Not long after stipulating that he would enter the race if he could raise $30 million in pledges before Oct. 21st, Newt Gingrich has decided not to run for President.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not run for president in 2008 after determining he could not legally explore a bid and remain as head of his tax-exempt political organization, a spokesman said Saturday.

“Newt is not running,” spokesman Rick Tyler said. “It is legally impermissible for him to continue on as chairman of American Solutions (for Winning the Future) and to explore a campaign for president.”

Gingrich decided “to continue on raising the challenges America faces and finding solutions to those challenges” as the group’s chairman, Tyler said, “rather than pursuing the presidency.”

This is unfortunate, as having Newt on the same stage as the other Republican candidates would be a good way to get them to commit to adopting principled conservative reforms to specific problems. Te onus now is on us now. Newt’s doing tremendous work in spreading ideas for real solutions to real problems. Now we, as voters and interested citizens, must let the candidates know that we expect them to address these problems with specifics and not just platitudes.

Fred Thompson’s stealth candidacy has moved within 5 points of Giuliani in the newly important Florida primary. It’s worth noting that Gingrich, who has been polling near 10 points in most states, was not included on the list. This perhaps confirms my impression that, at least at present, Newt and Thompson supports are interchangable. Thus, whichever of these two potential candidates enters the fray first will likely pick up most of the supporters of the other. My guess is that Fred is preparing to enter the race in early June, and as a consequence a Newt candidacy is not going to happen.

Fred is also said to have an opening in crucial Iowa.

Coming as a surprise to few on the right, except Newt Gingrich unfortunately, new research draws a compelling link between global temperatures and sun spots which casts serious doubts over the carbon hysteria that has been sweeping the globe.

Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star’s activity.

The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun’s 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun’s surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the “Little Ice Age”. Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

. . . Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Of course, no article this blasphemous could be put together without paying homage to the global warming eco-religion, so an obligatory acknowledgment was thrown in:

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

You’ll be able to watch live as Newt takes center stage and offers the closing remarks of this years’ Conservative Political Action Conference tomorrow at 4:45 EST. For more on the happenings at CPAC, check out some of Michelle Malkin’s coverage.

Race42008 reports that Rudy Giuliani has filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC, paving the way for an official Presidential run.

Meanwhile, both a lot and a little has been happening in the Republican primary race. I say both a lot and a little because there’s has been a lot of reporting but very little change in the dynamics of the race to go along with it. Romney continues his failure to gain traction, polling behind Newt in just about every state, further justifying my December claim that “Romney is not a viable candidate”.

Commentators are beginning to pick up on something else I said in that post back in December, and that’s the fact that Rudy Giuliani is the sole front-runner. This is largely due to the fact that McCain’s “inevitability” aura never extended beyond the beltway. Rank and file conservatives are far less enamored with him than his admirers in the media suppose.

Dick Morris (Hat tip: another race42008 post):

Until now, the status of front-runner in the Republican primaries for president was jointly held by Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. McCain is clearly no longer the front-runner. In the last week or so, Giuliani has moved out to a clear lead.

. . .Conversations with conservative activists also show a remarkable openness to supporting Giuliani - a belief that he can overcome (perhaps finesse) his pro-choice, pro-gun-control, pro-gay-rights and pro-immigration positions. Feelings seem bitterer over McCain?s role in Washington battles - his opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his support for ?amnesty? for illegal immigrants and for campaign-finance reform.

Giuliani has developed an effective parry to charges that his pro-choice stance would undo eight years of pro-life heavy lifting by the Bush administration. He?s saying he?d oppose partial-birth abortion and work to continue to curtail Medicaid funding for abortion. More, he?d appoint judges like Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

I’ve believed all along that Rudy’s strongest counter to the concerns of social conservatives is his record of support for strict constructionist judges, or what Scalia prefers be called originalists. Rudy has said on several occasions that he would have made Scalia his Chief Justice. Assuming he is to be believed, for which I have no reason to doubt, that statement alone can do a lot to bring weary social conservatives, who otherwise support his strong leadership and fiscal conservatism, into the Giuliani camp.

And, finally, I can’t talk about 2008 without turning to Newt Gingrich. The perennial favorite of conservatives everywhere is staunchly maintaining, in the face of rising poll numbers, his position that he won’t decide whether or not to enter the race until September.

Nonetheless, or perhaps consequently, the Draft Newt campaign has officially begun. Can it deliver a tide of grass roots support capable of ushering the right’s greatest idea man into the White House? It’s hard to say, though there are ample reasons to believe the odds are against him. Nevertheless, it may just be enough to thrust him onto somebody’s ticket in the VP slot. A Giuliani/Gingrich ticket is looking better and better to me.

