Getting a jump on Obama, Hillary echoed a Gingrich phrase in 2008

Many have pointed out that President Obama used Newt's "Winning the Future" wording. Here is something that I don't believe any have:

Over a year before that event, Newt started American Solutions for Winning the Future.

Sound similar?

Gingrich versus Obama on "Winning the Future"

In 2005, Newt wrote Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, wherein he laid out his solutions on everything from health care to education to preserving our culture.

In last night's State of the Union, President Obama's theme was "winning the future."

Gingrich noted this in his newsletter this week, under the headline: "Winning the Future...couldn’t have said it better myself!"

He continues:

I started with my first State of the Union as Speaker when I sat behind President Clinton because there has been a lot of speculation about whether President Obama will move to the center as President Clinton did after the 1994 Republican revolution.

Of course, President Clinton’s flight to the center is credited for saving his presidency after a devastating defeat just two years into his first term.

So after an even greater Republican landslide in 2010, and as President Obama eyes a tough reelection with an economy in much worse shape, the question is whether President Obama will make a similar move to the center and try to co-opt much of the Republican agenda as his own.

Well, it certainly felt like "déjà vu all over again" this weekend when people started emailing me asking how I felt about the President picking the theme winning the future" for his State of the Union address.

I wrote a book in 2005 called Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America.

Was President Obama setting the stage to adopt elements of my 21st Century Contract with America, just as President Clinton embraced the original Contract with America?

He compares and contrasts his vision with the President's:

What we heard last night did echo some themes from Winning the Future.

The basic plot was expressed – the need to compete with China and India, reform our tax code, stand up for human rights across the globe, defeat the terrorists, solve the challenge of illegal immigration, and improve math and science learning.

But it was clear that when it came down to hard policy proposals (with a few exceptions), the President’s vision was still big government dressed up in moderate clothing.

The most obvious example was in the President’s disingenuous suggestion of a 5 year discretionary spending freeze as a way to deal with our huge deficit. This after two years of a spending binge unlike this country has ever seen.

Tying in Obama's reference to Sputnik and his tax plan, Gingrich writes, "The only proposals we heard from President Obama to cut taxes were on the condition that other taxes were raised. Reshuffling our corporate tax code is not going to create jobs." He then quotes JFK from 1962, who said:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits... In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

On the comparisons between early 1995 and today:

This brings us back to my first State of the Union as Speaker in 1995.

It is important to remember that President Clinton did not immediately move to the center. His famous declaration that "the era of big government is over" did not occur in the 1995 State of the Union. It was in 1996.

In fact, President Clinton fought us for months. He vetoed welfare reform twice. It wasn’t until he realized that he would lose reelection that he eventually relented, signed welfare reform, and adopted many other items in the Contract with America, including balancing the budget, tax cuts, and entitlement reform.

We didn’t do everything perfectly during our battles with President Clinton, but we won on the issues by being principled and tough – a lesson House Republicans should keep in mind in the days ahead....

If Republicans calmly explain to the American people why a simple freeze won’t do the job, the vast majority of Americans will immediately understand and side with them in their desire to oppose big government spending and restore limited government.

We can win on the issues today like we did in 1995.

Remember the 1996 Republicans were the first reelected House GOP majority since 1928. If you win for the first time in 68 years you are doing something right. Standing by our principles and standing up to a liberal President were the keys to that success.

Busy day for Gingrich in Iowa

Gingrich gave a speech today "to about 600 at the Iowa Renewable Fuel Association’s Summit in Des Moines."

Before the speech, Newt "met with House members, Senators, Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds at the Iowa Capitol."

The headline from the speech was that he called for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing it with an Environmental Solutions Agency, which "would encourage innovation, incentivize success and emphasize sound science and new technology over bureaucracy, regulation, litigation and restrictions on American energy."

At the end of the speech, Iowa House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, about whom Newt has had very complimentary things to say, said, "I, for one, think that this is just the right guy to be president of the United States. And I think there’s a whole lot of people in this room who agree with me." Asked later about the meeting earlier in the day, she said there was no talk of a White House run, just "policy stuff." But, as Thomas Beaumont writes, "Upmeyer added: 'I’m a real fan. If he decides to run, I’m pretty likely to support him. I think he’s a solutions guy, an ideas guy. And that’s what I think we need.'"

Gingrich, should he run, also would have the support of Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, who announced the news on Tuesday as well.

AJC: "Newt Gingrich tells Georgia Republicans he’ll be a candidate in ‘12"

The first line of the Atlanta Journal Constitution story reads:

In the last 24 hours, former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich has touched base with several prominent Republicans in his former home state, telling them that he intends to make a run for president in 2012 using Georgia as his base -- and that he already has his eye on office space in Buckhead for a campaign headquarters.

AJC writer Jim Galloway:

The visits and conversations -- some face-to-face, others on the phone -- appear to be an attempt by Gingrich to revive his old campaign network and lock down as much support as possible in a state won by Republican Mike Huckabee in the 2008 presidential primary.

