Newt's Same Old Same Old

In an upcoming speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Newt Gingrich articulates a two-pronged strategy for creating a new Republican majority. But it's tepid stuff. First, he wants to emphasize symbolic issues like making English the official language of the United States and keeping "One Nation Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Newt's idea here are that these are issues where people on the left disagree with the majority of the American public. But if Newt wants to have an impact, he'll either have to engage in issues that people see as important, like health care, global warming, or job security, or he'll have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising to everyone that the wording of the pledge is one of the most important issues facing American society.

At the same time, Gingrich wants to go back to old fashioned fear-mongering about "the threat of the irreconcilable wing of Islam as well as resurgent Russian aggressiveness and the challenge of Chinese economic and scientific development." After four years of Bush blundering in Iraq, it's hard to scare anybody by waving the bloody shirt of Islamic terrorism. So Newt is throwing in the Russians and the Chinese as well. Of course, Newt conveniently ignores the problem of how to deal with the war in Iraq.

This makes me wonder if Newt is actually going to run. Gingrich is certainly preparing for a campaign, but I'd be surprised if even Newt is delusional or megalomaniacal enough to think he's going to win on a platform of making English the official language and baiting the semi-resurgent Russian bear.

Of course, I could be wrong about that.