Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is working with American Solutions for Winning the Future to rally up Americans across the country to start pushing Congress to end the bans on domestic drilling in places like ANWR and offshore areas in both bordering oceans.

There is an online petition you can sign to add your voice to the 154,000 people that have already signed in support of the drilling. I have been told before that Congress doesn’t care about online petitions and that they don’t do any good, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. Maybe someone who has recently or currently works on Capitol Hill can comment on that.

The below video features Gingrich talking about the drive. He also reminds everyone to call your representative and Senators and tell them to vote no on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill. It is important that bill not pass! Please do this!

Keeping my fingers crossed on this one!

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is being mentioned as a possible Vice-Presidential running mate for John McCain. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that McCain would choose either Sanford, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, or his current opponent Mike Huckabee as his running mate.

WSPA TV

My buddy Dave (aka Chemistry Dave) tipped me off to an article about a speech recently made by Newt Gingrich. I highly recommend reading it. It really is too bad he decided not to run for President.

Sleepwalking Into a Nightmare

H/T to Red State

Congressman Bobby Jindal is a model of fresh thinking on health care reform. His plan is bold yet coherent, his action items are doable, and his results would be the real change that Louisiana needs. Jindal’s message is one that should be part of campaigns across the country, including the race for the White House.

Congressman Jindal recently unveiled nine pages outlining his agenda to make high quality health care more available and affordable for the people of Louisiana. Nine pages. Too many candidates barely have nine words on their campaign website. Too few pro-actively talk about how to improve health care. And this is on an issue of central importance to voters everywhere.

Ouachita Citizen

There is way too much here for me to really summarize, but I have read over Jindal’s proposal and it’s not bad. While I would really like to keep the government out of this issue, I think it will take government to remove government. As Gingrich points out this is not an issue the Republicans can ignore any longer.

No, we do not have a health care crisis in this country, but Democrats learned a long time ago that if you repeat something enough times, people will start to believe it, true or not, so we must address it.

Two days after hinting he wanted to try for the White House, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich decided he would not run for president, his spokesman said Saturday.

Rick Tyler said Gingrich realized he couldn’t run a political action committee — his American Solutions group — and form an exploratory committee to run for president as well.

“He will continue to bring the American people solutions to the challenges America faces through American Solutions, not as a candidate for president,” Tyler said in a telephone interview.

CNN

That’s too bad.  I really think he would have added a lot to the race and had he actually been able to get the nomination I think he would have given Hillary the smack down during the debates.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will begin next week to seek financial commitments from donors for a presidential-nomination bid, the Georgia Republican told The Washington Times yesterday.

If he can get pledges for $30 million over the next three weeks, he will join the Republican presidential-nomination race — a prospect he had been downplaying until yesterday.

The Washington Times

I watched an interview on Fox News Sunday yesterday morning between Chris Wallace and Newt Gingrich. Gingrich said that if he can get pledges of at least $30 million he will join the presidential race. The main reason for his goal is to make sure he is financially competitive, namely against Mitt Romney, who if he needed to could basically write a check to finance his campaign.

“If the reports back that, in fact, we think the resources are there for a real race — remember, Governor Romney has been very successful legitimately as a businessman. He can write a $100 million check.

I mean, there’s no point in getting into a fight with a guy who can drown you unless you at least have enough resources for a vote.

And so if we have enough resources, then close to that we’ll face a very big decision in late October. If there aren’t enough resources, I’m not for doing unrealistic things.”

Fox News

Citing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant in the execution-style Newark murders, Newt Gingrich yesterday called for emergency legislation requiring anyone arrested for a felony to immediately have their legal status checked.

“Four young people, working hard, studying, doing the right things, three of them were killed, all four were shot in an execution style by somebody who should not have been in America in the first place,” the former speaker of the House said in a speech in Ames, Iowa.

Gingrich noted that Peruvian immigrant Jose Carranza had been arrested twice before the slayings, adding, “Twice, he was released back on the streets.”

