Another quote by Tony Lee of Human Events about Newt

Lee put out an article previewing Wednesday's GOP debate at the Reagan Library. He had this to say about Newt:

His summer was turbulent, but he is not that much worse off than he was when it started. Gingrich won the last debate and he performed the best out of all the candidates at the Palmetto Freedom Forum in South Carolina. He’s proposing ideas on getting rid of regulations such as Dodd-Frank and using social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+, effectively. He speaks of American exceptionalism in a way that resonates. Gingrich has a chance to keep the momentum going at a debate held at the library of a President (Reagan) he not only worked with, but whose life and ideas he has so richly chronicled.

U.S. News & World Report: Newt "Could Be the New 'Comeback Kid"

Paul Bedard of the magazine writes:

Either way, the big-thinking Republican, his supporters, and presidential political experts sense that Gingrich, left for dead by the political class weeks ago when his staff abruptly quit and stories surfaced about his big-dollar Tiffany's account, is on the way back. The reason for the emerging Newt 2.0? His effective performance in the last debate that inspired supporters to boost online donations after he assailed the deficit "super committee" while spelling out detailed solutions to fixing the economy.

"He moved out of the irrelevant category and now he has some standing," says a GOP analyst. "His strengths are his ideas and translating them at a debate. Given that there are lots more debates, he has a chance to win."

The Gingrich surge is seen in some polls. In Missouri and Louisiana, for example, he is fourth behind Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rep. Michele Bachmann.

"The general response to the campaign has gone up significantly since [the Iowa debate]," says Gingrich. "There's been somewhat of an uptick in polling numbers, not gigantic yet, but starting us back on the road to building a unique case. What I'm trying to do is show leadership now, show how you could actually solve problems and do it in a way that is totally compatible with conservative values but is also common sense and in some ways bipartisan," adds the Georgian.

"A number of people say that I'm just different and that they are glad to see somebody who isn't just articulating slogans without trying to develop solutions and my hope is that will grow," says Gingrich.

He feels he can come back and take the GOP nomination because the economy is so bad that voters more than ever are looking for new ideas.

Some suggest that his effort is similar to Sen. John McCain who in 2008 staged a comeback after being written off. Gingrich rejects that model. "I'm actually closer to [Barry] Goldwater and [Ronald] Reagan," he says. "They were arousing new groups, new organizations, using new issues and doing it new ways and it took a while to build momentum."

Also in the article, when asked about being a "Comeback Kid," Newt replied: ""Well, I may be that, but I may be more like a comeback grandfather."

Newt's campaign is promoting the fact that there will be five public discussions of issues in September -- four debates and Jim DeMint's Presidential Forum next weekend in South Carolina -- and those will shine light on the fact that Newt is the one with the real solutions to renew America.

Dennis Hastert was to Newt as Bush 41 was to Reagan

Newt was Speaker of the House from January 1995 until December 1998. Simple enough, right?

Apparently not.

One of the most bizarre criticisms of Newt I encounter online is when people are either too lazy to check the dates or are trying to deceive people by blaming Newt for things that happened when he was out of Congress.

The most common is that Newt did not live up to his promise to shrink government. They seemingly conflate Newt and his successor as Speaker, Dennis Hastert.

Fact: Federal spending under Newt's Speakership fell to its' lowest annual increase since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s.

To confuse Gingrich and Hastert is as wrong as confusing Ronald Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush. Imagine someone criticizing Reagan, not Bush, for breaking his no new taxes pledge. That is the same thing people are doing by blaming Newt for excessive spending under Hastert.

If people look at Newt's four years as Speaker -- and only those four years -- they will see four of the most conservative governing years of the 20th Century. Reforming entitlements, cutting taxes, building up the military, balancing the budget, and several other policy shifts to the right.

With a Democrat President no less.

Don't blame Newt for hijacking the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 anymore than you would blame Ronald Reagan for hijacking the Reagan Revolution of 1980.

The men who succeeded them are the real culprits in interrupting the forward march of conservatism.

With all the talk of a Bob McDonnell primary, remember this.

Anita Kumar of The Washington Post recently talked about Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, one of the most popular governors in the country, and who -- or if -- he will endorse for President during the primaries.

