2008: Gingrich at the Gate

I saw Mr. Newt on Fownews Live show today. All I can say is

RUN NEWT RUN FOR '08!! I'll back you 100%

Look Newt, it ain't happening. You died with the rest of the '90s.

I'm a Newt fan to be sure.. but I'm not sure if he will do the GOP any favors by running in 2008.. I just don't see him having a shot at being elected.

Transcript: Newt Gingrich on 'FOX News Sunday'

Sunday, January 09, 2005

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS: Back in 1994, when House Republicans were in the minority, one of their leaders had an idea that he thought would help them regain the majority. Well, that idea, called "The Contract with America," worked.

Now, 10 years later, that leader, Newt Gingrich, has a new book out called "Winning the Future" that argues that America is ready for a new contract, one for the 21st century.

Good morning, Mr. Speaker. Welcome.

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Good to be with you.

HUME: It's always good to have a Fox News Contributor adding something to the nation's literature.

Your book is built around a set of policy prescriptions to deal with certain what you think are major problems. Could you, sort of, tick them off so people know what you're talking about?

GINGRICH: I think there are five big areas. The first is national security: What do we have to do to win the war against terror, including winning the war in Iraq?

The second is recentering the society around the notion of our creator. We're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. That's the Declaration of Independence. But for 40 years, courts have been trying to crowd the notion of God out of public life, and I think that's very dangerous.

The third is: What do we do about patriotic education and patriotic immigration? I think part of the reason people worry about immigration is that we don't have a system of teaching American history, teaching American values, teaching American civilization. But guess what? We don't have it for our own students.

The fourth is the economy. If we're going to compete with China and India, and I think we have to, then we need better math and science education. We need a better tax code. We need litigation reform. There are serious breakthroughs.

And finally, since my generation is going to be the first really big retirement generation in human history on a grand scale, and we're going to live a lot longer than anybody ever planned, we need to look at fixing Social Security, fixing Medicare, rethinking work so that people are able to stay active for a long time and have active, healthy aging.

Those are the five big areas I tried to cover in "Winning the Future."

HUME: Let me just get one thing out of the way. I notice that in the book you point that each of these prescriptions, each of these ideas enjoys, according to polls that you have researched, very large majority support.

The original Contract With America was, among other things, an election document...

GINGRICH: Yes.

HUME: ... as we noted earlier. Could this become the platform for a Gingrich presidential bid?

GINGRICH: Well, we're going to give copies of "Winning the Future" to every candidate. And so we're happy for any of the very fine people who want to run to use the material and talk about the ideas and use them. And I think that's the important thing.

I want to keep the conversation for right now focused on: Are these the right ideas, are these the right solutions?

And part of the reason I emphasize popular support — and let me give you the one example.

Mr. Newdow again filed a lawsuit saying that George W. Bush, the president, should not be allowed to put his hand on the Bible when he is sworn in for his second term. Ninety-one percent of the country believes that you have the right to say, "one nation under God."

Now, I think the politicians in Washington underestimate how much support there would be for saying that a federal district judge who doesn't understand that "one nation under God" is the American system, frankly, shouldn't be serving in federal court.

HUME: What do you think is the proper way to deal with it? Are you talking about a constitutional amendment which would underscore the...

GINGRICH: No. Thomas Jefferson, who had something to do with all of this, and his Congress in 1802 abolished half the federal district judges. The Congress and the president have every right to serve notice that judges who don't understand American history and judges who don't understand American culture frankly just need to be retired. You don't need to impeach him. Just retire them.

HUME: Let me just get back to — you're not ruling out — my original question was: you're not ruling out the possibility of...

GINGRICH: I'm not ruling that out but I'm also — this book is designed for — it's a public document.

Anyone who wants to run, I am thrilled to give them the book. I am thrilled to sit down and talk to them and tell them why we did it, why we think these issues matter. And I'm thrilled to work with them.

So I don't want to, you know, I don't want to look ahead. We just finished a presidential election. Well, it'd be nice to talk about ideas for a few months.

