How Big-Government Republicans Approach Environmental Problems

William Saletan summarizes the Green Gingrich so you don't you have to read Newt's new book:

Nor is he averse to government spending and intervention in markets. He just wants the spending and intervention to take the form of incentives. Instead of giving $1 billion to a federal agency to deal with a problem, he'd offer the money as a prize to the first company that solves it. As the conversation proceeds, Gingrich throws money at one challenge after another. Hydrogen fuel? Dangle a 10-figure prize. Nuclear waste? A 10 percent tax break to any state that accepts it. Endangered species? Annual bonuses to countries that keep them alive. Math and science education? Pay poor kids for taking the classes and earning a B average. Even FDR's colossal outlays fit Gingrich's philosophy. "The entire New Deal was based on incentives," he says.

How does Gingrich square all this spending with limited government? To begin with, he reasons, it isn't much money. Second, the government doesn't administer solutions; it dangles the money and lets industry find the best way. Third, it doesn't count as spending if it comes off the revenue side of the ledger. We're not paying you to take nuclear waste; we're just cutting your taxes. Gingrich swears industry will be more inspired to solve the hydrogen problem by if we offer $1 billion tax-free than if we offer $1.8 billion subject to taxes. Why? People hate taxes, he says. Getting money tax-free just "feels better."

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The Daily Digest

Maureen Dowd reviews Rudy's performance at the recent NRA conference.

Shorter David Broder: Newt is good for America. Shorter Debra Saunders: But not as a politician.

Yesterday, the Council for National Policy issued a resolution that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate [i.e., Rudy] we will consider running a third party candidate.” The NYT's David Kirkpatrick reports (see also WorldNetDaily and Salon), "The group making the threat . . . includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participants said. Almost everyone present expressed support for [the] written resolution."

George Will poses 17 questions for Obama. For example: "You advocate leaving in Iraq 'some' U.S. forces for three missions—fighting al Qaeda, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. forces conducting those two missions. . . . What is your estimate of the numbers required by your policy? How, and in consultation with whom, did you arrive at your estimate? As to fighting terrorists but not insurgents—how would soldiers and Marines tell the difference? If, while searching for terrorists, they make contact with insurgents, would your rules of engagement call for a full-force response? You say all 'combat brigades' should be out of Iraq 'by the end of next year.' Even if al-Qaeda is still dangerous? Who, after the end of next year, will protect U.S. noncombat forces that you say 'will continue to protect U.S. diplomats and facilities' and to 'train and equip' Iraqi forces?"

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It's Official: Newt Won't Run

Mike Allen grabs the scoop:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) decided Saturday morning not to run for president just as his staff was preparing to launch a Web site to seek $30 million in pledges, his spokesman told the Politico.

Well, duh.

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Why Newt Isn't Running

On the inauguration of Solutions Day, Matt Lewis reviews the reasons no one is certain whether Newt will run or not (emphasis added):

One DC insider reminds me that longtime Gingrich adviser Rich Galen is currently advising another presidential candidate [Fred Thompson]. While purely an “inside baseball” argument, allowing a top-aide to work for another candidate, I’m told, is a tell-tale sign Newt has never really been serious about running.

Yet another source points to an interview Gingrich conducted earlier this year with Dr. James Dobson in which he discussed his past personal peccadilloes. This attempt to put his prurient past behind him, this source argues, is proof-positive a Gingrich candidacy has always been a fait accompli. (After all, why endure an auto de fe for no reason?)

Another cynical but commonly held view is that Newt’s coquetry with running has always been a gimmick, designed to sell books, promote this conference, and ensure the former Speaker of the House continues to be invited as a regular guest on Fox News.

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Is This Presidential Enough, Mr. Romney?

Newt Gingrich is frustrated for what passes as debate among the presidential candidates. He thinks they amount to "a recitation of talking points choreographed to avoid any risk." Or as the NYT recently put it,

This campaign has turned into a mind-numbing blur of 90- and 120-minute debates and forums that has consumed the Democratic candidates in particular. They are trudging from coast to coast at the beck and call of television networks, unions, state political parties and whoever else may want to throw them together on stage in front of a television camera and a blinking red and green light.

Newt's solution: a series of Lincoln-Douglas-like debates, where the answers are as long as they need to be and the conversation is open-ended.

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Fred Thompson Update

It's that time again.