McDonnell has spoken to former governors Romney of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota numerous times, including last week. In February, McDonnell dined with Pawlenty in Richmond, raising more than a few eyebrows.

He has also spoken or met with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich several times. Romney, Pawlenty and Gingrich all came to Virginia to help McDonnell during his 2009 gubernatorial campaign.

One thing Kumar did not include in the story was this quote I wrote about two months ago:

New York Times: Other than Reagan, the most significant Republican in the last half-century.

McDonnell: Newt Gingrich. That Contract with America really changed the way Republicans approached government -- positive, problem solving, solutions and then getting things done.

I think that was a phenomenal turnaround.

That's not to say McDonnell will endorse Newt, but I think it would have been a worthwhile inclusion in the article.

Gingrich Signs Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge

The entire press release:

Atlanta, GA – Newt Gingrich signed the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge today strengthening his over thirty year commitment to fiscal discipline.

“Balanced budgets are achieved by those who are committed,” said Gingrich, who passed the first balanced budget in a generation as U.S. House Speaker. “Fiscal discipline requires lawmakers to be smart not cheap and requires a different type of thinking than we see in Washington. I am proposing bold solutions because we have big problems. I pledge to be a President who will rein in deficits, the debt and out of control spending. It can be done, I know because we’ve done it before.”

The Cut, Cap and Balance pledge was a created by a coalition of over 40 conservative grassroots organizations who are calling on elected officials to support spending cuts and balancing the federal budget.

The pledge reads:

I pledge to urge my Senators and Member of the House of Representatives to oppose any debt limit increase unless all three of the following conditions have been met:

1. Cut -- Substantial cuts in spending that will reduce the deficit next year and thereafter.

2. Cap -- Enforceable spending caps that will put federal spending on a path to a balanced budget.

3. Balance -- Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- but only if it includes both a spending limitation and a super-majority for raising taxes, in addition to balancing revenues and expenses.

Gingrich was the first presidential candidate to propose a jobs plan which includes balancing the federal budget, bold tax cuts and development of an American energy plan. Combined with significant repeal of Obama era regulation the plan will eliminate the budget deficit and help pay down the national debt.

In June, Gingrich was the first presidential candidate to sign Save America Now’s pledge which calls on lawmakers to utilize the Lean Six Sigma fiscal waste reduction method developed by Reagan Administration official Mike George.

Learn more about Newt’s commitment to fiscal discipline at www.newt.org.

Newt: "I commit myself to actively advancing pro-life policies"

Newt was one of five GOP Presidential candidates who last week signed the Susan B. Anthony's pro-life pledge. (Mitt Romney and Herman Cain were the two who did not.)

In their morning e-mail, the "Morning Score," Politico writes:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the latest 2012 candidate to tout his support for the Susan B. Anthony List’s anti-abortion pledge, sending a message to his supporters in Iowa and South Carolina this morning that emphasizes his "deep belief in the sanctity of every human life." GINGRICH: "By signing this important pledge, I commit myself to actively advancing pro-life policies and legislation if I have the opportunity to serve as your next President...On the first day of my administration, I would immediately reinstate President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, so that no U.S. taxpayer money is used to pay for abortions overseas. I would also reinstate President George W. Bush’s Conscience Clause, so that no medical professional is forced to perform any procedures that violate their religious beliefs."

Those two executive orders he mentions have long been among the four examples (with 150 or 200 total) of the orders he would sign on his first day. The other two being the elimination of all White House czars and allowing Israel -- as we do every other country -- the choice of where we place our embassy.

During the debate last Monday, Newt's campaign sent out a tweet touting his pro-life record, writing "Newt has a 98.6% lifetime voting record from National Right To Life."

Politico also mentioned that already Mitt Romney has got heat for his refusal to sign the pledge as it adds to the concern that his pro-life conversion may not have been completely sincere.

Was the D.C. establishment -- gasp -- wrong about Newt's campaign?

Just a week or so ago, the common wisdom among journalists inside Washington D.C. was that Newt's campaign -- due to the comments about Paul Ryan and the surrounding dust up -- was on life support. Some even suggested he would drop out before July.

