Newt's radio interview with Dana Loesch

Link.



Loesch, a St. Louis radio host and tea party activist, also wrote a column defending Callista Gingrich against ugly media attacks.

The Latest News: newtexplore2012.com to go live today and Georgia radio interview

The website that will be used to gauge support for a Gingrich run is newtexplore2012.com.

And here is a radio interview in which he mentions the website.

From ABC, here is the relevant section of the interview:

'Callista and I promised, as you know, for well over a year that we would make a decision in late February or early March and we have kept our promise,' Gingrich told [Martha] Zoller. 'We will have a Web site up later on today, people can go to it. It’s newtexplore2012.com and it’s an effort to reach out to folks and say if we really want to get back to being a country of American exceptionalism and we really want to create jobs competing with Germany and China and India and we really want to shrink government, get power out of Washington, balance the federal budget and we really want to have a stronger national and homeland security so we’re safer. Lots of folks are going to have to decide if that’s a project they want to be engaged in.'

Newt "will begin raising money to test whether a bid for the GOP presidential nomination is feasible"

From the AP:

Gingrich is set to talk about the step at a news conference Thursday at the state Capitol in his home state of Georgia where he has a meeting with the governor. Tyler told the AP that Gingrich 'is entering the exploratory phase' of a presidential candidacy.

He is stopping short of setting up an exploratory committee, which would have made him a legal candidate. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, oversee a web of commercial and nonprofit ventures and must tie up some loose ends with those businesses before they can take that step, Tyler said.

However, 'this is a serious exploratory phase,' Tyler said.

...

The 67-year-old Gingrich is doing what is known by the Federal Elections Commission as testing the waters.

That means he can raise and spend money to hire staff and conduct polling to gauge how much support he would have for a presidential bid.

NYT: "A New Newt"

The New York Times wrote an interesting story about Newt's "reintroduction" to many conservative voters whereby he talks more openly about his faith now than he has in the past.

While it is worth reading the whole article, here is a couple of snippets:

Rival Republicans marvel at his deep well of ideas, his innate intellect and his knowledge of government. They also point to the strategic approach taken by the Gingrich team in the 2010 elections, including holding training sessions for a new generation of elected officials. He has secured important endorsements, including one from the new majority leader of the Iowa House, who has been courted by all potential presidential candidates.

Dr. Jack Willke, an early leader in the anti-abortion movement in Ohio and across the country, was among those waiting for an autograph. Dr. Willke said he was delighted that Mr. Gingrich had increased the role of faith in his public appearances, something that he said he did not recall during Mr. Gingrich’s tenure as speaker of the House.

'We were there long before he was,' Mr. Willke said. 'It was never a big public thing for Newt, but he’s surfaced now as considerably more so.'

As Dr. Willke and his wife, Barbara, mingled with others in the crowd, Mrs. Willke said she was delighted to read about Mr. Gingrich’s baptism as a Catholic in March 2009. When one woman asked about his conversion, Mrs. Willke replied: 'His Catholicism certainly sounds legit, and even more so since Callista is in the picture now.'

Newt on ABC's This Week (with link to video)

Video.

Gingrich was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour on Sunday morning, and they almost entirely discussed the Egypt situation.

Saying that President Obama should not be the focus, Gingrich said:

Our focus ought to be: what can America do now to make sure the military doesn't impose a new dictatorship for another thirty or forty years. And how do we, on the other hand, make sure that you don't end up with a Muslim Brotherhood staging a coup at some point over a three or four or five year period.

The only non-Egypt question dealt with 2012. And the response was one we have heard before:

Well, Callista and I will probably decide by the end of this month about whether to set up an exploratory committee.

Another quote on 2012

From a Texas NBC report:

'I think Callista and I will make that decision in February or early March,' he said. 'We run four small businesses, and we're organizing them right now so that we'd be able to run. I must say that the clear, vivid choice between where Obama would take us and what most Americans want to go makes it very appealing.'