1. Bob Novak reports that "Thompson's decision to announce his presidential candidacy with a video was suggested by Newt Gingrich."

2. Why did Thompson, who in the winter of 1997 was considering quitting the Senate, agree instead to chair the committee investigating Clinton fund-raising scandals? Because he hoped the investigation would "galvanize support" for his then-hobbyhorse, now-bugbear, campaign finance reform, which was then stalled in Congress.

3. Jonathan Martin reports on the state of the campaign:

A Thompson source, requesting anonymity to speak candidly, voiced concern that Team Fred is still not ready for a the pressure cooker of a presidential campaign.

"There is no question that from a political standpoint, the testing-the-waters committee is right where it needs to be,” this person said, “but from a personnel standpoint, it's a completely different story."

"You have some gaping holes in the communications shop and in the overall management at the committee.”

Thompson fired his communications director Linda Rozett, a former chamber of commerce official, last week, displeased by her lack of campaign experience. Thompson’s spokeswoman, Burson Snyder, resigned two weeks ago, unhappy with a diminished role and uneasy about the disorder in the campaign structure. And Thompson's first campaign manager, Tom Collamore, was viewed as lacking the necessary political chops for a White House run and forced out.

Asked if the installation of Bill Lacy, Thompson’s close friend and the strategist from his first Senate race, had brought order to the operation, the Thompson source said, “It hasn’t yet.”

One person familiar with the day-to-day operation indicated that there could be belt-tightening measures taken to curb the outbound flow of cash from Thompson’s testing-the-waters committee.

After raising just under $3.5 million in June—about a million-and-a-half less than his advisers initially predicted they’d haul in—Thompson indicated that the financial report he’ll file along with the other presidential hopefuls at the end of third quarter in September may not dazzle the doubters.

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The Daily Digest

The Yangtze River Dolphin

Patrick Ruffini has fast become one of my favorite new-media pundits (others include Rob Bluey, Todd Zeigler, David All, Micah Sifry and Josh Levy). His post explaining why Ames was "the perfect place to roll out an SMS program" evinces his expertise: it's an eminently sensible proposal yet remains unembraced (the only candidate to avail himself of texting was a noncandidate, Newt Gingrich, who also did so at this year's CPAC).

The National Review editors defend our recently announced $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. They are quick to note that these so-called desert rats play "both sides of the War on Terror," but argue that with a weak Iraq, the U.S. needs a new counterweight to Iran. The deal "passes the realist’s most important standard in such matters," they conclude. "It’s better than the alternative."

Contrary to reports that George W. and George H.W. Bush have grown distant, the NYT's Sheryl Stolberg discovers that "[t]hey talk almost every morning by phone," and the father "has passed on his own foreign policy wisdom to the president."

Taking a cue from the latest Obama Girl video, David All produces two new mockumentaries for the Majority Accountability Project. He thinks it's his "best work yet," and I agree.

Jonathan Martin files another admiring Romney profile, which paints him more as a reformer than a Republican. Money quote: "Frankly, the only thing I’d be worried about having behind my name is ‘United States Senator,'" Romney said. "Somebody who's been in Washington, that’s the challenge."

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The Daily Digest

The invariably funny Dave Weigel live-blogged last night's Democratic debate. (Google, the debate's co-host, lavished some cool perks on the press pool.)

Obama is chummier and softer, but, as Jennifer Rubin observes, he simply cannot compete with Hillary's "experience, judgment and preparation. . .. All but the most rabid of the Democratic base I think will come to see that. So I would suggest that the GOP primary voters think long and hard about electability. Otherwise, we'll be debating whether First Gentleman or First Guy sounds better for Bill."

David Hogberg captures the state of Newt: "Newt is a great idea man. He provides the GOP and the conservative movement a wonderful service in that role. Why mess that up with a run for the Oval Office that would prove disastrous?"

Speaking of Newt, his new grassroots group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, which has seven staffers on payroll, is spending like John McCain, hauling in almost $115K last month but shelling out almost $415K.

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Was Newt Gingrich for Amnesty Before He Was Against It?

In April, in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women, Newt Gingrich called Spanish in America "the language of living in a ghetto." A year earlier, he preached "zero tolerance for amnesty," and last week, in an TV ad bashing McCain-Kennedy, he declared that "[a]mnesty makes our laws meaningless."