Then, the reports of overflow crowds at each and every of his Iowa appearances began to trickle in. As Newt has noted, the only national reporter to actually show up was NPR's Mara Liasson, who said the crowds and enthusiasm was nothing like she was hearing back in D.C. Chuck Todd, NBC's White House Correspondent, tweeted: "As folks prepare Sunday columns writing off Gingrich, riddle this: he's attracting large crowds; Conservative elite-Iowa grassroots split?"

Then, Newt has been in New Hampshire the past two days, talking to about 600 people total, says The Washington Post.

photo: R.C. Hammond











While the actual voters showed no interest in Newt's jewelry purchases, Nia-Malika Henderson passes along the following exchange with a fellow reporter and Newt:

Will your charge account at Tiffany sink your campaign, a Reuters reporter asked.

“I want you all to notice, finally, the citizens having failed to raise the most important question of the day. I was asked about a charge account at Tiffany’s,” he said, standing before a crowd of about 200 people, who didn’t boo but laughed at his sarcasm. “Now, I’m grateful that somebody here finally had the courage to go to one of the hot-button issues that will change America’s future.”

Henderson quotes Newt: “I’ve got to be more careful and make certain that it’s virtually impossible to misunderstand what I’m saying. I’ve got to be less academic and more explicit,” he said at the Conway Diner. “And we’ve got to get faster at responding to stories that are just totally false. We are still a half-step behind doing that. We eventually burn them out, but it takes longer than it should.”

Henderson included an interesting tidbit that I have not seen reported yet: "Over the next week, Gingrich will work on two major speeches to be delivered in June, one on foreign policy and another on the Federal Reserve."

So Newt had a great response in Iowa and New Hampshire (and he will be in South Carolina Friday, where he will discuss the federal power reach in the Boeing case.) National polls (here and here) show Newt still in good position.

With all that, it looks like the D.C. media was wrong about trying to stick a fork in Newt's campaign. Not that surprising when you consider just a few things the media has been wrong about;

It was also wrong about Ronald Reagan being unelectable. And wrong about Reagan's economic policies. (As Reagan himself said: "I could tell our economic policy was working when [the media] stopped calling it Reaganomics.") And Reagan's foreign policy.

The media laughed at Newt when he said the Republicans would gain a majority in the House. They said he would never become Speaker. Then they doubted Newt and the House Republicans would fulfill the Contract with America. Then the media doubted that welfare reform could be passed. And when it was passed, they predicted terrible things for those leaving welfare, not two of every three either going to work or school. The media said it was impossible to balance the budget.

So does it surprise anyone that they were wrong about this?

Newt will hold a dozen events in Iowa next week

Carmen Cox of ABC has the following details of Newt's next week:

At 8 a.m. Friday in Washington at the Fairmont Hotel, he will give an economics speech sponsored by Laffer Associates -- as in Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve and the godfather of supply side economics. On Friday night, Newt will give his first official campaign speech in Atlanta.

On Saturday, he'll be in Illinois to give the commencement speech at Ronald Reagan's alma mater, Eureka College. On Sunday, Gingrich will appear on Meet the Press.

Newt will then spend almost all of next week in Iowa -- a dozen campaign events spread out over Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Wednesday, he'll head across the border for an event in Minnesota.

The speech in front of Laffer's group is interesting. While it sounds like it isn't an official endorsement, it might be a sign that Laffer -- and other supply-siders -- are not too crazy about the other candidates. CNBC host Larry Kudlow, another influential supply-sider, recently had Newt on his TV and radio shows as well as participated in an American Solutions workshop in 2008.

Cox continues:

Gingrich's campaign organization has already started to take shape. He's already secured space for his campaign headquarters in Atlanta and will soon have a campaign office opening in northern Virginia. And he's hired a campaign manager: 36-year-old Rob Johnson who, most recently, ran Governor Rick Perry's reelection campaign in Texas.

The former Speaker of the House will position himself as the experienced conservative: he's the only candidate who can say he personally fought for and delivered a balanced federal budget, tax cuts, and welfare reform -- all signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

"The response to inexperience should be experience," says Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler.

