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Gingrich Plans Massive Outreach
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is telling associates that he’s launching a major new grass-roots movement to recapture the soul of the Republican Party, and quite possibly the White House.
Gingrich says that the effort will be much larger than his founding of GOPAC and his creation of the Contract with America. The Georgia Republican is spearheading a program called "American Solutions for Winning the Future” in an effort to revitalize the GOP with Ronald Reagan conservatism.
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This is the third time Gingrich has led a drive to steer the Republican Party toward traditional conservative values. In 1986, Gingrich took the chair of the Republican political action committee GOPAC and transformed it into an effective tool for electing conservative candidates. The stated theme of GOPAC was "a conservative opportunity society replacing the liberal welfare state.”
GOPAC was a key element in Gingrich’s rise to the leadership of the Republican caucus in Congress.
Then in 1994, as House Minority Leader, Gingrich was a co-author of the Contract with America, a conservative political platform that helped the GOP gain 54 seats in the House and end 40 years of Democratic majorities there.
Gingrich’s new program echoes the title of his 2005 book, "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America.”
Sources close to the former speaker say Gingrich believes the Republican Party has once again lost its way, and needs to refocus its agenda with an eye toward regaining Congress in 2008.
Stepping back into the political spotlight could help Gingrich’s presidential aspirations as well.
He recently told an interviewer that he won’t decide whether to seek the White House in 2008 until September of 2007.
But insiders predict Gingrich could throw his hat into the ring if a true Reagan conservative doesn’t emerge as a likely GOP candidate.
For the time being, he’s playing his cards close to the vest. "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,” he tells Fortune magazine.
Gingrich said he plans to build grass-roots support for the health care, national security, and energy independence ideas he has been promoting for the past six years.
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