In 1997, however, then Speaker Gingrich was singing a different tune. As Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten report in One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century (2006; p. 73):

Realizing the depth of their problem, congressional Republicans rolled back some of the most onerous restrictions on immigrants. Speaker Gingrich traveled to Miami's Little Havana shortly after the election to celebrate a blanket amnesty that saved thousands of Cubans and Nicaraguans from deportation. As Jodi Wilgoren reported in the Los Angeles Times, Gingrich had pushed for the amnesty in the final days of the congressional session, and he was welcomed in with the words "Hispanics Love Newt." Before leaving Washington, Gingrich has told a group of Hispanic Republicans of the importance of improving the party's image on immigration and race. "If we extend un gran abrazo [a big hug] to everyone," he said, "they will extend it back to us and we will be a big American family."

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The Daily Dose

Boat Pond, Central Park, Manhattan

A consensus has congealed: Fred Thompson's use of the Internet to disseminate his ideas, and by extension his potential presidential campaign, is an unqualified boon.

The Hotline reports that Thompson's crack ghostwriter and p.r. guy is Mark Corallo.

The Hotline also reveals how much time each candidate got to speak and how many questions each received during Thursday's debate. In both categories, the winners were Romney, Rudy and then Brownback.

Supporters of Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson have each launched Web sites to encourage these shadow candidates to run for president. Thompson's site is much more robust, and includes a blog, audio files of Thompson's radio spots, YouTube videos and RSS feeds, but both offer an electronic petition, a donation page, and links to the latest favorable news coverage.

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The Daily Dose

Tel Aviv

The Right Angle, the blog of Human Events Online, catalogs (but sans hyperlinks) each presidential candidate's response to yesterday's Supreme Court banning late-term abortion.

In case you missed this year's CPAC, click here to watch Dave Bossie's introduction for Newt Gingrich, as well as Newt's speech (courtesy of American Solutions, Newt's latest Next Big Thing). Click here for a transcript of Dave's speech.

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The Inevitable Conclusion of Technocracy

Yesterday I blogged Monday's sunshiny debate on global warming between Newt Gingrich and John Kerry. Today, Dana Milbank rains on my parade with a quote from the former speaker:

"I am not automatically saying that coercion and bureaucracy is not an answer," he granted.

Newt has never been a limited-government conservative. In 1995, he told Time, "I'm for limited government, but a very strong limited government." (Translation, courtesy of Democratic Congressman Barney Frank: "He's not for smaller government. He's for different government.")

Indeed, in a word, Newt is a technocrat, who wants the government to wield science and technology in the service of empowering the citizenry.

Update: Bradford Plumer, the liberal TNR researcher-reporter on the GOP environmental beat, raps Newt for being too much of a limited-government guy. In Newt's alleged world, Plumer writes,

If it involves more regulation, it can't possibly be good. "We're talking about a massive increase in government power," he warns.

Plumer ends his article with another typically Newtonian quote,

perhaps the most elegant explanation of why global warming is a difficult problem for conservatives—even for someone who, like himself, professes to care deeply about the environment. "For most of the last 30 years, the environment has been a powerful emotional tool for bigger government and higher taxes," he says. "Even if it's the right thing to do, you end up fighting it because it's bigger government and higher taxes."

This is an intriguing but ultimately specious theory, because it assumes that people cannot be allowed to do the "right thing," but must have the government do it for—i.e., force it on—us.

If Newt were a conservative before he were a technocrat, he would instead trust the wisdom of crowds and the forces of supply and demand, i.e., the market. But because he's a technocrat before he's a conservative, he's not opposed to "coercion and bureaucracy."

Update (4/14): I should have noted that Newt isn't the only conservative to have gone green. Mark Sanford, the former congressman and current South Carolina governor, recently penned an op-ed in the Post, in which he proclaimed, "I am a conservative conservationist who worries that sea levels and government intervention may end up rising together."

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Life Imitates Art

Newt Gingrich has talked up the idea of real debates among the presidential candidates. Kudos to him—and John Kerry—for leading by example.

According to the AP, for almost two hours yesterday on the Hill, the two argued whether the government should cap emissions of greenhouse gases or whether tax breaks will encourage businesses to do so.

The Draft Newt bloggers say the duo engaged "each other’s minds as well as the audience," and David All adds that "instead of reciting partisan rhetoric and vehemently opposing the other guy, they actually found some common ground."

Who know the West Wing—particularly an episode that wasn't written by Aaron Sorkin—was so influential?

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