Polls by the American Research Group show Rudy Guiliani in a strong position in Republican primary states ranging the ideological spectrum.

Iowa

Rudy Giuliani 29%

John McCain 24%

Newt Gingrich 19%

Chuck Hagel 7%

Mitt Romney 7%

Nevada

Rudy Giuliani 31%

John McCain 25%

Newt Gingrich 22%

Mitt Romney 4%

New Hampshire

John McCain 29%

Rudy Giuliani 25%

Newt Gingrich 14%

Mitt Romney 9%

South Carolina

John McCain 35%

Rudy Giuliani 28%

Newt Gingrich 15%

Mitt Romney 5%

There are, I think, three important points we can take from these numbers. First, Rudy is the front runner. Even though McCain is very close, he has burned too many bridges with conservatives. Rudy’s 28% in traditionally conservative South Carolina is impressive, and reinforces the previous evidence we’ve seen that the conventional wisdom is most likely wrong, conservatives are not going to run away screaming as they get to know Rudy Guiliani. Some will, but many will also see a man who ran a fiscally conservative government in a liberal state, who made strong strides in the areas of crime and education, and who is capable of leading in the war against global jihad.

Point 2: Romney is not a viable candidate. His exposure as a faux conservative, who couldn’t bring himself to be associated with Reagan or even support the Contract with America, means the end of his campaign. With McCain and Guiliani already pulling strong support, there’s no more room for preceived “moderates”. It’s conservative or bust for whoever wants to be candidate number three.

And that also brings us to point number three. Newt Gingrich. He polled a respectable third in every state, ranging in support from 14% to 22%. If no true conservative steps forward before September of 2007, Gingrich will be a force to be reckoned with in the Republican primary. Whether or not he’d have a legimate chance at the nod will depend on a number of factors wholly unpredictable at this time. But it will be good for the Republican party, and good for America, if he’s at least strong enough to be a serious contender, as he’ll have strong influence in setting the debate.

Hat tip: race42008

Gingrich calls for elimination of McCain-Feingold reforms

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says First Amendment rights need to be expanded, and eliminating the McCain-Feingold law’s restrictions on campaign contributions would be a start.

Gingrich, a Republican, suggested allowing people to give any amount to any candidate as long as the donation was reported online within 24 hours.

“Just as tax lawyers always succeed in out-thinking the (Internal Revenue Service) because they stay after five and the IRS goes home, the private-sector lawyers will always out-think the (Federal Election Commission) because they stay after five and the FEC goes home,” Gingrich told about 400 people at the Nackey Scripps Loeb First Amendment Awards dinner Monday.

Passed in 2002, McCain-Feingold bans unrestricted donations from labor, corporations and the wealthy to the political parties. Gingrich said the reforms have failed and led only to more negative campaign ads via e-mail, television, direct mail and phone calls.

Notice how the AP couldn’t help slip in some liberal framing, declaring that the bill “bans unrestricted donations from labor, corporations and the wealthy.” The bill does not discriminate against wealthy and poor, it applies equally to (and thus infringes upon) everyones free speech. But leave it to the MSM to slip some class warfare into an unrelated issue of free speech.

Hat tip: Race 4 2008

First, their agenda is rather obvious. Investigate everything. Expect the same battles, WMD’s and the reasons for the Iraq war, to be fought all over again for the umpteenth time. The upside to this massive waste of time is that it’s a massive waste of time. The more time spent investigating, the less time spent enacting bad liberal policies.

What little time they do leave themselves for legislation will be spent pulling the emergency brakes on the economy by increasing taxes and advancing socialized health care. However, neither effort is likely to gain serious traction. The question many conservatives are probably asking, however, is whether this means the end of the Republican revolution. In no way, shape, or form does this result indicate an end of the rightward track of the country.

Contrary to what media is going to sell you, this is not an historic election. In the long run it will have little impact. It doesn’t signify a u-turn in the gradual rightward shift of the electorate; more like a speed bump. Europe is pleased to see a Democratic victory. This is no surprise, as the Democrats offer little more than the European model of secularization and self-destruction by indulgence that comes with big welfare states. But the American people aren’t buying that. A recent poll by CNN found a majority believes the government is too big and is doing too much. Two years of a Democrat Congress is almost certain to be more than this small-government majority is willing to stomach.

Thankfully, Democrats can be counted on to expose their true agenda to the public before 2008. While in order to be competitive in redstate America, Democrats had to field an array of conservative candidates, their leadership is full of old liberals. Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi are the face the public will see. With new found power, the left will make strong demands on Democrats that they won’t be able to deliver without alienating the vast majority of the electorate. Gaining power may, in fact, exacerbate the severe problems already showing under the Democratic tent. The Democratic party is really still just a collection of special interests fighting for their piece of the pie. Until they find a core ideology that appeals to more than just fringe leftists, Democrats will find themselves outside-looking-in-very soon.

