Gingrich Points to the Future: US President?

Gingrich Points to the Future
By Mike Allen and Brian Faler
Monday, August 15, 2005; Page A02
Washington Post

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich gave a PowerPoint presentation to an enthusiastic group of Republican staffers at the Capitol last week that he billed as a blueprint for turning the party's "present, temporary partisan majority" into a "21st century governing majority." Gingrich's handouts also provide an early peek at how he might pursue the Republican nomination for president.

Gingrich, whose current book is titled "Winning the Future," called for "cheerful persistence" and urged Republicans to be "cheerfully funny about our opponents." He said conservatives need to be "relentlessly repetitive, because we are educating those who agree with us against the hidden values of the left."

"Speed, cleverness and shallowness are advantages for the Left," Gingrich, who stayed around to field a flurry of admiring questions, asserted on page 58 of his presentation. "They dominate the elite news media so they will always be able to launch new attacks, have their allies in the bureaucracy create new leaks and focus on analysis that hides their values." He added, "Our core pattern should be 'there is a BIG difference and it is a fact. . . .' We must then take such key facts to immediately illustrate a large vision; we cannot remain in arguments at the detail level."

Last week, an American Research Group poll of likely voters in New Hampshire's Republican primary put Gingrich in second, with 14 percent, after Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who drew 39 percent.