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<\/p>\nRUN, NEWT, RUN!<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’ve decided to make an early endorsement of Newt Gingrich<\/a><\/strong>, who is not yet officially declared<\/a>, for the GOP ‘s 2008 nomination for President of the United States. Why am I doing this ?<\/p>\n It’s not because Newt’s earlier quasi-libertarian, Toffler-futurist, conservatism meshed well with my own views, though it did. It’s not because Newt is likely to win the presidency, he’s a long shot at best even for the Republican nomination. I’m not endorsing him simply because he’s a historian, drinks Guinness<\/a>, likes paleontology and writes book reviews on Amazon.com<\/strong> <\/a>– though these are all fine things in my view.<\/p>\n I’m endorsing Gingrich simply because it will be healthy to have a candidate on stage who actually reads books and takes ideas with enough seriousness to effectively communicate them to a mainstream audience. Win or lose, Gingrich’s intellectual presence and inclination toward impulsive, rhetorical bomb-throwing will disrupt the hyperscripted performance of everyone else, something that will be all to the good. Frankly, I want<\/em><\/strong> to see all hell break loose on national television in such a way that the candidates might blurt out what they actually believe. Create enough of a media firestorm and all the Democratic candidates will have to respond as well.<\/p>\n Gingrich has the luxury of a win-win scenario. At a minimum, running a serious race raises Newt’s media profile, his influence and his future income stream from lectures and books; at maximum, lightning may strike and Gingrich could end up on the national ticket or at least resume his place as a powerbroker inside the Republican Party. He does not need to adopt the cautious, mannequin-like, ” frontrunner” posture that turns so many voters off to politicians. Gingrich can simply have fun.<\/p>\n Chances are, when Newt is long gone from the race, the ideas he bombastically injected into the body politic will still be very much part of the debate – much to the discomfort of the actual nominees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" RUN, NEWT, RUN! I’ve decided to make an early endorsement of Newt Gingrich, who is not yet officially declared, for the GOP ‘s 2008 nomination for President of the United States. Why am I doing this ? It’s not because Newt’s earlier quasi-libertarian, Toffler-futurist, conservatism meshed well with my own views, though it did. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}