(Sources: Fortune magazine and RedState)
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke to Fortune magazine today about the 2008 presidential elections and whether he would run in them.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asks.
The radical realist who defied conventional wisdom 12 years ago by stealing the House out from under the noses of entrenched Democrats now plans a surprise attack for the presidency. “I’m going to tell you something, and whether or not it’s plausible given the world you come out of is your problem,” he tells Fortune. “I am not ‘running’ for president. I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen.” So he’s running, only without yet formally saying so.
Gingrich is approaching the presidential race in a fundamentally different way than other Republican presidential hopefuls such as John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Gingrich tells Fortune that he plans to create a draft-Newt “wave” by building grassroots support for his health care, national security and energy independence ideas. He calls his GOP competitors “nice people” but says that “we’re not in the same business. They’re running for president. I’m running to change the country.”
Mr. Gingrich is not the first to run a so-called ‘movement’-campaign. Other famous examples include Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid and Ronald Reagan’s first attempt to reach the White House in 1976. Both of those are noted primarily for having failed. But the power of a movement-campaign doesn’t lie so much in winning the presidency as much as it does in influencing whomever does end up winning it.
“My hope is to create a wave that sweeps through that entire system, and in a context that obviously includes the presidency. Even if he’s not the nominee, Gingrich says he plans to throw the weight of what he’s built behind a “winning-the-future presidential candidate.”
I think Gingrich realizes that his chances to end up in the White House are about as bad as Kerry’s chances are. It has become conventional wisdom the Republicans can probably only hold on to the presidency by running a moderate such as Giuliani or McCain. Gingrich won’t persuade any Democrat to switch parties, but he can cause enough trouble for the front-runners come primary season that they will be forced to include some of his ideas in their own rhetoric to win the Republican nomination.
A moderate Republican might also consider asking Gingrich along as his running mate to pacify their core constituency, though I consider that unlikely as well. Then again, Newt Gingrich has made a career out of beating long odds. I can’t really picture seeing his name on the Republican ballot, but I can’t rule it out yet. Fortune mentions two recent polls that have him rank 2nd and 3rd in the GOP presidential nomination race. Recent polls I’ve seen mark him 4th and 5th, but Newt’s inclusion in the race should be interesting if nothing else.
Gingrich delineated his future moves as follows: come December, he will launch a 527 group, called “American Solutions for Winning the Future,” that will enable him to raise and spend unlimited money on behalf of this effort. Then in January, he will conduct a strategy meeting with advisors and will make his final decision next fall.
That would mean an extremely late start, but Gingrich has never exactly been conventional in his politics. In the words of his old friend, and occasional adversary, former House majority leader Dick Armey: “He’s never been a parochial member of Congress. He has big ideas, and has had them for a long time. He’s not going to appear to have just discovered them for the purposes of an election. And that’s a good place to be for an ‘08 candidate.”
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