Former Republican Representative (GA-6) and Speaker of the House
Thinking about thinking about running; decision by October
Q: We're curious about whether you're a candidate. Let me show you what you've said. In December 2003: "I doubt it very much," running for president. Then in May 2006, "I doubt it." Then in December 2006, "Of course I'm thinking about it."
And last week, "It is a great possibility." As we sit on this day, May 20th, 2007, will Newt Gingrich run for president?
A: I promise, if after the September 27th American Solutions workshop, I do decide to run,
I will come back and be on "Meet the Press."
Q: So you're thinking about running?
A: Well, I'm thinking about thinking about running. But I won't do anything at all about the possibility of running until after
September 29th when we have our second workshop.
Q: So by October you should have a decision?
A: By October I'm confident that we'll be chatting.
Creator as source of liberty is literally written in stone
The first rays of sun on our Nation's Capital each morning illuminate [the Washington Monument]. And there on the top is inscribed Laus Deo ("Praise be to God"). These simple words, for the eyes of heaven alone, are a fitting reflection of George
Washington's conviction that liberty is owed to divine blessing.
[One can see in any tour of Washington DC] that our Creator is the source of American liberty--it is literally written into the rock, mortar, and marble of American history.
Source: Rediscovering God in America, by Newt Gingrich, p.130-131
Dec 31, 2006
A media-academic-legal elite is energetically determined to impose a radically secularist vision against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Americans. This outlook rejects the wisdom if the founding generation as outdated and treats the notion
that our liberties come from God as a curious artifact from the 1770s but of little practical importance for more enlightened times.
This elite is especially hard at work in the courts and in the classrooms where it is attempting to overturn two centuries of American self-understanding of religious freedom and political liberty.
In the courts, we see a systematic effort by this elite to purge all religious expression from American public life. The ongoing attempt to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance is only the most well-known of these mounting efforts.
Constitution says freedom OF religion, not FROM religion
The first ten amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. Amendment I begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
The language clearly prohibits the
establishment of an official national religion, while at the same time protecting the observance of religion in both private and public spaces. In fact, two of the principal authors of the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison, who were also our third and fourth presidents, respectively, both attended church services in the Capitol building, the most public of American spaces. During Jefferson's presidency, church services were also held in the
Treasury building and the Supreme Court. Therefore, these Founding Fathers clearly saw no conflict in opposing the establishment of an official religion while protecting the freedom of religious expression in the public square.
Supreme Court hostile to religion, but building based on it
While recent years have seen increasing hostility from the courts to public displays of religion, the Supreme Court is filled with them. Notice that all sessions begin with the Court's marshal announcing: "God save the United States and this honorable
court."
Throughout history, decisions of the Supreme Court have recognized that we are a religious nation. For example, in the 1952 case Zorach vs. Clauson, the court upheld a statute that allowed students to be released from school to attend religious
classes.
The most striking religious imagery at the Supreme Court building is that of Moses with the Ten Commandments. Affirming the Judeo-Christian roots of our legal system, they can be found in several places: at the center of the sculpture over the
east portico of the building, inside the actual courtroom, and finally, engraved over the chair of the Chief Justice, and on the bronze doors of the Supreme Court itself. There is also a sculpted marble depiction of Mohammad on the wall.
Reform traditional instruments of gov't for 21st century
We must implement policies that will ensure America's leadership, safety, and prosperity. And we must reinvigorate the core values that have made an exceptional civilization. We do not believe the traditional instruments of government will reform
themselves fast enough and thoroughly enough for the twenty-first century.
Only a grassroots citizens' movement can insist on the level of change that is needed for our children and grandchildren to have a successful future. Such a citizens' movement
would have to be focused on goals rather than on interest groups. The goals define the America we want our children and grandchildren to have. To achieve this future we will:
Defend America and our allies from those who would destroy us.
Transform the Social Security system into personal savings accounts.
Recenter on the Creator from Whom all our liberties come.
Establish patriotic education for our children and patriotic immigration for new Americans.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org
Dec 1, 2006
Focus on 5 major challenges for the 21st century
We believe our children & grandchildren deserve the opportunities our parents & grandparents gave us. [We must address 5 major challenges]:
Securing America & its Allies by Defeating America's Enemies, especially the Irreconcilable Wing of
Islam & the rogue dictatorships that empower them.
Defending God in the Public SquareThere is no attack on American culture more deadly & more historically dishonest than the unending war against God in America's public life.
Protecting
American CivilizationWe should not worry about people who want to come to the US to work hard & become Americans. What should worry us is ensuring that new immigrants learn to be American.
Winning in a Global EconomyThe challenge of economi
competition from China & India will require transformations in litigation, education, taxation, environmental & health policies.
Promoting Active Healthy Aging[We need to reform the] Medicare & Social Security systems for the 21st Century.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org
Dec 1, 2006
Polls are biased left; GOP wins on the issues
There is another great source of liberal power, not quite the same thing as the press but working hand in hand with it--and that is news media public opinion polls. Polls can be manipulated: through the pools selected for polling and through the
wording of the questions. First of all, if you ask all adults rather than likely voters, your results will be skewed by the responses of people who are not interested in politics and will therefore be more likely simply to parrot
what they have picked up from television. The more likely you are to vote, the more likely you are to pay attention to the arguments. As we’ve lately been discovering, the more you pay attention to the arguments, the more likely you are to vote for us.
