Newt Gingrich: Serious candidate or sideshow?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is running for president. But can he win? (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has always been a divisive figure — even within the Republican party. So, it’s not all that surprising that Gingrich’s plan to run for president in 2012, which will be formally announced on Wednesday, has quickly divided people into two camps.

On one side are those who believe Newt is an old face in a party hungering for new ones, a man whose political abilities are only exceeded by his belief in those abilities. For that group, Newt is a sideshow — a highly entertaining one, to be sure, but not someone who is a serious candidate for the nomination.

“Newt’s name ID is 130 [percent] so just about everyone who has ever even flipped by a cable news channel en route an NCIS rerun knows who [he] is, and has an opinion of him,” said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist and former communications director for Gingrich. “He is going to have to convince a lot of people this is the New Newt.”

On the other are those who see Gingrich as the brightest mind within the party, a man with command over a range of domestic and foreign policy issues that is the envy of everyone else in the race. This camp believes that Gingrich will drive the conversation in the contest through the force of his ideas, win debates and propel himself into the first tier of candidates.

“He is an idea factory and Republican voters love him for it,” said Ron Bonjean, a longtime GOP congressional aide. “They have watched him on TV while his think tank produces a streamof solutions to America’s problems.”

Who’s right? Both sides — sort of.

Gingrich has been befuddling political analysts since he first won Georgia’s 6th district in 1978.

Long regarded as a backbencher, Gingrich is widely credited with the “Contract with America” — a mission statement of sorts that propelled Republicans to the House majority in 1994 for the first time in four decades.

Touted as a strategic genius in the wake of that election, Gingrich quickly wore out his welcome within the party — losing a game of political chicken with President Clinton over the budget in late 1995/early 1996 and leaving office entirely after his predictions of Republican gains in the 1998 election proved incorrect.

“If you added up all the IQ scores of all the other GOP presidential candidates, they might equal the IQ of Newton Leroy Gingrich,” said one unaligned Republican consultant granted anonymity to speak candidly about the Georgia Republican. “This is an extremely mixed blessing. Not only does Newt have a huge range of knowledge, experience, and ideas, he also has the huge ego to match.”

That dichotonomy is the essence of Gingrich the politician and has led many people who follow his career closely to think of him as two people: Good Newt and Bad Newt.

Good Newt can wow a crowd with the depth and breadth of his knowledge — on virtually any topic.

Bad Newt disappears down intellectual rabbit holes while speaking, losing the crowd in the process. He also tends to go for a rhetorical grand slam when a single will do. One example: His suggestion that President Obama had a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mindset.

In other words, when Gingrich is good he’s very good and when he’s bad he’s very bad. And that’s what makes analyzing Gingrich’s impact on the race so tough.

As we have written before, Gingrich is putting the pieces in place to run a serious campaign in Iowa and will almost certainly be on of a handful of candidates able to raise the sort of money — tens of millions — to be competitive in the first few states to vote. He’s also one of the best-known candidates in the field, regularly notching double-digit showings in national polls of the race.

And yet, there is no one in the party — except those on the Gingrich payroll — who believes that he can stay on message (or close to it) for the entirety of the campaign.

Good Newt and Bad Newt will both be running in this race. The central question is which one we will see more of between now and next February’s Iowa caucuses.

For more on what Newt means for the race, check out our live video chat this morning where we break it all down:

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President Obama, the compassion candidate

President Obama is pushing a message of compassion in the early stages of the 2012 campaign. Mark Wilson/Pool via Bloomberg President Obama has begun road-testing his 2012 campaign message this week in a series of speeches that can be boiled down to a single word: compassion.

“The America I know is generous and compassionate,” Obama said in his speech on the debt Wednesday .

At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night in Chicago, Obama reiterated his “belief in an America that is competitive and compassionate,” contrasting that with a Republican Party that “is entirely sincere that says we no longer can afford to do big things in this country ... (that) we can’t afford to be compassionate.”

The electoral frame Obama is seeking to set up is simple: the 2012 election is not about an issue or even a set of issues but rather a broader moral choice about what kind of country we want America to be.

