaign to explain that Jindal, as a governor, who has served as an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, has served as a congressional staffer, has served as a congressman, is not qualified but Sen. Obama is qualified,” Gingrich said.

But Newt…Jindal is 37.

You’re actually proposing that the guy a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, especially in an election where age is being increasingly raised as an issue, could be under 40? It’s not like Jindal cancels McCain’s age. It only brings a second question mark into the mix, and that’s not what yo want.

Also, let’s do a quick thought experiment here…imagine if Obama was under 40. What would the hue and cry would sound like. But somehow it’s okay for Jindal? Not a chance.

Also, what would voters think about Jindal’s more colorful religious beliefs? My guess is they’d be more than a little concerned, and this may almost certainly push more evangelicals away from McCain and towards Obama.

Long story short, Jindal doesn’t make sense in 2008, and I’m surprised that Newt isn’t seeing that.

But between the new health care proposal, heavy investment in green-collar jobs and renewed investment in our infrastructure and national education system, Obama seems like he has plenty of ideas that Americans could get behind. So it feels like Gingrich is trying to position Obama as the guy without ideas. But this has been Newt’s message since long ago: the Republican party is the party of ideas and the Democrats aren’t.

Still, Newt’s historical perspective is always an interesting read…

Your campaign has been brilliant. It has given you more support and more momentum than most analysts expected a year ago. Keeping things simple and vague has worked so far, and it might work all the way to the White House. “Change you can believe in” is a great all-purpose slogan. It allows every person to fill in his or her own interpretation of what it means. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 promise to run “a government as good as the American people.”

The challenge you will face in the next few months is stark. Do you want to remain vague? You might win—but you might find that, in winning, you have a “victory of personality” with no real policy consequences. Or do you want to provide specifics? If so, your victory could be a clarion call from the American people to Congress to join you in achieving your goals. [...]

Can you find five big changes that are substantive, popular—and can rally Democrats from the House and Senate to join you on the Capitol steps in September or October? If you cannot, you should question if you’ll be able to deliver on your “change” slogan. Your campaign advisers may not care about that. Their instinct will be to win the election and leave the difficulties of governing up to you. But if you want to be a genuine historic agent of change “we can believe in,” then you have to look beyond Election Day.

Well, I think I named 4 changes above. Whether they fall into Newt’s definition of “big” is a completely different conversation. But what would be a 5th? A completely new foreign policy philosophy? Is that enough? My guess is yes.

What do you think?

Hillary Clinton has asked for it, but this style of debate is apparently being characterized incorrectly.

TPM provides some perspective…

This is not in fact the format used by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas — which in turn would be anathema to a modern viewing audience. In those famous debates, one candidate would speak for a solid hour, the opponent would go for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate would make a half-hour rebuttal. In this format, there was simply no active role for a moderator to play.

A better term for Clinton’s proposed format might be “Santos-Vinick,” after the fictional West Wing debate acted out by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda.

To the best of my knowledge, Newt Gingrich proposed this format back in 2007 when he was flirting with running for President. Here’s his commentary…

We don’t really have presidential debates today; we have a kind of meaningless political performance art: a recitation of talking points choreographed to avoid any risk.

In the 2004 election, the Bush-Kerry debate rules ran a full 32 pages of do’s and don’ts, including one rule that ordered the moderator to stop any candidate who dared to depart from the script to reference someone in the audience.

The candidates also were ordered to turn over for inspection “all such paper and any pens or pencils with which a candidate may wish to take notes during the debate.” Pen and pencils. Talk about the vital stuff of democracy!

In telling contrast, the ground rules for the most famous debates in U.S. history were outlined in a two-sentence letter from Abraham Lincoln to Stephen Douglas, his opponent in the 1858 race for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. After a prompt exchange of letters, they settled on the terms for seven debates. Lincoln insisted only that “I wish perfect reciprocity, and no more.” There was no talk of pens and pencils.

In any event, I agree with Alan. Obama should accept the challenge. But it’s interesting that the historical context has been revised via a pop culture reference and a Republican operative.

The following Q&A is classic and points to exactly what this blog has been saying for the past 3 years:

Okay, back to the past. What happened to your party over the last eight years?
They went off the rails. That’s it. They took a majority that took 16 years to build and they destroyed it.

How?
There was a fundamental misunderstanding about how to govern. The concept of red versus blue is a tactic, not a strategy. In the long run, in order to mobilize your base, you tend to become more intense and your positions become more vitriolic, and you drive away the independents. Then you are no longer a majority.

