Dorothy Rabinowitz and Steve Moore talk about Newt

Link to video.

You'll notice how level-headed Moore and Rabinowitz -- neither of whom are in the bag for Newt but simply see that he has great ideas and is catching on -- and how childish the critic of Newt sounds.

Wall Street Journal op-ed: "Why Gingrich Could Win"

Dorothy Rabinowitz writes:

"Substance" is too cold a word, perhaps, for the intense feeling that candidate Gingrich delivers so coolly in debates. Too cold too, no doubt, to describe the reactions of his listeners, visible on the faces of the crowds attending these forums—in their expressions, caught on C-SPAN's cameras, in the speed with which their desultory politeness disappears once a Gingrich talk begins. Their disengagement—the tendency to look around the room, chat with their neighbors—vanishes. The room is on high alert.

The former speaker of the House is a dab hand at drawing listeners in, for good reason—he showers them with details, facts and history in a degree no candidate in recent memory has even approached. Audiences have a way of rewarding such trust.

No one listening that night to candidate Gingrich's reflections on the menace of radical judges from Lincoln's time on down could have ignored the power of his fiery assessment—including the Dred Scott decision, others by courts today that threaten our national security, and much in between.

His greatest asset lies in his capacity to speak to Americans as he has done, with such potency, during the Republican debates. No candidate in the field comes close to his talent for connection. There's no underestimating the importance of such a power in the presidential election ahead, or any other one.

His rise in the polls suggests that more and more Republicans are absorbing that fact, along with the possibility that Mr. Gingrich's qualifications all 'round could well make him the most formidable contender for the contest with Barack Obama.

A sneak peek at Newt's speech on the Federal Reserve

From The Wall Street Journal:

In the latest salvo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is expected to call Wednesday in Atlanta for a "dramatically limited Federal Reserve." In the text of his comments released in advance, he criticizes the U.S. central bank for not staying focused on the strength of the dollar and for lending money to subsidiaries of foreign banks during the financial crisis.

...

In the text of his comments, Mr. Gingrich accuses the Fed of supporting Libya during the financial crisis. A New York subsidiary of Bahrain-based Arab Banking Corp. was among many foreign banks the Fed lent to during the crisis to prevent a global financial meltdown. The Libyan government has a large stake in the bank, though Fed officials have said most of the stake was purchased by Tripoli after the bank's loans from the Fed were repaid. A Fed spokeswoman declined to comment.

(Update: Newt has already posted a short video that mainly deals with the Fed):

The media claims Pawlenty was the first to unveil an economic plan

In a speech yesterday, Tim Pawlenty outlined his economic plan. It is quite good -- though much of it is similar to the one Newt gave a speech unveiling on May 13. Notice the date Newt released his plan -- May 13, almost a month ago -- because the media obviously doesn't notice the date.

The mainstream media, even some mainstream conservative outlets, spent yesterday and this morning talking about how Pawlenty was the first Republican to have a plan on the economy. As should be expected, Newt's camp wanted to set the record straight.

Newt's spokesman, Rick Tyler, tweeted that one of the members of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Stephen Moore, was at the very speech in which Newt laid out his nine-point plan.

POLITICO:

"Apparently, according to the Journal, its editorial board neither looked at nor has seen Gingrich’s jobs and prosperity plan, even though one of its members was present when he revealed it," Tyler told POLITICO. "It’s posted on our website and it’s been distributed to hundreds if not thousands of political reporters."

Kendra Marr: "Though the Journal apparently hasn’t been impressed, Investors Business Daily’s editorial board gave Gingrich an “A” grade for the plan, calling it “one of the most laudable economic plans in memory.”

Marr doesn't mention it, but as I have written about, Peter Ferrara has called it the best reform plan of any of the candidates.

Art Laffer, vital to the Reagan economic policies and the man who hosted the speech Newt laid out his plan in, said of the plan: "The combination of pro-growth tax reform, spending restraint, and sound money will restore robust economic growth with low unemployment and low inflation."

January 19 newsletter: "1,968 Reasons to Repeal"

Newt's group Center for Health Transformation released a chart this week that shows "1,968 new and expanded powers given to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius" [and my former governor -- how lucky am I?].

In his newsletter, Gingrich lists five of the most egregious powers given to the HHS:

• "The Secretary will decide what clinical drugs seniors can access."
• "The Secretary will instruct physicians and nurses exactly how to give a drug to their patients in long-term care facilities"
• "The Secretary will determine how dentists and dental hygienists should examine your teeth."
• "The Secretary can overrule states on what insurance rates can be whether they like it or not."
• "The Secretary can use comparative effectiveness research to determine access to care for seniors, like they do for patients in the British National Health Service." 