New York Daily News

This is simply astounding.  I had no idea the killer of those kids in Newark was an illegal alien until I saw this article.  We keep hearing about this.  A few months ago it was the illegal in Virginia Beach that killed two girls in a drunk driving accident.  In both incidents these guys had prior arrests.  How long are people going to put up with this?  What is it going to take?  How many American citizens have to lose their lives at the hands of illegal foreign criminals that the courts have just played ping-pong with before people in this country will force the government to fix this?

The American populace is still asleep at the wheel.

Potential presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Tuesday blasted the modern-day road to the White House as too long, too expensive and verging on “insane.”

The former House speaker from Georgia said he will decide whether to enter the GOP presidential field in October. But in a wide-ranging speech at the National Press Club in Washington, he ridiculed campaign consultants and spin doctors who he said are extending the 2008 campaign. He said presidential debates have become “almost unendurable.”

“These aren’t debates,” the former Georgia congressman said. “This is a cross between [TV shows] ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘Who’s Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.’”

“What’s the job of the candidate in this world?” asked Gingrich. “The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.”

CNN

I agree with everything he is saying.  The media really kicked off this campaign almost two years before the election is to take place.  That’s too long to endure the daily coverage and 30 second sound bites at debates that don’t answer anyone’s questions.  People are going to have election fatigue before 2008 even gets here and it will be a turn off rather than an enticement to get involved.  Additionally, I think the media has lost respect for the Presidential office in itself, as exampled by the ridiculous YouTube debate.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich drew strong criticism from Detroit city leaders and school officials Monday after calling the city a “disaster” in a national network TV interview on Sunday.

Gingrich blasted the city of Detroit, Detroit Public Schools, the United Auto Workers and Michigan’s unemployment rate during an interview on Fox News Sunday in which he talked about how he would transform Washington.

A spokesman for Gingrich, an undeclared Republican presidential candidate who has been ramping up his public appearances, singled out Detroit and its schools because they’re the “best worst-case example” of bureaucracy and “a union structure that doesn’t work.”

“We should basically, fundamentally replace the Detroit school system with a series of experiments to see if they’ll work,” Gingrich said in the interview.

Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s spokesman, said Monday that unions are to blame for many of the city’s and state’s woes, including the inability of the Big Three automakers to be competitive and the school system’s struggle to reform itself. Gingrich also cited Detroit’s massive population losses.

“Detroit is routinely pointed out as one of the worst public school systems in the entire country,” Tyler said. “It provides the best example of why we need transformational change in bureaucratic systems that don’t work.”

Detroit News

So naturally, the City, the school district, and the unions are all having a hissy.  I am not certain why.  Newt didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) came a step closer to suggesting he will not run for president as he praised other Republicans on “Fox News Sunday.”

He confirmed he recently had dinner with Fred Thompson, adding that the former Tennessee senator would be a “very formidable candidate.”

Politico

I figured that Gingrich wouldn’t run if Thompson did.  This isn’t definitive, but it sure looks as if that is how it will turn out.

Robert Novak has a column in Human Events that seems to indicate he might just do that.  Newt has said he would make a decision in September on whether he would run for the nomination and that decision would hinge on if there was a true conservative leader running that he could support.  Fred Thompson seems to be the man Newt has been waiting for.

Newt Gingrich is telling Republican insiders that his decision in September whether to run for president in 2008 depends on the progress of Fred Thompson’s imminent candidacy.

If Thompson runs a vigorous and effective campaign, Gingrich says privately, he probably will not get in the race himself. If Thompson proves a dud, however, the former House speaker will seriously consider making a run. That implies that the others in the field look to Gingrich like losers in the general election.

So says Newt:

Newt Gingrich is one of those who fear that Republicans have been branded with the label of incompetence. He says that the Bush Administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when nothing seemed to go right. “It’s just gotten steadily worse,” he said. “There was some point during the Iranian hostage crisis, the gasoline rationing, the malaise speech, the sweater, the rabbit”—Gingrich was referring to Carter’s suggestion that Americans wear sweaters rather than turn up their thermostats, and to the “attack” on Carter by what cartoonists quickly portrayed as a “killer rabbit” during a fishing trip—“that there was a morning where the average American went, ‘You know, this really worries me.’ ” He added, “You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.” Gingrich continued, “When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.”

