C-SPAN2 and C-SPAN.org will air Iowa GOP Reagan dinner on Friday

Jennifer Jacobs:

C-SPAN2 will broadcast live the speeches of five GOP presidential candidates at the Republican Party of Iowa’s Ronald Reagan Dinner in Des Moines.

Speakers include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvaia.

Also speaking at this annual state party fundraiser are Iowa’s own U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, U.S. Rep. Steve King and Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will not be able to attend, but one of his five sons, Josh Romney, will work the crowd on his dad’s behalf.

Live coverage of the 90-minute event begins on C-SPAN2 and c-span.org at 7 p.m. Friday Iowa time at the Iowa Events Center’s Hy-Vee Hall, said Craig Caplan, C-SPAN’s senior political producer.

Multiple hires coming in Iowa. C-SPAN to televise Saturday's Faith and Freedom Event

Newt 2012 will be announcing "multiple hires in Iowa," reports The Atlantic.

In other news:

Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register on an event Saturday:

"C-SPAN will broadcast live the entire Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition fall banquet, featuring six GOP presidential candidates, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday in Des Moines.

And the network will trail candidates in Iowa Thursday through Monday (seven have booked campaign stops)."

Iowa GOP: Caucuses will be January 3rd

Writes Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register: "IA GOP central committee's Steve Scheffler: The date is in stone, period. There is no chance we will reconvene to change the date."

Which officially means I will be in Iowa for New Year's Eve. Probably going door-to-door for the 45th President of the United States.

Newt's schedule in Iowa on Thursday and Friday

Writes Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register:

Here’s his schedule, according to his campaign:

THURSDAY:

Noon: Gingrich town hall meeting with employees of the Principal Financial Group, 711 High St. Des Moines. [This is when Newt will be unveiling the 21st Century Contract with America.]

6 p.m., Gingrich will meet with grassroot activists at the Republican Party of Iowa headquarters, 621 East 9th St., Des Moines.

FRIDAY:

8 a.m., Breakfast with local grassroot activists at the Best Western Starlite Village, 1518 3rd Avenue NW, Fort Dodge.

11 a.m., Gingrich will host a town hall meeting on creating jobs in science and technology. The meeting will be on the campus of Iowa State University. Gingrich will tour the Virtual Reality Application Center after the town hall meeting.

Details about Newt's campaign stop in Iowa today

From Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register:

Gingrich and [Ron] Paul had dueling presidential campaign events today: both were billed as town hall meetings and both began at 2 p.m. in Sioux City.

It offered a rare chance to get a side-by-side look at events for the two GOP candidates.

Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker from Georgia, drew a slightly bigger crowd – about 40 more people than Paul, a longtime congressman from Texas.

...

More people came to Gingrich’s event than were at Paul’s across town -- about 215.

Because the event took place on Morningside College’s campus, it instantly had the atmosphere of a college lecture. Although they nodded and laughed at points, the audience was more subdued than the Paul crowd. Gingrich attracted more young people: It was an even split with half college students, half older Iowans.

Jacobs notes that Newt spoke for just a few minutes, then opened it up for questions from the audience.

Jacobs:

THEMES: Anecdotes about the 1980s, 1990s and the Reagan administration; the 10th amendment; the military; harsh criticism of the Obama administration; the Contract with America introduced 17 years ago and the one he intends to unveil Sept. 29.

REACTION: Ted Brian, 43, a teacher who lives in Sioux City, said he thought Gingrich came across as trustworthy and believable.

“The thing that impressed me the most about the speech was that he seems to have specific ideas and specific programs he wants to either implement or cut,” Brian said. “And he doesn’t seem afraid to talk about those specifics.”

Jacobs quotes Newt:

“I do not ask anyone to be for me. I’m asking people to be with me because I think this is going to eight years of very hard work. … If you try change of this scale, you’re going to have things that don’t work very well.”

More details on the 21st Century Contract with America

From Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register:

Newt Gingrich promised to lay out a “very visionary” new Contract with America during a speech next week in Iowa.

It “will be 10 times deeper and more comprehensive than 1994,” he told an audience of about 40 people Monday night in Council Bluffs. “Because the truth is, while we changed the system some … we didn’t fundamentally change the underlying system.”

The new “21st Century Contract with America” will, he said.

Gingrich said his ideas, which he will unveil Sept. 29 in Des Moines, are “very big, and they’re exactly what Abraham Lincoln would have campaigned on.”

Monday night’s campaign stop, at Bent Tree Golf Club, centered on a screening of “A City Upon a Hill,” a documentary Gingrich and his wife, Callista, helped create about the concept of American exceptionalism.

Afterward, Gingrich spoke and answered questions for an hour, flexing his intellectual muscles and calling his campaign “the antithesis” of the other campaigns.

“One of the major themes of next year if I’m the nominee is going to be that (President Barack) Obama is the best food stamps president in American history and I’ll be the best paycheck president in American history,” he said.

“And I will be happy to debate Obama on any university campus in the country, including Harvard and Berkeley. I’m not afraid to debate this president anywhere, any time, on any topic.”