In many ways, that strategy is a return to the central tenet of the successful campaign of 2008: that voting for Obama was fundamentally aspirational, that it said something larger about who we are and, more importantly, who we can be.

Need proof? The two most memorable words/phrases of the 2008 race — “hope” and “yes we can” — both sought to invoke that somewhat amorphous idea that voting for Obama said something basic (and good) about the country.

Early indications are that Obama and his political team want to return to that aspirational, we-are-all-in-this-together messaging that delivered him victory with 365 electoral votes in 2008.

Of course, the three years that have passed since Obama won have been filled with economic turmoil and legislative battles — most notably health care — that have made him look more like an average politician than the transformational leader that Democrats, independents and even some Republicans voted for back in 2008.

Republicans will do everything they can to keep the election at a ground level debate of Obama’s policies, rather than a 10,000-foot discussion of what it means to be an American.

But Obama’s rhetorical skill — coupled with the fact that the GOP will be embroiled in a serious primary fight for much of the next year — suggest that the incumbent will get a chance to frame the race as he sees fit for the foreseeable future.

The big budget vote: The number of Republican defections on the budget compromise was hardly overwhelming Thursday, as the bill passed with 260 votes. But the tea party sent a message.

Fifty-nine Republicans — a handful more than rejected a short-term continuing resolution a few weeks ago — rejected the bill, while another 179 voted in favor. That three in four Republicans voted for the bill demonstrates a fair amount of party unity, even though some on the right were clearly looking for much bigger cuts.

On the Democratic side, 81 voted yes and 108 voted no, in what amounts to a more divided reaction to the compromise Obama and Democratic leaders helped orchestrate.

On the Senate side, the bill passed even more easily, 81 to 19.

Notable ‘no’ voters included most of the House’s and Senate’s tea party-affiliated members, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), all of whom are eyeing or running for higher office.

Redistricting update: Arkansas and Oklahoma are both moving forward with redistricting maps that are unlikely to change much in their current delegations.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) on Thursday signed into law a congressional redistricting plan that should have little impact on the current map. Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s congressional delegation has agreed on its own status quo plan, which sailed through a state House committee vote.

Though Democrats controlled the process in Arkansas, they chose not to overhaul the map, which could have given them a better chance at winning seats. Instead, a map that flipped from three Democrats and one Republican to one Democrat and three Republicans in November will remain largely the same.

That the Democrats chose not to be too ambitious with the map means they miss one of relatively few opportunities to add winnable districts. Arkansas is one of just three states where Republicans hold a majority of congressional seats but Democrats get to draw the lines. (At the same time, outside of Little Rock, it’s hard to find territory that isn’t conservative, so it’s not clear how Democrats could have done much better.)

In Oklahoma, Republicans control the process and could try to make things tough for Democratic Rep. Dan Boren, but Boren has held down a very conservative district for a while now, and Republicans in the delegation seemed happy to keep their four-to-one majority.

Fixbits:

Mitt Romney accuses Obama of demagoguery.

Obama thinks birtherism works in his favor.

Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) is staffing up for a potential challenge to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Brun ing (R) stands by his embattled fundraiser, onetime Warren Buffett heir apparent David Sokol. The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into an insider trading probe of Sokol, but Bruning insists there is nothing criminal involved.

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) is set to endorse Romney for president.

Former Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) is running for her old seat, which she lost to Rep. Frank Guinta (R) last year — setting up a second potential rematch in the Granite State. But she may face primary opposition from former state Senate president Maggie Hassan or DNC member Joanne Dowdell.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) raised $1.1 million in the first quarter and has $2.1 million in the bank.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) raised $1.1 million and has $1.5 million on hand, significantly outraising his likely GOP opponent, Rehberg, who raised $580,000 million and had $933,000 on hand.

Bob Vander Plaats’s Iowa conservative group will decide this fall whether to endorse in the GOP presidential primary.

Must-reads:

“Independent groups expected to raise hundreds of millions” — Jessica Yellin and Kevin Bohn, CNN

“Trump’s a joke” — Charlie Cook, National Journal

“Census shows declining black population shares in U.S. metro areas, stirring redistricting fights” — AP

“Rumors of Democrats’ demise in the Senate are slightly exaggerated” — Nate Silver, New York Times

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