Free Republic

Republicans are in danger of losing their power and Democrats could become a near-permanent majority if the GOP doesn’t conduct a major overhaul on its party operations, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has warned. … Gingrich said there are 25 issues the party should address, including more work to include minority communities, a push for the party to compete in big cities and a refusal to ignore parts of the country that lean Democratic. …

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says President Barack Obama should nominate Colin Powell as secretary of state as a “bipartisan” gesture toward mending fences with Republican senators who rejected U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for the post. “I actually think it would not be a bad idea for President Obama to seriously consider seeing if Colin Powell would come back out of retirement because Colin did endorse him,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday night. “That might be a bipartisan step that would move us in a direction of a different kind of dialogue,” he said, suggesting that Powell’s moderate...

Former House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said the current GOP would be “incapable of competing” against Hillary Clinton should she run in 2016. Gingrich on NBC’s “Meet the Press” called Clinton a “very formidable” person who is married to “the most popular Democrat in the country.” “If [the Republicans'] competitor in ’16 is going to be Hillary Clinton, supported by Bill Clinton and presumably, a still relatively popular President Barack Obama, trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl. And the Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level,” Gingrich said.

President Barack Obama “guarantees a permanent war” with Republicans by forcing the party’s hand on the issue of income-tax hikes on top earners, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday. “The president won,” Gingrich said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “The president has a very clear, simple position. He wants to prove he can dominate, and he proves he can dominate by getting the rates up, and he has a veto pen.” …

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it would be better for Republicans to take that dive off the so-called fiscal cliff on Dec. 31, rather than “cave in” to President Barack Obama on tax increases. The Georgia Republican also suggested that GOP leaders in Congress “should be prepared” if necessary to force a government shutdown to get the deep spending cuts they want. “I think it’s a huge mistake for House Republicans to cave in and try to find some kind of desperate solution that doesn't work,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night. …

On Wednesday, November 28, 2012, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, calling the “so-called fiscal cliff” a “fantasy being used as an excuse to panic.” Speaker Gingrich went on to discuss House Republicans, telling them to not form a “Surrender Caucus” by stating, “They are the majority. They are not the minority.”

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks. “One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. “They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to...

The key 'R' word is Republican, not Romney With all the efforts to understand the recent election defeat, a lot of the focus has been on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his campaign. That is exactly the wrong way to begin analyzing the outcome of the 2012 campaign. The focus on Romney as a candidate is profoundly misleading for those who want to prepare for future Republican victories. Any analysis of recent Republican presidential results will reveal a systemic failure which can’t be ascribed to Romney. The last clear Republican presidential victory was in 1988 when Vice President George...

Every person who talks and writes about politics gets stuff wrong. I’ve gotten my fair share wrong. But what I think I got most wrong in Campaign 2012 was the damage Mitt Romney’s “47%” remark would do to him. It may seem obvious, but bear with me. Mitt Romney was talking off the cuff to a supposedly off the record group of donors and muddled several data points together, ultimately telling the tale of the 47% who won’t vote for him for any reason. He was referencing the 47% who don’t pay taxes and interwove it with a 47% of...

"It's nuts," Gingrich told guest host Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "First of all, it's insulting. This would be like Wal-Mart having a bad week and going, 'The customers have really been unruly.' I mean, the job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. If we can't offer a better future that is believable to more people, we're not going to win."

The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century— Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories— bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat. One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called "the great communicator," but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan's vision were things he...

Add Newt Gingrich to the list of Republicans coming to terms with the loss of the presidential election. On Monday, the former speaker of the House sounded reflective on the "Today" show, saying, "We need to stop, take a deep breath and learn." He added, "The president won an extraordinary victory. And the fact is, we owe him the respect of trying to understand what they did and how they did it." Gingrich said, "But if you had said to me three weeks ago Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he'll be 2...

In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost. The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie...

Video at link... While CBS This Morning asked only one tough question on the Obama administration and Libya on Friday, guest Newt Gingrich came out swinging and dismantled Democratic guest Jennifer Granholm's defense of the administration. CBS has at times been friendly to the administration over the fiasco. "I think with regard to the debate and the election, I don't think people are going to be voting on Benghazi. I think they are going to be voting on who do you trust," Granholm ridiculously argued. "You want to talk about trust? Having an American ambassador and three other Americans killed...

Newt was on CNN earlier today and said that he believes Romney hasn’t found a theme that really resonates with people yet, which is why he isn’t doing better ins states like Florida and Ohio, both of which have Republican governors. Bu he doesn’t believe it’s the candidate or anything else for that matter, he simply believes that it is message, that Romney needs to draw sharper lines between he and Obama and really hammer the differences in a way that makes sense to people. He was also critical of an ad Romney released this morning, where Romney said that...

ST. LOUIS • Newt Gingrich is coming to St. Louis Monday for a Todd Akin fundraiser because he wants “to tell the people of Missouri” that they have the right to stand by the Republican Senate candidate of their choice, regardless of what the party's leaders tell them. In a phone interview today with the Post-Dispatch, Gingrich, the former House Speaker and presidential candidate, said the controversy surrounding Akin isn't the point. “The people of Missouri picked him to be their nominee in a fair fight.” He also warned what others have said: That for the GOP to throw in...

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: What does -- well, let me talk about our ally in the region, Israel. How does Israel sort of fit into this whole dynamic of what's going on right now? NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have to break up laughing because I was watching "FOX and Friends" this morning, and it had a picture of the president meeting with a pirate who was... VAN SUSTEREN: It was dated from '09 or something. It was an old picture, I understand. GINGRICH: Sort of "dress like a pirate" day. And they were making the point...

Newt Gingrich gave this speech, which runs 44 minutes, within the past week. Haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I know it's basically about causing regime change in Iran by supporting dissident groups.

The real meaning of the violence of the last week across the Muslim world is the bankruptcy and collapse of the Obama strategy which began with his speech in Cairo. President Obama had a deep conviction that pandering to Islamic sympathies, identifying with the virtues of Islam and parroting phrases that sounded good would lead to a deeper acceptance of the United States by Muslims. While reaching out to “mainstream Muslims,” the Obama strategy would wage selective war against designated enemies. The Obama administration decided to ignore concerns of sovereignty and to kill terrorists with stepped up drone attacks. It...

Newt Gingrich suggests a connection between Libya and Egypt uprisings and attacks and backs Mitt Romney’s statement yesterday that said President Obama sympathized with attackers. Gingrich says, “This is not just about Libya. You don’t get, simultaneously, attacks in Benghazi and Cairo, in Libya and Egypt on a purely local basis. And you don’t get them on 9/11, a day we’re already honoring terrorist attacks against the United States, without a fair amount of collusion and a fair amount of planning. I think you have to look at this in a larger context…. There’s a substantial faction, particularly in Benghazi,...