Gingrich had the audience laughing multiple times with quips and stories about his personal life, including his childhood ambition to be either a paleontologist or a zoo director.

After the 2½-hour event, Sam McManus, 58, of Council Bluffs said Gingrich’s pitch “changed my whole perception of him” from a has-been to a serious contender.

McManus’s wife, Anna, a railroad official, went even further. She said she was previously leaning toward Mitt Romney or Rick Perry, but “it’s going to take a lot to get me to go anywhere else now. Mitt is good, but he’s not going to have ideas like this.”

The original Contract with America presaged today’s tea party movement with its calls for smaller government, lower taxes and greater public accountability.

...

Gingrich’s two-day Iowa campaign swing continues today with a town hall meeting at Morningside College in Sioux City at 2 p.m.

Newt to be in Iowa later this month

"He arrives in Council Bluffs on Sept. 19 and Sioux City on Sept. 20," writes Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register

Newt's campaigning in Iowa getting attention.

Newt's campaigning in Iowa -- being there 16 of 45 days -- is getting attention in the Iowa press. Jennifer Jacobs of Des Moines-Register wrote a column today highlighting Newt's recent appearances in the Hawkeye State as well as his upcoming ones.

Newt will be back in the state with the first Presidential contest next Tuesday in "in Decorah and the surrounding area."

Jacobs:

On Aug. 4, Gingrich will be the highlight of a lawn party in Des Moines’s Waterbury neighborhood. Organizers of a five-county fundraiser say he will be at their event in Tiffin on Aug. 5. And he will be at the Iowa State Fair, his spokesman said this morning.

...

Since then, he was in Des Moines for the Strong America Now debt-reduction summit on June 18 and in Indianola on a tea party bus tour stop June 25.

On Fourth of July, he marched in the parade in Clear Lake and visited with political activists in that area.

Last week, Gingrich did speeches as part of a Family Leader lecture series in Pella and Iowa City. On the same day, July 11, he met with the Iowa Conservative Union in Cedar Rapids.

Later in the week, he spoke to a conservative breakfast club in Des Moines, threw the first pitch at an Iowa Cubs game (the ball did make it to the catcher, but Gingrich was in front of the mound, not on it), and spoke at a tea party event in Lamoni.

Before his Iowa visit next week, Gingrich is scheduled to be on the East Coast, campaigning in the early-voting state of New Hampshire before traveling to Georgia for several stops, including a meeting with phone bank volunteers at the Newt 2012 headquarters who call voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Newt's Fourth of July

Newt walked the July 4th Parade in Clear Lake, Iowa on Monday. He estimates that in his career he has walked 150 parade routes.

Jennifer Jacobs quotes him when he was asked about the campaign: "Did there seem to be enough support to proceed?" Gingrich told reporters after the parade. "I just wish all the guys in Washington would come out and walk one parade with me and go to one town hall meeting with me. I think they’d have a different attitude."

From The New York Times:

"The attention comes and goes," Mr. Gingrich said, reciting rhythms of the Republican presidential race. "Sometime around October and November, it will settle down and be a race."

...

"I like campaigning face-to-face with people and being able to talk to folks," Mr. Gingrich said, adding that he intended to spend 16 days here in July and August. "It’s important to lay the base of support that will be there in January."

For all the speculation in political circles about the future of Mr. Gingrich’s campaign, there were no questions from Republicans who turned out for the parade.

They called out his name, waving him over for a handshake or a picture. He beamed as he walked from one side of the street to the other.

The sun was hot and the breeze was slow, but Mr. Gingrich barely broke a sweat. "Campaigning in August in Georgia is great training," he explained.

A gallery of pictures from the event.

Linda Upmeyer: Newt "a guy with ideas and the solutions."

(Update: the July 4th parade starts at 10 A.M. Monday. "Iowa House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, who has served as state chairwoman of Gingrich’s presidential campaign, said Gingrich will be in the parade and then spend the rest of the day enjoying the sights in Clear Lake," writes Peggy Senzarino.)

From Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines-Register:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will be in Iowa for a Fourth of July parade, will campaign hard throughout July here and will return for the Iowa State Fair in August, he told one of his top Iowa advisers today.

“I think he’ll make every effort to re-establish his campaign in Iowa, the way it sounds to me,” Linda Upmeyer, a longtime Gingrich supporter, said after receiving a telephone call from Gingrich this afternoon.

“He’s absolutely committed to continuing on in Iowa."

Upmeyer added: "I still have confidence that this is a guy with ideas and the solutions. I’m absolutely interested in continuing to work with him and introduce him and see how it goes."

"Upmeyer said Gingrich called with questions about how to organize his day in Clear Lake," Jacobs writes. "He said he will bring his family to the State Fair, including a grandson."

Newt will be on Iowa Tea Party Bus Tour Saturday

From Jennifer Jacobs:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will appear at the Iowa tea party bus tour event in Indianola on Saturday.

The event begins at 10 a.m. at the Pizza Ranch at 1709 North Jefferson Way in Indianola, said Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party.

The tea party bus will be in Indianola in the morning and Lamoni at 5 p.m.

Here is the link to the Bus Tour's webpage for Saturday.