In the mean time, small-government conservatives need to regain control of the Republican party. We lost some good people today, but we also trimmed some fat (Lincoln Chafee) that we can do without. It’s time to start looking for new control of the party. Mike Pence, of the conservative Republican Study Committee has indicated a desire for the minority leader spot. I think he would be a good choice. A reenergized Republican party with a new found resolve for conservative principles has the potential to set the agenda, even as the minority. By appealing to the public, as well as many of the newly elected blue dog democrats, on popular conservative issues such as spending and immigration we can work to solve important issues in spite of Democrat gains. We need forward thinking and principled leadership from someone like Newt Gingrich to lead us into ‘08.

Newt Gingrich Fights His Way Back to Top

. . .Well as Mark Twain once said (and I paraphrase) the reports of Newt?s political death have been greatly exaggerated.

Newt is back.

Once most political leaders leave office, they rapidly fade away?but not Newt. He is in high demand, speaking to a wide range of audiences whose interest varies from healthcare to global trade, to science, to education, to national security. People, whose interest may be piqued because of his celebrity status, are listening to what he is saying and it is often not what they expected. He recently spoke to the liberal New School in New York City?s Greenwich Village. His topic was a ?new birth of freedom? for the poor. He appeared earlier this year with former Sen. John Edwards at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles on the same topic. Edwards should have owned this event, but it was Newt who won them over.

Newt has also been busy writing, not just opinion pieces but, since leaving office he has published five books, including three Civil War novels, and is about to release a book from an historian?s perspective of God in America, a book on transformation and large-scale change, and a book on the environment (as a professor he taught environmental studies).

But, while Newt is changing the minds of those who did not think they could find themselves in agreement with him, he is also having a conversation with the conservative base who are longing for a reconvening of the conservative movement, and he is communicating in a way no one else is. Gifted with clarity, Newt and his message to the GOP has been tough.

. . .

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised when Newt emerges as a front runner for the Republican nomination.

The weekly standard has an excellent article on Newt.

. . .To commemorate the fifth anniversary of September 11, on Monday Gingrich took the podium at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a senior fellow, and delivered a talk entitled “Lessons From the First Five Years of War: Where Do We Go From Here?” It wasn’t what you would call a “glass-half-full” speech. Gingrich thinks President Bush deserves credit for treating the 9/11 attacks as acts of war and toppling the Taliban and Saddam regimes. But “time is not on our side,” Gingrich said. “We must confront the reality that we are not where we wanted to be nor where we need to be.”

Gingrich’s speech is important because it comes in the midst of what can only be described as a sustained and successful public relations campaign to burnish his image in anticipation of the upcoming 2008 Republican presidential primaries. Officially, Gingrich has said only he’s considering a run and will make a decision next year. But his actions suggest he’s all but made up his mind.

His speech, btw, is available on Newt.org. I definitely recommend everyone check it out. Back to the article.

. . .This summer, pollster Frank Luntz conducted focus-groups in which participants were asked about a variety of potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich included. “We were genuinely surprised by the strongly favorable reaction to his speeches and interviews,” Luntz wrote afterward. Luntz found that voters had forgotten the many controversies associated with Gingrich’s tenure as speaker in the 1990s. “The words he spoke were like nothing they had heard from anyone else. While he didn’t start either session with any measurable support,” Luntz went on, “he ended both Iowa and New Hampshire sessions with the most new converts.”

The key to Newt’s growing popularity is his willingness to speak directly and unequivocally about the serious problems we are facing, both foreign and domestic, and to offer real solutions. At a time when conservatives are becoming more and more despondent over a Republican party that has abandoned conservatism for big government, Newt offers hope. He offers hope that the party can be salvaged and returned to the principles that brought them, under Newt’s guidance in ‘94, into power in the House for the first time in 40 years. Unfortunately, this scares many in the Republican establishment as much as it does the Democrats.

. . .Republican strategists with ties to other nascent presidential campaigns say that they are almost certain Gingrich will run for the presidency. “Gingrich will raise the level and quality of the debates,” one told me earlier this year. “He will only make whoever emerges better.” This strategist cautioned, though, that it was doubtful Gingrich could win the nomination. “His ultimate goal is to get his agenda adopted,” the strategist said. That assessment is now conventional wisdom among capital Republicans.

My position on this is very simple. Ignore the conventional wisdom. These people are products of Washington D.C. The idea of a straight shooter advocating real reform, instead of just superficial window dressing, scares the crap out of them. But they’ll find out how wrong they are soon enough. When Newt wins the nomination they’ll get on board or get left behind. We’d be better of without most of them anyway, since they got us in this big spending mess in the first place.