Long story short, partisan hackery doesn’t work as a political philosophy. And that’s goes for both sides. It just so happens that the Republicans’ star has fallen particularly far in the past decade and a half.

Do note how Newt Gingrich doesn’t take the bait AT ALL. Good for him.

UPDATE:
Well, the video doesn’t seem to want to embed in some browsers, so here’s the link.

(h/t: Poligazette)

Here are some excerpts:

In his latest book, Assault on Reason, former Vice President Gore wrote: “Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.” [...]

Former House Speaker Gingrich, in an op-ed written in February with former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, called for a different kind of presidential campaign – one involving “more thought, more creativity, more substance, more solutions–and a whole lot less rhetoric.” [...]

And New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, in announcing this summer that he was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent, took a shot at the way the two parties in Washington have governed.

“I am particularly upset that the big issues of the time keep getting pushed to the back and we focus on small things that only inside the Beltway are important,” Bloomberg said. “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology. Working together, there’s no
limit to what we can do.”

Good observations by WTT, but I think the ultimate conclusion that these guys need to set a voluntary contribution limit of $500 doesn’t really address the problem. But the idea that these guys need to run on the idea of political reform is significant. Because I believe that a lot of independents don’t think this is just a change election…it’s also a reform election. People are looking to reshape the political landscape and how we cooperate with one another, not just switch an R to a D.

Of all the actual candidates who are running I’ve heard so far, Ron Paul and Barack Obama have picked this meme up the most. Obama is fond of saying that there’s not a liberal America or a conservative America, but a United States of America. It’s a good line, and it resonated with me. Paul talks about broad reform based around respecting the Constitution, and that’s radical enough to give rise to a viable third party movement, and I wish he’d consider that more closely and possibly embrace the Unity 08 movement so he wouldn’t have to do all the leg work to get on the ballot in the 50 states.

And yet with all this talk about reform…the polls suggest that Giuliani and Hillary are the front runners. Sure, Barack is up there with Hill, but Paul trails far, far behind. There is no candidate talking about reform in the first tier of the GOP field.

The question then is do we really have a shot at reform in 2008 or is this merely a change election? And if the Dems were to win, are we really ready for another Clinton and thereby ushering in at least 24 years where a Clinton or a Bush has held the Oval Office?

If nothing else in this next election, I’m looking for the “change” to come with a heavy dose of reform. And if not…well, I just may sit this one out.

Gingrich on the money game…

What’s the job of the candidate in this world?” asked Gingrich. “The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.”

Gingrich said the need to raise tens of millions of dollars has driven campaigns to begin cranking up much earlier than ever. Meanwhile, he said, advisers are telling candidates to begin campaigning “as soon as possible — I need a check.”

“Go look at all the analysis,” said Gingrich. “Why are people starting early? Because you can’t build the organization. What are you building the organization for? So you can raise the money.”

On the debates…

“These aren’t debates,” the former Georgia congressman said. “This is a cross between [TV shows] ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘Who’s Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.’”

And the solutions?

Gingrich’s answer to the problems would be to get rid of limits on campaign financing, which he said have made the problems worse by requiring more individual donations to meet the same goals, and to stage a series of “dialogues” among the major-party candidates — once a week, for 90 minutes, for nine weeks before the elections.

Candidates would pick the topics, and their answers would be uninterrupted “except for fairness on time,” he said.

“After nine 90-minute conversations in their living rooms, the American people would have a remarkable sense of the two personalities and which person had the right ideas, the right character, the right capacity to be a leader,” he said.

Here’s the deal…Gingrich thinks that the Repubs are going to lose next year. Given that, he’s positioning himself to lead the next great Republican revolution after that. I can almost guarantee it. Heck, he may even be thinking of starting another party, although that’s a long shot. The only way to do that is to get out in front of the meme and define the conversation. He’s the master of that, and you’re seeing it here.

So then, what would you do to fix the “Road to the White House?”

That’s right. He calls it bogus.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Washington — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a “phony war” on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.

“None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war,” the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives.

In other news, Newt is officially not running for President. Well, unless he’s going to run on a 3rd party ticket as Ron Paul’s VP.

And to that point…

“I believe we need to find leaders who are prepared to tell the truth … about the failures of the performance of Republicans … failed bureaucracies … about how dangerous the world is,” he said when asked what kind of Republican he would back for president.

Who knows, maybe he’s testing the waters. After all, if Newt is anything he’s a political survivor.