Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich — who bounded onto the CPAC stage to the strains of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” — predicted that the GOP will seize control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. That was the headline-grabbing bit of his bombastic, 30-minute speech, which touched on topics as varied as the works of Albert Camus, old anti-Soviet slogans, Gordon Wood’s definition of “corruption,” and Minnesota’s ability to balance the budget.<\/p>\n
“Please note,” tweeted Tim Cameron of Gingrich’s group American Solutions. “Newt Gingrich doesn’t need a teleprompter.”<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n Other speeches by the politicians on CPAC’s presidential straw poll* were far more obviously partisan. Gingrich did have booster-ish zingers, crediting Obama with creating the jobs of Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and crediting Mitt Romney with creating more jobs than the Democrats. The first statement was cant — the second was a cutting remark that underscored why, exactly, a man who left the speaker’s chair in disgrace 12 years ago could speak so confidently about how his party was ready to govern again. He framed his prescription for Republicans — “bipartisanship” that demanded parity, right now with the majority party — as a good faith effort to save Democrats from themselves.<\/p>\n “We can’t go on recess,” he said.<\/p>\n The Democratic Party that Gingrich saw in Washington resembled the one that Glenn Beck rails against on his Fox News show — a “radical” and “corrupt” project antithetical to America’s institutions and history. Multiple speakers have compared the administration to the Soviet Union; Gingrich did so more subtly, explaining that the Soviets tried to convince their subjects that “2+2=5,” and so did the Democrats.<\/p>\n Before the speech, I asked a few attendees what they thought of Gingrich. Did they forgive him for endorsing Dede Scozzafava in NY-23? Sure, said University of Alabama student Alexandra Brown — “He’s Newt Gingrich.” But Ohio activist Marie Heinig told me she’d ruled out Gingrich as a conservative leader because of the “immorality” with which he conducted his personal life.<\/p>\n *with the exception of the one by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich — who bounded onto the CPAC stage to the strains of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” — predicted that the GOP will seize control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. That was the headline-grabbing bit of his bombastic, 30-minute speech, which touched on topics as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}