Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich brought the crowd to its feet before even opening his mouth at the 2010 Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in New Orleans
As the Hilton exhibition hall speakers blared Survivors’ “Eye of the Tiger,” 2000 activists from 14 southern states clapped in unison.
Even before the ovation ended, Gingrich’s first words were a wry and direct shot at President Obama’s honesty and authenticity, “when you speak from the heart you don’t need a teleprompter.”
Leading off a string of speeches from 2012 GOP White House wannabes he pulled no punches. “This is the most radical president in American history” Gingrich said, “historians will some day write that the more Obama talked, the less people believed him.”
The mastermind of the 1994 republican revolution described opposition to the Obama agenda in the 2010 mid-terms in sweeping historical terms: “I believe this is the most serious conflict since the 1850’s.”
He cast Obama as a picking a fight with Americans, “the most radical American President has thrown down the gauntlet . . . . He (Obama) has said I run the machine and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Gingrich says there is a simple three step solution to right the nation.
Gingrich says stage one is to simply win the fall mid term elections.
Stage two is refusing to fund any objectionable Obama programs in 2011 and 2012.
Stage three is “make sure that Obama joins Jimmy Carter as a one term president.”
In that context he asked republicans to commit that a republican president and congress will repeal every radical bill passed by the Obama administration.
Gingrich said republicans have rightly been the party of NO against bad policy but that republicans should also emphasize their good ideas.
Republicans, Gingrich proclaimed, should loudly say yes to: a balanced budget, more jobs through tax cuts, stopping medicare and medicaid fraud, better equipping soldiers, an American energy plan, and the right kind of health care reform.
After his prepared remarks the former college professor took questions and inevitable the White House question came up: “What are your personal plans for 2012?”
Without hesitation he postponed his answer and left the door wide open, “in 2011 (my wife) Calista and I will probably have to make a decision on whether or not to run.”
In the hallway before his speech, Newt said he would soon be visiting the lead off caucus and primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
If there is any doubt left that he is seriously testing the waters..later this year Gingrich also has a book coming out – an absolute must in the modern presidential campaign.