GOP represents people, but Dems communicate better
Sometimes I think we conservative politicians forget how much the people "out there" are with us. The age of liberalism is over, and millions of Americans are calling on us to figure out how to replace it. We do in fact know how to do that, though people
go on needing to be convinced that there will be no unmanageable hardships for them concealed in our plans.
They need to believe that we understand how people feel. This is sometimes an uncomfortable thing for Republicans to make convincing.
Often we tend to talk as if we are a group of managers analyzing some problem in a boardroom. Democrats, on the other hand, whatever their other shortcomings, have a passion for both power and people and instinctively know how to focus in on both.
You might say that they on the whole come on like a party of lawyers making an appeal to a blue-collar jury, while Republicans come on like a party of managers making an appeal to a board of directors. Guess who is more successful at mass communication?
Baby Boomers becoming Republicans while Dems become outdated
Republicans are riding a wave of generational change. Baby boomers and their children are growing more conservative & critical of government failure to deliver services to a standard comparable to those of the private sector. On their side, the Democrats
are being dragged downhill by a combination of their industrial-age institutions, such as the labor unions, government bureaucrats, & trial lawyers, and their ideological base groups, such as radical feminists, homosexual activists, & race politicians.
These all keep the Democratic Party committed to policies & institutions that often violate the public's sense of decency & that cannot meet their demands for a dollar's worth of government services for a dollar of taxes.
Most of these trends are barel
noted in the media while they are happening, with the result that the view of the world that dominates in Washington and New York and Cambridge Mass, is almost 180 degrees different from the view of the world of everyday practical political leaders.
We must expect liberals to continue to fight us, and where they do so honestly, to respect them for it while continuing to work for our success. If the conservative movement had survived LBJ & Watergate by assuring itself that values were more important
than popularity, we can expect the liberals to do no less. After all, they have something tempting to promise people that we do not, namely, the quick fix & the easy buck. Americans are especially tired of the oppressive politically correct culture that
has grown up around them. But it is well to remember that temptation is something ever lurking, waiting to exploit human weakness, especially in difficult times. What we have to offer people instead is strength and adventure, the experience of a new
level of life-enhancing energy and love of a great country. We have no reason to become distressed--as many members of the House did and as I at some point also did. What we are embarked on is what they call steady work, more than enough for a lifetime.
Six challenges for a prosperous, free, & safe America
Let me outline the six major changes that I believe are necessary to leave our children with an America that is prosperous, free, and safe:
We must reassert and renew American civilization. Until we re-establish a legitimate moral-cultural
standard, our civilization is at risk.
We must accelerate America’s entry into the Third Wave Information Age. Second only to renewing our civilization is making the intellectual investment necessary to understand these changes and harness them to our
lasting advantage.
We must rethink our competition in the world market. We want our labor to add the highest value so that we can be the most effective competitor on earth.
We must replace the welfare state with an opportunity society.
We must
replace our centralized, micro-managed, Washington-based bureaucracy with a dramatically decentralized system more appropriate to a continent-wide country.
We musty be honest about the cost of government programs and balance the federal budget.
We must reassert and renew American civilization. From the arrival of English-speaking colonists in 1607 until 1965, there was one continuous civilization built around a set of commonly accepted legal and cultural principles. From the Jamestown colony
and the Pilgrims, through de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, up to Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Our civilization is based on a spiritual and moral dimension.
It emphasizes personal responsibility as much as individual rights. Since 1965, however, there has been a calculated effort by cultural elites to discredit this civilization and replace it with a culture of irresponsibility that is incompatible with
American freedoms as we have known them. Our first task is to return to teaching Americans about America and teaching immigrants how to become Americans. Until we re-establish a legitimate moral-cultural standard, our civilization is at risk.
Our civilization is a shared opportunity to pursue happiness
We have gone from being a strong, self-reliant, vigorous society to a pessimistic one that celebrates soreheads and losers jealous of others’ successes. I came out of my two years of reviewing American history convinced that our first need is to
rediscover the values we have lost. In my reading, I found five basic principles that I believe form the heart of our civilization:
The common understanding we share about who we are and how we came to be
The ethic of individual responsibility
The spirit of entrepreneurial free enterprise
The spirit of invention and discovery
Pragmatism and the concern for craft and excellence.
We stand on the shoulders of Western European civilization, but we are far more futuristic, more populist,
and more inclusive. American civilization is not merely a subset of Western Europe’s. We have drawn people and cultures from across the planet and integrated them into an extraordinary shared opportunity to pursue happiness.
Contract with America: 10 bills in 1st 100 days of Congress.
Gingrich wrote the Contract with America:
As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body, we propose not just to change its policies, but to restore the bounds of trust between the people and their elected representatives. That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.
Within the first hundred days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given a full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote, and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny:
The Fiscal Responsibility Act: Balanced budget amendment & line item veto
The Taking Back Our Streets Act: More prisons, more enforcement, more death penalty
The Personal Responsibility Act: Limit welfare to 2 years & cut welfare spending
The Families Reinforcement Act: Use tax code to foster families
The American Dream Restoration Act: Repeal marriage tax; cut middle class taxes
The National Security Restoration Act: No US troops under UN command; more defense spending
The Senior Citizens Fairness Act: Reduce taxes on Social Security earnings
The Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act: Incentives to small businesses
The Common Sense Legal Reforms Act: Limit punitive damages
The Citizen Legislature Act: Term limits on Congress
Further, we will work to enact additional budget savings, beyond the budget cuts specifically included in the legislation above, to ensure that the federal budget will be less than it would have been without the enactment of these bills. Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.
Source: Contract with America 93-CWA1 on Sep 27, 1994