Newt responds to CPAC critics

From his weekly newsletter:

During my speech to CPAC, I tried to lay out a substantive and compelling alternative to Obama and the Democrat's left wing governance, focusing on American energy and environmental policies. I proposed an aggressive, all-American energy strategy that would dramatically boost all sources of energy production in our country.

I also proposed replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with a new Environmental Solutions Agency which would focus on technological solutions to our environmental challenges and adopt a collaborative approach with business and local government, instead of the command and control regulatory model of the EPA.

...

The record crowd of over 11,000 attendees reacted strongly to this vision for lower energy prices, more jobs, better environmental outcomes and a safer America.

It was clear watching the crowd's reaction to my speech and the speeches of others that the conservative movement is energized by the possibility of winning an epic election in 2012. It's also clear they expect real conservative reform from a new conservative president and Congress.

Maybe that optimism and energy made some people nervous.

Before the event was even over, the mainstream media was hard at work trying to pour cold water on the fire that has been lit across this nation.

This article from the Associated Press sums up the doubt and skepticism that so many in our elite media seem intent on sewing amongst the American people.

The not-too-subtle message from these guardians against high expectations is crystal clear: Don't get your hopes up. Real change isn't possible in America. You might as well stay home.

In fact, this piece of conventional wisdom is both historically wrong and insidious.

History shows that real change is possible, but only if the American people are informed and engaged.

He then cites Ronald Reagan and the 1994 victory he led as "successful conservative reform[s]" that succeeded "because they understood that real power resides with the American people, not in Washington."

This rule was described to me by an associate of Reagan's as, 'I show the American people the light. They turn up the heat on Congress.'

Ronald Reagan was known as the Great Communicator, but he can better be understood as a great educator. He thought that if he could use his platform as a national figure to inform the American people, they would provide the pressure to implement conservative reform.

That's how Ronald Reagan was able to cut taxes, reduce spending, and reform burdensome regulations to revive the American economy despite having to deal with a Democratic Congress that was opposed to his agenda. Reagan understood that the American people would pressure the Congress into doing the right thing. All Reagan had to do was champion policies that reflect American values and treat the American people with respect by being honest and clear about the facts.

...

Similarly, when I was Speaker, the Republican Congress was able to achieve its principal goals despite having to work with a liberal Democratic President. We balanced the budget while cutting taxes and increasing military and defense spending. It is a historic fact that Clinton never proposed a balanced budget. It was the Republican House that made it happen.

...

All this was possible because we understood that President Clinton would eventually yield to the demands of the American people. That's why after twice vetoing another one of our principal goals, welfare reform, Clinton eventually signed it in 1996, before he ran for reelection. He knew he wouldn't be able to stand the heat from the American people if he didn't.

He then discusses the campaigns that preceded those two conservative reforms:

Ronald Reagan and the Republican Congress under my Speakership also delivered on our goals because the preceding election campaigns focused on the issues, not on personalities.

In 1980, Reagan offered a bold, competing vision for America's future that outshone the malaise and weakness of Jimmy Carter. He promised to cut taxes to boost economic growth, to renew America's strength in the world by standing up to the Soviet Union, and to restore America's civic confidence in its founding and unique purpose (American exceptionalism).

With a weak economy and the hostage crisis in Iran in 1980, Reagan could have simply run as 'not Carter' and emerged victorious. But then he would not have had a mandate to govern, and would never have been able to achieve his principal goals.

Similarly, in 1994, we explicitly crafted the Contract with America campaign around conservative reforms that we understood had overwhelming support in America (if not in the editorial pages of the NY Times) but had nonetheless been blocked by the Democratic House.

Consequently, despite having a liberal Democrat in the White House, we still managed to achieve a balanced budget, welfare reform, tax cuts, increased military and defense spending, and more.

Perhaps Republicans could have won control of the House in 1994 by simply running against Clinton. However, the Republican landslide would not have been as large, and we certainly would not have had the mandate necessary to enact real change.

