Brian Carney suggests that Newt Gingrinch, who led the Republican Party to victory in 1994, may be making a run for the presidency in 2008:
The party governed to maintain power, and so lost touch with its electorate. And here he adds a warning: ‘Our natural majority in the country is a very reform majority. It’s the taxpaying majority. It’s the people who do not trust Washington, do not like seeing their money wasted, are not impressed with pork — if anything, they’re irritated by it. And either the House and Senate Republicans are going to move substantially in the next few months or they’re going to run a very real risk of losing the fall election.’So what does ‘substantial movement’ look like? Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gingrich has a program. ‘[T]here are two layers. I’ll give you things they can’t do and things they can do.’ First, the things they can do, such as cutting down on earmarks and pork-barrel spending. ‘They should change the House rules so that any conference report that comes back is automatically filed on the Thomas system [the Web site where congressional actions are logged and made publicly available] and is not voted on for 72 hours so that every blogger in the country can go in and read it. That would immediately cut down on the most outrageous stuff because you wouldn’t be able to pass it.’
This is Mr. Gingrich at his best — a swish of the sword when faced with a Gordian Knot.