HUME: One of the issues — it's not the first one by any means — that you ticked off was this problem of Social Security, which this president is trying to address.

One of the prescriptions you talk about are the very kind of private accounts within Social Security, private investments accounts, that the president's proposing or is prepared to propose.

First of all, is he doing essentially what you think needs to be done within that program?

GINGRICH: I am very strongly supportive of President George W. Bush on this whole issue. He first started talking about it in 1999. It took real courage. He did not back off one inch during the debates in 2004.

And if you look at the country, 72 percent of young people would like to have the right to take part of their FICA tax and put it in a personal Social Security savings account.

The difference, economically, for them and for the country will be massive. It's a fight we should undertake and it's a fight I think we can win.

HUME: The administration apparently plans in doing this to figure out a way to cover the costs, the initial costs to the system as it now exists, of allowing people to begin putting money in private accounts.

That money, of course, would not, therefore, be available, like all your other Social Security taxes, to pay current benefits.

So you've got a short-term problem that will last for some number of years. The administration proposes to address it by some formula that might have the effect of reducing benefits or other ways.

Do you believe that you have to accompany the private accounts proposal with a way to pay those short-term costs?

GINGRICH: I devote a whole chapter in "Winning the Future" to this question of how do you fix Social Security.

The Ryan-Sununu bill is a very important — Congressman Ryan, Senator Sununu have a very important bill that moves in the right direction.

None of us buy a house under Congressional Budget Office rules. None of us try to, unless you're really, really rich, try to pay these things off immediately. We understand 30-year mortgages.

Social Security is a national contract. You can fix it over 30 years, I think, in a very comfortable way. You build an off-budget trust fund. It pays itself off as the system works.

The numbers that the Social Security actuary scored said that, by 2058, you actually have to cut the FICA tax, because the surplus is so big.

But I don't think you can solve it inside the normal Congressional Budget Office scoring, which is, frankly, an artifact. It's six or seven guys sitting in an office, not very far from here, making up rules.

HUME: I understand, but as a matter of politics in this debate, it is universally recognized and believed that we're going to incur these short-term costs.

GINGRICH: Right.

HUME: The administration proposes to go ahead and try to deal with them, so that they basically are paid off as we go.

GINGRICH: Right. I think...

HUME: Do you think that's a mistake?

GINGRICH: I think that — politically, I think you're much better off to go to the country and talk about the equivalent of a home mortgage. The country understands that. Talk about the equivalent of a student loan. The country understands that. And say, "Look, over a 20- to 30-year period, you can create a sinking fund, you can do this whole thing, you can do it like Chile has done it." There are examples around the world.

And it can be done, frankly, with declining interest rates, because you increase the savings pool — having these personal accounts increases the savings pool about five times faster than the amount you have to borrow to implement. So you actually have a downward pressure on interest rates.

HUME: That has been described, in some places, even by some of your conservative friends, as the free lunch option. How do you respond to that characterization?

GINGRICH: Well, if you think that student loans and home mortgages are free lunches, then it's a free lunch. If you think they are smart ways, over a lifetime, to deal with letting middle-class people increase their assets, then they're a good thing to do.

HUME: What is your reaction to this dispute we had this week and last involving the House Ethics Committee and the apparent effort to shield Tom DeLay from some of its consequences? What's your view of that whole matter?

GINGRICH: Well, I have a chapter in "Winning the Future" in which we talk about congressional reform. And ironically, I suggest the Senate needs to tighten up, and the House needs to loosen up, in terms of how they deal with each other, not on ethics issues, but on rules of the House, allowing amendments...

HUME: Right.

GINGRICH: ... allowing minorities to have a right to vote, and that sort of thing.

On ethics issues, I think it's always a mistake, particularly for Republicans, because I think we're the natural reform party, it is always a mistake for us to attempt to change rules to fit one person.

I ran into a problem when I was speaker. I consciously, deliberately was under the rules. I did what the rules required to do. I didn't ever try to fix it in terms of saying, "Let's have a carveout for Newt Gingrich."