The New Yorker

Pretty hard to argue with that.

In an interview with Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America,” the former Republican speaker of the House said there was a “great possibility” that he would run for president.

He will make that decision sometime in the fall. Sawyer noted that previously Gingrich had only said he was “thinking about” a run for president.

ABC News

With Thompson having yet to declare, there is still a conservative void to fill in the race. I still think if Thompson does declare prior to September, Gingrich will step aside.

This is an annual event coming up next month, which unfortunately I have never gotten the time to attend, but from what I hear is excellent. I get the impression it is like a smaller version of CPAC, but for Pennsylvania conservatives. Being that I am moving out of the state at the end of next month, if I don’t make it there this year it is unlikely that I’ll get there in the future.

Laura Ingraham, one of the most widely recognized, and widely heard political and cultural analysts in America, will be this year’s featured speaker. Laura will speak at the conference’s Liberty Banquet on Friday, April 20, 2007 along with former Congressman Pat Toomey who is now president of the National Club for Growth. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also expected to speak during the two-day conference.

PA Leadership Conference

Whether he runs or not, the very notion of a Gingrich candidacy says as much about the glum mood among Republicans and the seeming weakness of the current crop of candidates as it does about Mr. Gingrich. Within the party’s powerful conservative base, Mr. Giuliani is tainted by two messy divorces and his generally moderate stands on social policies. Mr. McCain is openly reviled for his support of campaign-finance reform, his previous criticisms of the religious right and his support for easing the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Conservatives view Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith and shifting social positions with suspicion.

Since the collapse of the campaigns of former senators Bill Frist of Tennessee and George Allen of Virginia, there’s also no prominent Southerner in a race that Southern voters largely shaped for the past generation. While former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is courting conservatives, Mr. Gingrich, a one-time congressman from Georgia could better fill the void.

Wall Street Journal

Some of Newt’s actions of late really lead me to believe he is going to announce a run in September and the article makes some excellent points. There really is no true conservative champion in the running. I really like Rudy personally, but some of his positions are what keep me from supporting him in the primary at this point. McCain needs no explanation. Romney seems like a nice enough guy, but you just don’t know for sure what he believes. As for Huckabee, he just reminds me of another George W Bush and he supports higher government spending and a welfare state. Sorry, but one President from Arkansas was enough. Do we really want to repeat that??

I think Gingrich is really playing this smooth. Announcing later in the year after the public is sick and tired of hearing about the Big Three could be a breath of fresh air and who knows how much the current front runners could damage themselves by then, allowing Newt to ride in on a white horse to save the day. Plus, he already places well in most primary polls and he hasn’t even announced he is running so that shows he’s the hope in a lot of peoples’ minds.

There is, believe it or not, a path by which Newt Gingrich could conceivably arrive at the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. The path starts where we are now, with Gingrich not declaring any sort of candidacy and refusing to shed light on his plans. What he has done instead is create a nonpartisan political organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, that can spend unlimited sums of money under section 527 of the U.S. tax code. American Solutions, Gingrich says, will hold national workshops this September 27–the thirteenth anniversary of the Contract With America–and September 29. Then, on September 30–call it G-Day–Gingrich will “decide” whether to run for president. At which point there still will be about three and a half months before the first actual caucuses and primaries.

Gingrich has a lot going for him. He has taken no apparent steps to run for president–he has no presidential exploratory committee, for example–but still comes in third, behind former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Arizona senator John McCain, in every national Republican presidential poll. Gingrich also places third, behind McCain and Giuliani, in the RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls; he comes in fourth, behind McCain, Giuliani, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in the average of New Hampshire polls. Fortune magazine reported in November that an “internal GOP poll” had Gingrich running second nationwide. The right-wing group Citizens United recently conducted a straw poll among its donors; Gingrich won with 31 percent.

The Weekly Standard

It’s official. I am not sure who I am backing. Honestly, I don’t like any of them. I could support Newt, but I think he is too much of a policy wonk to win the Presidency. I know he says he is not running, but nobody makes that many trips to Iowa and New Hampshire and doesn’t run.