As he has in the past, Gingrich criticized the 2004 Bush re-election effort for not engaging John Kerry on the issues:

I wrote a white paper in 2004 pointing out that on over 70 key issues, John Kerry was on the wrong side of public opinion by larger than a 70-30 margin. An election campaign run on these issues would put John Kerry at an impossible disadvantage and could have led to a landslide result with a true mandate for President Bush to govern.

However, the choice in the minds of most American voters in the fall of 2004 wasn't over two competing visions for America; it was between forged National Guard papers and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercials. Accordingly, more people turned out to vote against John Kerry than to vote against George W. Bush. With no mandate to govern, is it any wonder that Bush's subsequent attempt to reform social security was dead on arrival?

Newt similarly attacks the 2008 McCain team that did not show how radical then-candidate Obama was.

Looking forward:

We will need candidates that have a clear and substantive plan to govern and who can explain conservative solutions to the American people in a way that gets them excited and engaged.

We will need a new Contract with America in 2012.

A new Contract with America with specific, substantive, conservative solutions to the great challenges facing our nation is the only way to gain the mandate from the American people needed to bust through all the embedded interests in Washington and the state capitals that will oppose change.

If a new conservative President and Congress develop and win based off of a new Contract with America in 2012, there is nothing that can stand in the way of true conservative reforms that will create jobs, make America safer, and maximize individual freedom and dignity for all Americans.

Newt's newsletter previews his CPAC speech

In today's newsletter, Gingrich describes the setting in which the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will take place.

Over 10,000 conservatives attended last year's CPAC, worried about the left-wing overreach of the Obama administration and determined to do what it takes to defeat the Left at the polls in November.

This historic attendance at CPAC in 2010 was followed by a historic election, in which we saw the largest one party pickup in the House of Representatives since 1948. It was an enormous victory for the power of conservative principles.

Of course, after such a historic victory, there is the question, "Now what?"

Remarkably, attendance for this year's CPAC will be even larger than last year's record attendance. Almost 12,000 people have registered. It is clear that the momentum against President Obama and the left is building as people realize the 2012 elections will be a decisive moment for the country.

The needed strategy:

Many conservatives, however, also recognize that the next two years should not only be spent preparing to win at the polls. We must also develop broad support for a governing agenda that can be implemented by a new conservative President and conservative Congress.

In other words, CPAC this year will be important not just in outlining why we must reject the left wing governance of the Obama administration and Reid Senate, but also in articulating what a center right coalition would replace it with.

He previews his speech:

With this challenge of replacement in mind, I will focus my speech tomorrow at CPAC on one such area that badly needs replacement if we are to keep America safe and create robust economic growth with millions of new jobs: American energy policy.

I will be driving four main themes during my speech:

* It is in our national security interest to produce more American energy. We must reduce the world's dependence on oil from dangerous and unstable countries, especially in the Middle East.

* In contrast to this urgent national security need, the Obama administration's policy has been almost the exact opposite of what is required. In effect, they have been waging war against the American energy industry.

* A comprehensive energy strategy that maximized all forms of American energy development would not only make the US and our allies dramatically safer, it would make us much better off economically.

* Part of this strategy would be to replace the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency ] that achieves better environmental outcomes through an emphasis on the transformative power of new technology and a collaborative approach with industry and state and local governments (as opposed to the bureaucratic, regulatory model of the current EPA that does more to kill jobs and halt American energy development than it does to protect the environment).

You can watch my speech live at 12:30 ET tomorrow by signing up at the CPAC website.

Newt quotes from Reagan's 1978 CPAC address:

"The themes of a sound foreign policy should be no mystery, nor the result of endless agonizing reappraisals. They are rooted in our past -- in our very beginning as a nation....Our principles were revolutionary...Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless...To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world -- nothing more and nothing less."

"To carry out that purpose, our fundamental aim in foreign policy must be to ensure our own survival and to protect those others who share our values. Under no circumstances should we have any illusions about the intentions of those who are enemies of freedom."

"...If we are to continue to be that example -- if we are to preserve our own freedom -- we must understand those who would dominate us and deal with them with determination."

On what our foreign policy goals should be:

First, it must be the policy of the United States to defend consistently and resolutely the standards for the universal rights of man outlined in the Declaration of Independence and codified into law in the Constitution.