I saw Tom DeLay Friday night at the tenth anniversary of the Class of 1994 and I commended him, because he listened to his colleagues, he understood that he had put them in an uncomfortable position, and he led the way to go back to where the rules had been prior to last fall. I think it was the right thing to do.

If there is, as some fear, a political indictment from this one state prosecutor, who, after all, once indicted Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison four days before an election and then dropped it after the election, if it's purely, blatantly political, the House can deal with that as a case. But I don't think they should change rules to try to shield anybody.

HUME: You say in the book that, in winning the war on terror, we need to win the war in Iraq. Does it appear to you now that we are winning or losing, as we approach that election?

GINGRICH: I think we're winning, but I think it's very difficult, and I think that we need to redouble our efforts...

HUME: More troops?

GINGRICH: ... to strengthen the Iraqis.

I don't think the answer is more American troops. I think the answer is we need more translators, frankly. The troops that are there need probably as many as 4,000 additional translators, because you can't go door to door and not speak Arabic and do any good.

I think that the underlying problem is, what worked in Afghanistan, which was transferring the government back to the Afghans within three weeks of winning the campaign, did not happen here. We're now digging ourselves out of a hole.

It is very much to our interest to make sure that General Petraeus and the training program works. It's very much to our interest to have Iraqis policing Iraq. We should be reinforcers, we should not be enforcers.

And we want to get Americans out of the cities and have them provide firepower and backup, but in the end have the Iraqis running their own cities.

HUME: That appears to be the policy, doesn't it?

GINGRICH: It is. And the question is accelerating it. And I mean the machinery, the bureaucracy, still moves at a peacetime pace and it's a very constant problem.

HUME: Mr. Speaker, it's a very interesting book. Again, it's called "Winning the Future," correct?

GINGRICH: That's right.

HUME: All right.

GINGRICH: Thank you.

HUME: Mr. Speaker, it's always a pleasure to have you. Good luck with the book.

Gingrich has no more of a chance of being elected than Hillary does. They both represent the boogeymen of the other party and have negatives that preclude them from anything approaching an election victory.

I have a better chance of being picked than Newt does.

btw newt had a long interview on CSPAN last weekend if anyone is interested.. you can watch online

http://booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=5357&schedID=328

I don't think he was questioned about a presidential run but I didn't see the whole thing.

Go Newt!!!

I agree (at the moment) that he would be a tough sell as a candidate; however he is going to drive the Republican Party & the debate in a positive direction... Intellectually & ideologically, he is the counter Hillary Clinton. (however, i think he is much smarter than she is going one on one with her).

Newt hasn't a chance. It will have to be someone not entirely demonized yet by the media.

I'm a Newt fan to be sure.. but I'm not sure if he will do the GOP any favors by running in 2008.. I just don't see him having a shot at being elected.

Depends on who he runs against. Goldwater couldn't be elected either, but he set the dinner table and the feast has lasted a long time.

They both represent the boogeymen of the other party and have negatives that preclude them from anything approaching an election victory.

Yeah, but what if they run against each other?

I don't know how successful Newt would be in a run for the presidency in 2008.

I do know that Newt is one of the five most powerful and influential conservatives of the last 25 years. It's a fact. Without Newt's 1994 leadership and his Contract With America, there would have been NO GOP takeover of Congress for the first time in 40 years. And without that GOP majority advancing the conservative agenda, there would have been NO "President" George W.Bush.

Don't. Please don't!

They both represent the boogeymen of the other party and have negatives that preclude them from anything approaching an election victory.

Yeah, but what if they run against each other?

matter-antimatter explosion

Frist/Rice 2008!

"The former House speaker has been plotting a comeback"

We should be so lucky. Of course the leftist RINOs like Tom Kean of New Jersey (the pompous a** from the 9-11 Commission)wouldn't support him, but who cares?

We won without them in 2004 and can do it again in 2008.

NO to Frist......ESPECIALLY if he cannot go "nuclear" with the Senate!

Your hypothetical would be the immoveable object meeting the irresistable force but on the Republican side Gingrich would be recognized as too hot a candidate. Besides, Gingrich is out of power now, how would he start the great engine that would give his candidacy momentum?