After writing that "the rush to socialism under the Obama administration puts all our freedoms at risk," Gingrich gives some explanation:

Of course, I am hardly the first to warn about the inherently totalitarian nature of big government.

Thomas Jefferson warned in a letter to Charles Hammond that 'When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.'

Freidrich Hayek warned in the Road to Serfdom that 'The more the state ‘plans,’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.' Hayek also wrote in The Constitution of Liberty, 'Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.'

Even George Orwell, who was a left wing intellectual, understood the danger of giving too much power to unelected bureaucrats. Orwell’s novel, 1984, described dictatorship in London, not Moscow. He agreed with Hayek’s concerns in a review of the Road to Serfdom: 'It cannot be said too often…collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.'

Gingrich again:

Flushed with the promise of these 1,968 new grants of authority to her office, Secretary Sebelius recently made a series of threats to use one of these new powers to punish health insurance companies who have dared to tell the truth about how the health reform law has led to rate hikes for their customers.

The idea of an unelected bureaucrat using her power to punish those who exercise their right to free speech should be considered abhorrent in a society that values liberty.

Also, as Karl Rove astutely pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, Secretary Sebelius has also used her new powers to reward her friends. The Secretary has granted a number of companies exemptions from key requirements in Obamacare. More than a third of these companies’ employees are unionized compared to a mere 7% of the national workforce....

No unelected bureaucrat should have this amount of power, whether he or she is in a Democratic or Republican administration.

The genius of the founding fathers is that they understood the fallen nature of man and designed a system of government to prevent any one person from being so powerful that he or she could violate the rights of any citizen.

Gingrich quotes Milton Friedman -- meaning Friedman, Hayek, and Jefferson in the same newsletter -- who said, "Where in the world do you find these angels that are going to reorganize society for us?”

Newt is gaining influence within the Tea Party

Given the Tea Party's dramatic influence on the upcoming midterm elections -- whether one looks at the moderate Republicans they have already played a part in defeating or the Democrats they will knock out on November 2 -- many have begun to speculate on the movement's role in the 2012 Presidential race.

The first part of that race, of course, is deciding who the GOP will nominate to take on President Obama. The general consensus has formed, within many conservative circles as well as liberal, that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would be the movement's favorite.

However, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that, in the words of Pater Wallsten, "One third of Republicans support the tea party so strongly that they describe themselves as part of the movement more than they identify as Republicans. Among this group, Mr. Gingrich is considered the GOP's "most important leader."

Palin, however, does win among the Republicans who while supportive of the Tea Party movement "identifies more as Republicans."

The article also discusses the two different manners in which Gingrich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney have prepared for possible White House bids.

The reason they have followed different paths is simple: they simply view the movement differently. Whereas Romney, according to his advisers, "is betting that the tea-party groundswell, while energizing fiscal conservatives, doesn't mark a fundamental shift in the preferences of GOP voters." Basically, the movement will wither and not have an influence for much longer.

Gingrich's view as described by Wallsten:

[Gingrich] views the tea-party revolt as the dawn of an enduring movement, and he has spent more time courting tea-party activists than forging ties to Republican party leaders. Mr. Gingrich has recast his American Solutions group, launched in 2007 to press for expanded oil drilling and other policy initiatives, into a tea-party clearinghouse of sorts -- creating a curriculum to teach activists, small business owners and first-time candidates how to run campaigns. He is keeping in touch with this potential army of volunteers.

So when it comes to building a base of support for a 2012 run, Governor Romney has courted a lot of party leaders. And Newt "is traveling the country to build alliances with local tea-party activists in key presidential primary and caucus states....assign[ing] a full-time staffer at American Solutions to recruit and work with local activists across the country. Many of those now in his database live in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- key early-voting states in the presidential primaries, where Mr. Gingrich has devoted time to meeting them in small groups."

Wallsten then gives the story of one such meeting:

Elisabet Wilson, a tea-party activist who lives near Greenville, S.C., said she received a call from a Gingrich aide last spring seeking her attendance at a May roundtable with the former speaker at a local hotel. When she arrived, she found a group of nearly 30 fellow activists.

"He went around the room and asked each of us, why did you get involved?" Ms. Wilson said.

Ms. Wilson later agreed to serve as a state coordinator for American Solutions.

Wallsten continues, "Mr. Gingrich said American Solutions was intended to boost the conservative movement whether or not he runs."

"It's certainly probably broadly helpful (to a presidential campaign), but it's not designed for that,' Gingrich said." "We're happy to share our ideas and our information with everybody, with all the different candidates."