This principle has much deeper and more complicated ramifications than a shallow support for democratic elections. Instead, we should be on the side of genuine freedom for the people of the world.

The fact that the two U.S. backed democratic governments in Afghanistan and Iraq are refusing to protect the religious liberty of Christians and other minority religions (or worse, are complicit in their persecution) is evidence of a total lack of clarity regarding the purpose of US foreign policy. (See here and here for examples.)

Newt closes with:

This is our generation's rendezvous with destiny. And ultimately, Ronald Reagan's most instructive message for meeting our challenge would probably be, "I did my generation's job. Now it's your turn."

Hand on Shoulder

Newt in one of his radio addresses:

How would the Gipper handle today’s challenges?…Last week I visited the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Walking through that beautiful library, I was reminded of a meeting that I and a few House conservatives had with him during his second term. We complained for nearly an hour about the goals that hadn’t been accomplished. We told the President what we thought he should do.

Then, as we were leaving, President Reagan placed his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. He said, "It took us 50 years to get into this mess. I’m doing the first eight. Maybe when I’m gone, you guys have to continue the heavy lifting."

That moment put the situation in perspective. President Reagan was reminding us that the biggest dreams of the conservative movement would take much longer than his presidency to realize. Today, much of that work still remains to be done, and together, our generation will be the one to accomplish it.

This week I’ll be focusing on how I think President Reagan would have handled today’s challenges. Whether it’s defeating Islamic-fascists, defending God in the public square or competing in a global economy, we will be the ones to take the Gipper’s vision into the 21st century.

Our generation’s rendezvous with destiny is now. Ronald Reagan’s legacy will live on through us. I’m Newt Gingrich, and together we can win the future.

Gingrich discussing the free market, Reagan, and Thatcher

Two of the most important books on the benefits -- economically as well as for personal liberty -- of free enterprise were F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, and Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, 1960. Both men had other very important works, but those were their most influential. Two centuries before, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. The latter, published the same year as The Declaration of Independence, introduced the concept of the "invisible hand":

...by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

In a 2001 interview with PBS, Gingrich was asked of the impact of the three on his views:

INTERVIEWER: Philosophically speaking, what was the wellspring of your ideas? Were you influenced by people like Friedman or Hayek?

NEWT GINGRICH: No, I think I was influenced more by Adam Smith and by the founding fathers -- Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington -- and to some extent by the Whig historians of the 19th century. I was very much influenced by Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative and by Reagan's speeches starting with "A Time for Choosing" in October of 1964. I actually came to Hayek backwards through Reagan, rather than the other way. In my mind, at least, what you had was a clear overdevelopment of the state in the 20th century as a vehicle for humans to organize their lives, so you needed a party of freedom that was committed, almost in the British 19th-century liberal tradition, to argue for personal choice for markets, for private property rights, and for taking Bismarck's insurance state and transferring it into a personal insurance system, as we're trying to do now on social security.

...

INTERVIEWER: Do you make a connection between free markets and personal freedom, personal liberty?

NEWT GINGRICH: Absolutely. In fact, so did all the founding fathers. That goes back to the English Civil War, which is really the wellspring from which the American model of freedom emerges. It is the English Civil War and the effort of people to protect themselves from judges who are instruments of the state, not instruments of justice, to protect themselves from troops in their houses, to protect themselves from the king's right to kill you. And it's out of that English Civil War that you begin to have the rise of what we now call freedom, [the] first truly mass democratic societies in history, even more than the Roman republic. I think it's inextricable if you read Locke, if you read Jefferson, if you read the founding fathers, it is inextricable that if you don't have the right to private property, if you don't have the right to trial by jury, if you don't have the right to vote and fire the people to whom you loan power, you don't have freedom. The idea of a socialist free society in the long run, as Hayek points out, is an impossibility.

...

NEWT GINGRICH: Start with a simple fact: If you earn resources, you should have the right to spend them. Now how are you going to know what to spend them on without a market? How are you going to know what the prices are without a market? Hayek's great insight, which, interestingly, mathematics only caught up with about 50 years after he wrote, is essentially the understanding of chaos theory. Hayek's intuitive understanding was that the sheer number of decisions made daily by humans is beyond the capacity of any bureaucracy or any computer to organize centrally. We now have in chaos theory, which is the most elegant current form of mathematics, a scientific explanation of Hayek having been intuitively right and of socialist bureaucracies scientifically incapable of exercising that kind of detailed control.