A spokeswoman for Johnny Isakson said Gingrich called the U.S. senator earlier this month -- adding that Gingrich was not definite about his plans in that conversation. In an interview on Friday, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss said he had not talked to Gingrich yet, but that the former U.S. House speaker had asked for an appointment in the near future. 'He said, ‘I need a significant amount of your time,’ ' Chambliss said.

...

Perhaps more important, fundraising for Gingrich’s American Solutions organization is conducted out of Atlanta.

However, Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Gingrich, contacted Friday, said the former House speaker’s schedule for deciding on a 2012 presidential run had not changed. 'His plans are to decide on whether to create an exploratory committee in late February, and make a decision about his candidacy in March,' Tyler said.

But Tyler said that Atlanta shouldn’t be ruled out as a headquarters -- should Gingrich join the presidential contest.

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?”

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.

Newt on Fox News, talks about NoMoreObamacare.com

Last night, Newt was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren about mainly the new website he set up to repeal Obamacare -- NoMoreObamacare.com -- and the GOP retreat this weekend, at which Gingrich will speak.

A portion:

[The House passing a repeal bill] is more than symbolic. Passing by a substantial margin the repeal of Obamacare is a very important first step. We have now over 100,000 signatures and they are growing every day. Our goal is to target the 23 Democratic senators who are up for election in 2012....

The Center for Health Transformation going to release tomorrow its third chart on Obamacare. This is a 50 square foot chart that lists the 1,969 grant of authority the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Obamacare. Thing about that, 1,969 grants of power over your health care to a single bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. I think combined with our earlier charts of 159 new offices under Obamacare and a 50 square foot chart of all the deadlines under Obamacare, those three charts are devastating examples of why we should repeal Obamacare.

Weekly Newsletter: Forever Stamp Folly

In this week's newsletter, Newt touches on the shootings in Arizona, writing that as more information surfaces, "the more clear it is he is a mentally deranged person who as early as his sophomore year in high school had fellow students and teachers worried about him."

He also writes about a Post Office decision. "This week," Gingrich writes, "U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahue plans to announce that all future stamps sales will be so-called 'forever stamps,' which can still be used even if postage rates go up."

Gingrich:

The Post Office will try to use any short term increase in sales from these forever stamps to solve their immediate fiscal problems. But if the Post Office is already having trouble operating at full capacity with current prices, imagine how difficult it will be to do so in five or ten years after inflation has pushed their costs up AND they are selling even fewer stamps because so many people already purchased them in the past.

In fact, this move is setting the stage for a future taxpayer bailout of the Post Office because it virtually guarantees its future bankruptcy.

he low price of stamps is not the reason why the Post Office is facing such huge deficits. The Post Office is seeking a 5.6% increase in the price of stamps despite an inflation rate of just 0.6%.

Instead, the Post Office is facing budget shortfalls because it is unwilling to engage in the necessary reform of its operations necessary in the modern economy.

As I discussed in To Save America, which is now out in an updated paperback version, the Post Office’s union work rules require it to pay a large group of employees more than a million dollars a week to do nothing. Instead of being able to lay off redundant workers, the Post Office (and by extension, every American who uses the mail) keeps them on salary through a program called “standby time.”

If the Post Office really wants to solve its fiscal challenges, it needs to engage in the difficult work of reforming its operating procedures, including its suffocating and costly union work rules like “standby time.”

Congress should block the Post Office from implementing this genuinely dumb move and force it to confront the true cause of its budget woes and implement real reform.

Newt's advisers: Tout your time as Speaker

Writing on usnews.com, Paul Bedard reports that "Newt Gingrich’s advisers are telling him that if he decides to run for the presidency, he needs play up his four years as speaker when many bipartisan policies were put into place."

One such adviser is quoted as saying: “Newt can say he has been there, done that on the economy and social issues, and then he can pivot and say how he’ll fix the current problems."

"Some think that his successes as speaker would top those of many two-term governors, like Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, because Gingrich worked on a national stage where victories are harder to score and have greater impact," writes Bedard.

I have noticed Newt talking up his time as Speaker of the House a lot -- more than he has in the past in my opinion -- during speeches, in his newsletters, and in radio interviews.

Frank Luntz on Newt's communication

From 2004:

The change in Republican language began with Newt Gingrich in 1994, and while much of his communication still came across as angry and partisan, when Newt was speaking about policy and not talking about those who opposed him, there was none better, and there has been none better. Newt Gingrich had the ability to explain a very complicated process in very clear-cut, common-sense ways, unlike anyone I've ever seen. He explained the difference between taxing and spending. He explained the difference between investment and savings. He explained the difference between a weak foreign policy and a strong one. This is a guy who knew how to articulate a philosophical point of view in a way that just made sense. And if it wasn't coming from Newt Gingrich, you believed it; you absolutely supported it. The problem with Gingrich was he was too angry in some of his communication.

Newt has gone a long way, in my opinion, of moderating his tone and doing certain things that help him appeal to those in the middle. How successful those efforts have been will likely determine if Gingrich becomes the Republican nominee or even the next President.