Quotes from Newt's speech to Maryland GOP

In a speech at the Maryland Republican Party fundraiser Thursday, Newt assailed President Obama's foreign policy. From Kendra Marr:

He told the audience that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and challenged the notion that the Libyan rebels have America’s best interests at heart. He said political correctness is inhibiting the fight against Islamist terrorists. Gingrich also charged that Obama has been “strangely quiet” about Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and that the president no longer cares about Israel’s safety.

“I’m not very comfortable that Egypt is going to work out well,” he said. “I’m not very comfortable that Tunisia is going to work out well. I’m not very comfortable that Libya is going to work out well.”

Gingrich ended his speech with a few solutions. He proposed that Congress force the president to make foreign policy decisions at home, not through foreign organizations like the United Nations, and revamp the Intelligence Act so that American can have “real effective spies.” He also called for the firing of Attorney General Eric Holder, who Gingrich charged with undermining American security.

From ABC's Arlette Saenz:

"Is the tide of war receding or is there a potential tsunami of violence building offshore?" Gingrich repeatedly asked the crowd.

"I want to challenge the president to withdraw the phrase because it totally misleads the American people and it represents a delusion of the real world."

Also from Saenz:

Prior to his speech, Gingrich held a roundtable fundraiser for his campaign. Earlier this week, two top fundraisers for the campaign quit.

The Gingrich campaign is planning fundraisers as they head into the final week of the fundraising quarter.

"I ask everyone I can for money. I’d love to have your support," Gingrich told reporters.

Newt's speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition will be on foreign policy

Politico reports:

RJC executive director Matt Brooks said Gingrich is planning on giving a "major foreign policy speech," which would focus on "his view of the world" but also specifically on Israel.

The other topic Gingrich, whose aides approached Brooks a week ago about speaking, will discuss is "how he wants to reform the State Department," Brooks said.

The event's website.

Brooks sent out a tweet:

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'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."