...

NEWT GINGRICH: I don't think Americans push freedom. I think Americans define what we believe to be a fact much like the Earth is round. We go around the sun. Humans are born with inalienable rights. It is every human's right to live in freedom.

...

INTERVIEWER: Had [Reagan] internalized people like Hayek?

NEWT GINGRICH: Absolutely. Reagan is the only president to have actually studied The Road to Serfdom and thought about [it]. He knew Hayek personally, [Peter] Diamond, he knew Milton Friedman personally. As governor of California he was deeply into these kinds of conversations. It's a little bit like learning how to cook eggs. Once you learn that there's a stove, there's a pan, there's water, you boil it, you put the egg in, that's a profound thing if you've never done it before. But once you've learned that you don't have to learn 700 permutations, you've learned it. Reagan's technique was for going for the basics -- learning why freedom worked, why military strength worked, why American civic culture worked, and then communicating that over and over from different angles. But he had thought profoundly about the basics of what worked.

INTERVIEWER: You yourself had a dinner with Hayek, didn't you, during the Reagan years?

NEWT GINGRICH: There were a group of us, younger members of Congress, activists around the city. Hayek had come to the city to visit Reagan at the White House and we had the very good fortune -- I think the Heritage Foundation sponsored it -- to have it that evening with us listening to him. And it was intriguing to me to realize that there were men who had by force of intellect, and I would certainly say Hayek and Friedman are two of them, [they] moved the entire debate and began to change what had been for almost 70 years the dominant intellectual assumptions about how the world worked. You could see it happening, and Reagan was in a sense their popularizer. So he was this person who could take these people who were very profound but not very easy to communicate. I don't think you'd ever get Hayek on the Today Show, but you could get Reagan explaining the core of Hayek with better examples and in a more understandable language. It was a great thrill for me as a history professor by background to really see right in front of my eyes that a person could dedicate their life to ideas and have a very deep, very profound impact on history through people of action who read them and studied them.

Here was a man who had intellectually changed the world without really ever leaving the university. It was the power of his books, the power of his ideas as then captured by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, that had changed things. And I really did feel like I was having dinner with a historic figure.... He was this very unprepossessing person who was very self-defined as an intellectual and had zero interest in politics, and he had helped change the world.

He came across as low key and pleasant but very self-defined. He knew what he believed. He wasn't particularly interested in worrying about people who were wrong. He was pretty cheerful about being pleasant and saying this is where the world's going. This was still at the peak of the Soviet empire, so it was a remarkable act of optimism on his part to be as confident as he was that freedom would win.

INTERVIEWER: What is your impression of the historical importance of Margaret Thatcher?

NEWT GINGRICH: Margaret Thatcher was the forerunner who made Reagan possible. The 1979 campaign was the direct model from which we took much of the 1980 Republican campaign. Reagan drew great strength from Thatcher, and her courage and toughness in living through that first recession and toughness in the Falklands Wars rallied Americans in a remarkable way.

...

INTERVIEWER: And her impact around the world?

NEWT GINGRICH: I think Thatcher and Reagan were the duo that defeated the Soviet empire, relaunched the legitimacy of freedom and free markets, and created the intellectual framework for the modern pro-freedom movement. In a lot of ways Tony Blair is Margaret Thatcher's adopted son. He has actually been running a fairly Thatcherite Labor government.

Newt's take on free trade:

Trade increases the likelihood that you and they will engage in win-win activities. The difference between politics and trade is that in politics I may take something from you to give to somebody else, even though you don't want to lose it, so I raise your taxes. I charge you a fee. I confiscate your farm. In a free market you only do the things that make you happy in order for me to get the things that make me happy, and if we're not both happy the trade doesn't occur. So free markets dramatically lower the friction of human relationships and increase the relative pleasure and the relative success of human relationships. The more the Chinese and Americans [sit] down together to create more wealth, the happier they'll be with each other, the less likely we'll have conflict. I've always said that was true in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, that if you could find a way to launch genuine joint ventures of Palestinian and Israeli entrepreneurs who could only succeed together, you would in a matter of 10 or 15 years have a significant shift in attitudes.

