Newt Gingrich: A Refresher in Scary

Draft Newt (for President)

'Gingrich says to mull decision on White House bid'
By Matthew Bigg


(Reuters) -- Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday he would wait until September before deciding whether to run for the Republican party's presidential nomination and described that race as "wide open."

"In my case I really believe that what we did with the Contract with America, very solution-oriented, very specific (was right). My mission from now until September is to do a real project of creating a generation of solutions," he said.




Newt's 18 Points on the "winning" in Iraq

Key Steps to Victory in Iraq - Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq on January 23, 2007


1. Place General Petraeus in charge of the Iraq campaign and establish that the Ambassador is operating in support of the military commander.

Bush announced the change on January 4, 2007
Petraeus took over on February 10, 2007

Anyone believe Newt didn't talk to Bush prior?

2. Since General Petraeus will now have responsibility for victory in Iraq all elements of achieving victory are within his purview and he should report daily to the White House on anything significant which is not working or is needed

3. Create a deputy chief of staff to the President and appoint a retired four star general or admiral to manage Iraq implementation for the Commander in Chief on a daily basis. (war czar)

4. Establish that the second briefing (after the daily intelligence brief) the President will get every day is from his deputy chief of staff for Iraq implementation.

5. Establish a War Cabinet which will meet once a week to review metrics of implementation and resolve failures and enforce decisions. The President should chair the War Cabinet personally and his deputy chief of staff for Iraq implementation should prepare the agenda for the weekly review and meeting.

(so much for those levels of bureaucracy getting in the way)

6. Establish three plans: one for achieving victory with the help of the Iraqi government, one for achieving victory with the passive acquiescence of the Iraqi government, one for achieving victory even if the current Iraqi government is unhappy. The third plan may involve very significant shifts in troops and resources away from Baghdad and a process of allowing the Iraqi central government to fend for itself if it refuses to cooperate.

7. Communicate clearly to Syria and Iran that the United States is determined to win in Iraq and that any further interference (such as the recent reports of sophisticated Iranian explosives being sent to Iraq to target Americans) will lead to direct and aggressive countermeasures.

8. Pour as many intelligence assets into the fight as needed to develop an overwhelming advantage in intelligence preparation of the battlefield.

(and out those who won't play along?)

9. Develop a commander’s capacity to spend money on local activities sufficient to enable every local American commander to have substantial leverage in dealing with local communities.

(back to kicking stacks of 100 bills around like footballs?)

10. Establish a jobs corps or civil conservation corps of sufficient scale to bring unemployment for males under 30 below 10% (see the attached op-ed by Mayor Giuliani and myself on this topic).

11. Expand dramatically the integration of American purchasing power in buying from Iraqi firms pioneered by Assistant Secretary Paul Brinkley to maximize the rate of recovery of the Iraqi economy.

12. Expand the American Army and Marine Corps as much as needed to sustain the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan while also being prepared for other contingencies and maintaining a sustainable rhythm for the families and the force.

13. Demand a war budget for recapitalization of the military to continue modernization while defeating our enemies. The current national security budget is lower as a percentage of the economy than at any time from Pearl Harbor through the end of the Cold War. It is less than half the level Truman sustained before the Korean War.

14. The State Department is too small, too undercapitalized and too untrained for the demands of the 21st century. There should be a 50% increase in the State Department budget and a profound rethinking of the culture and systems of the State Department so it can be an operationally effective system.

15. The Agency for International Development is hopelessly unsuited to the new requirements of economic assistance and development and should be rethought from the ground up. The Marshall Plan and Point Four were as important as NATO in containing the Soviet Empire. We do not have that capability today.

(but Newt wants it)

16. The President should issue executive orders where possible to reform the implementation system so it works with the speed and effectiveness required by the 21st century.

17. Where legislation is needed the President should collaborate with Congress in honestly reviewing the systems that are failing and developing new metrics, new structures and new strategies.

18. Under our Constitution it is impossible to have this scale of rethinking and reform without deep support from the legislative branch. Without Republican Senator Arthur Vandenburg, Democratic President Harry Truman could never have developed the containment policies that saved freedom and ultimately defeated the Soviet Empire. The President should ask the bipartisan leaders of Congress to cooperate in establishing a joint Legislative-Executive working group on winning the war and should openly brief the legislative branch on the problems which are weakening the American system abroad. Only by educating and informing the Congress can we achieve the level of mutual understanding and mutual commitment that this long hard task will require.



Frontline:Vanity Fair:Newt Gingrich from 1995

"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to." Newt Gingrich"

"Newt's friends have told me that his primary references are movies. They have informed his heroic ideal. "When he watches John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart on TV, he lives out these movies," says Melvin Steely, a former colleague at West Georgia College."

"I'm a mythical person," says Newt, no stranger to revolutions. "I had a period of thinking that I would have been called 'Newt the McPherson,' as in Robert the Bruce."

"Robert the Bruce," Newt continues, "is the guy who would not, could not, avoid fighting...He carried the burden of being Scotland." Like the Bruce, Newt feels he must carry the burden of being his nation."

learned a damn thing, or will they back another would-be messiah?

Newt's emerging again in a very public way. He dropped out of the public eye for a bit - but not the game.

Don't know if he will run or not - doesn't matter if he can influence those who do.

are ready to get out of Iraq, and would prefer that our politicians shift to helping the diminishing middle class. With outsourcing, shipping jobs overseas, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and increasing numbers of us slipping into poverty, most of us are tired of doing nothing but footing the bill for nothing but letting the rich off without paying their share, and a loss of the social safety net for the rest of us. We are tired of our loved ones coming home in body bags, or badly damaged.

They then face the indifference of an administration which thinks of nothing but rewarding their cronies, and gaining more power and control. We're tired of being worried sick over losing our jobs, and our health insurance, and our homes, and tired of not having enough money to put our kids through college, and then having puffed up, self-important people like Newt strut around and expect us to vote for our own destruction. Enough of Newt, and the neocons, and all the rest of these people who have ruined our country, and are bent on expanding even more warfare in the Middle East. It's time for them to go.

over and over again.

Like Newt...back in the public eye, testifying before the Senate on Iraq, advising Bush (on Iraq) and threatening to run for President.

he was giving out "A"s for sex, any one hear anything like that?