I thought he had faded into the mists a decade ago. I really don’t remember much about his politics except that most of my reactions to him were of the WTF variety.
The article also mentions Palin as a possible candidate so I’m wondering if this is some elaborate hoax that’s just too late for April 1. Or maybe the GOP has finally lost whatever grip on reality they might have once had.
Or it’s all a red herring to distract the Dems and put them off their guard while they groom a real candidate in the background somewhere.
With the Republicans in disarray, all sorts of names will be put forth. The Democrats were in a similar position after Reagan was reelected.
It’s still almost three years until the next primary. Lots of names will be mentioned. Some may run; others may decide to wait (assuming no disaster, Obama will be very difficult to beat in 2012).
Gingrich and Palin have name recognition. They’re also fresher (Romney, for instance, couldn’t win the nomination, which will hurt). Mick Huckabee might also have a shot. But it’ll be at least a year before the field will even begin to take shape. Meanwhile, everyone speculates.
Gingrich talked about running in 2008, too, and he’s trying to maintain a high profile. He does not accept the fact that he’s long since become irrelevant.
Consider that at this point in Bush’s second term, Obama was still an Illinois state senator, most of us were reacting to predictions that Hillary Clinton would run with a “WTF?!” and John Edwards was still the losing VP candidate. Nobody knows what the ground is going to look like in three years. No one.
Newt’s been getting a lot of talk lately, and not just on April 1. I have pretty much the same reaction you do, but I think what’s happening is that there just isn’t a clear and obvious choice for the Republicans right now, so they’re sort of running in every direction at once. Gingrich, Palin, Jindal, Huckabee, and the rest all seem unlikely prospects, but all for different reasons, and nobody has really stood out from the crowd. My guess is that it’ll end up being some dark horse that nobody right now has heard of.
When things go badly, you can either come up with something new, or fall back to what has worked in the past. Republicans these days seem to be doing the latter. No one can run on Bush’s coattails. Who’s their most recent success before that?
I could see Gingrich running on a cut-taxes, build-the-military, ban-abortion platform. He might even resurrect the flag-burning debate.
Seriously. When the word really gets out about the sordid circumstances of his two divorces, to say nothing of rehashing all of his mid-Nineties tantrums, I expect his presidential dreams will just fade away.
The reason why some Republicans are turning to Newt on this point seems pretty clear to me. He retired in 1998, hence he’s the only powerful Republican who had no role in the disastrous decisions of 2000-2008.
Newt can run if he wants to, but I have no idea who he thinks is going to get excited about his candidacy.
Liberals obviously hate him, but what they overlook is, there’s nothing about him that should appeal to conservatives, either. Liberals always ASSUMED that, because he was a Southerner, he was a leader of the Religious Right.
Nope. He’s always proclaimed himself a “Rockefeller Republican.” Economics matter deeply to him. Abortion and gay marriage? Nah, not really. He’d sometimes vote the way the Religious Right wanted, but he’s never been one of them, and both sides are all too keenly aware of that. MIGHT the Religious Right reluctantly embrace him if he won the nomination? Sure just as they reluctantly embraced John McCain in 2008. But he’s not their first choice ,or even their third, fourth or fifth choice.
This is neither funny nor insightful. The Southern Protestants who make up most of the Religious Right tend be to vocally anti-Catholic. If Newt converted, it most definitely is NOT because he was hoping to win votes from the evangelical crowd.
Nah, everyone’s heard of her. I wouldn’t put it past her to run, but I just can’t see any way that she might conceivably win. At any level above a congressional district, you have to be crazy for something, not just plain crazy.