While all Republican candidates will espouse the virtues of the market, how many have the deep knowledge of why it works -- and not just is the popular thing to say in front of Republican primary voters -- that Gingrich possesses.

Craig Shirley, the author of of two books on Ronald Reagan and who will soon publish a biography of Gingrich, put it this way back in 2007: "Among the 2008 GOP aspirants, [Gingrich] is probably the only one who knows the difference between Friedrich Hayek and Salma Hayek."

Gingrich to keynote Reagan 100th birthday celebration

On February 4, two days before what would be President Reagan's 100 birthday, Newt will keynote an event in Tampico, Illinois, in celebration of the 40th President.

Writes Kurt Erickson:

Gingrich...is expected to highlight the influence of northwestern Illinois communities on the former president, who lived in Tampico and Dixon before attending Eureka College. He died in 2004.

Gingrich also will host a screening of his documentary about President Reagan's life, Rendezvous with Destiny, at Sterling High School's Centennial Auditorium. The screening will be open to the public.

The event is sponsored by the Illinois Reagan Centennial Commission and the Tampico Historical Society. More information on the event can be found at www.illinoisreagancentennial.com/gala.htm.

Former Reagan official compared a Gingrich speech with Churchill's Iron Curtain

When quoting Peter Ferrara in my last post, it made me think of a quote that Frank Gaffney, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, made in April 2003 after Gingrich lambasted the State Department:

The speech former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute may be one of the most important foreign-policy addresses by a former national leader since Winston Churchill warned in March 1946 that 'an iron curtain has descended across the (European) Continent.'

Des Moines Register: "Gingrich takes steps toward a presidential run"

Gingrich made a quote to a Texas NBC station that him and wife Callista were "organizing" their enterprises to clear the way for a run last week.

In a column by Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register, Newt once again talks of having to organize them in such a way to make a run at the White House. Beaumont writes, "Gingrich did not take similar steps to deal with his personal and business arrangements before ruling out a 2008 run, aides said."

Joe Gaylord, "Gingrich’s closest political counsel," said that he "would be very surprised" if there is not a Gingrich candidacy. "Does he want to run? You bet. Does he think he can figure out a way to do that? Yes. But he’s got to go through all the processes to make sure he can do it financially," Gaylord said.

Beaumont then sketched a possible outline of a campaign: "Gaylord, an Iowa native, likely would play the role of senior adviser in a Gingrich presidential campaign. Sam Dawson, another longtime Gingrich operative who was part of the 1994 House majority victory, also would be expected to take on a national campaign leadership role, aides said."

Estimating that he spoke to 39,000 people while campaigning for the mid-term elections, Gingrich said, "I have some sense for what’s working and what isn’t....We haven’t had the kind of sweeping reform capability that is survivable since Reagan."

"Gingrich plans to test the reaction to the themes when he addresses the Republican Governors Association meeting in San Diego this week and during four Web-based policy seminars," Beaumont added.

New Newt biography out late 2010 or early 2011

A few weeks ago it was announced that Craig Shirley, author of books chronicling Ronald Reagan's 1976 campaign and 1980 campaign, would write Newt Gingrich's biography after Gingrich approached him. Mel Steely, a colleague of Newt's from West Georgia college, wrote The Gentleman from Georgia, a biography written in 2000.

But this one will focus more on politics, specifically the 104th Congress -- the first Republican-led Congress in 40 years. In an interview with Politico, Shirley said, “One thing that I hope to get into very deeply is the role of the 104th Congress...that Congress accomplished a lot.”

Of Gingrich in general, the conservative author said, “How many speakers have had so much of an effect on national politics before the speakership, during the speakership and after the speakership?....From my standpoint I think he’s one of the most interesting, complex and durable political figures of our time. “I know he liked my books on Reagan and we’re both fascinated by history and political science.”

For now, the title of the book is "Citizen Newt" and is tentatively scheduled for release late this year or early next year.