Newt Gingrich sets sights on 2012 presidential run

Newt Gingrich, the anti-Clinton of the 1990s and master tactician of the Republican Party, knows just when to bark at the dog. As America finds something to celebrate in the news that Bo the Portuguese water dog is on his way to the White House, Gingrich takes a more solemn view. "I hope the girls love the dog," he says. "I hope the family - and all the pressure they are going to be in - finds it useful. And I think that this whole thing is fairly stupid."

Ever the political partisan, Gingrich is as quick to seize on Bo's lefty-liberal provenance as a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy. That is a "nice gesture" he says, but "who cares?"

While the nation fiddles to the tune of Knick-knack paddy-whack, give-a-dog-a-bone, the former Congressman from Georgia has more serious matters on his mind.

The problem with Newt Gingrich, however, is that he is both the smartest guy around and a proven disaster zone

This could be the first time that a presidential campaign has been launched on the back of a curly haired, black and white, hypoallergenic puppy. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that Gingrich, after ducking out of the 2008 race on the sure bet that any Republican treading in Dubya Bush's footsteps would lose, is lining himself up for 2012.

Right now a great majority of the nation would throw his own words back at him: "Who cares?" But by 2012, a good few might well care.

The problem with Newt Gingrich, however, from both the Republican and Democrat viewpoint, is that he is both the smartest guy around and a proven disaster zone. Now 66, which is old for presidential candidates these days, Gingrich reached the zenith of his career in 1994-1995 with his catchy "Contract with America". It propelled the Republicans to sweeping mid-term election victories and control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1954.

By the rise of Bush and Cheney, he was gone, resigned from office as Speaker of the House. He went back to teaching as an untenured law professor, and writing books with titles like Rediscovering God in America.
 
He kept his head down as disaster followed the Grand Old Party's triumph. "The GOP got off track," he says. "It failed to perform. It got fired." All of which makes room for the Return of Newt, ready to write a new 'contract' and put the party back on track.

Timing is all. The first signs that Gingrich was eyeing an opportunity came with the rise of Governor Sarah Palin. "I think she is going to be a significant player," he enthused. "But she's going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She isn't going to be the de facto leader."

Indeed she is not. Gingrich is. The coup de grace has already fallen: the organisers of the Republican's top-top-table Senate-House Dinner, on June 8, have announced that Governor Palin will no longer be the key-note speaker, as previously announced. She is too busy in Alaska. Gingrich has graciously agreed to take her place.
 
He is already the clearest voice of opposition, attacking Obama's "higher tax, weaker economy, fewer jobs" strategy as "likely to make things worse". Conservative columnist Robert Novak has already anointed him for 2012 in the Washington Post. Gingrich himself told the Richmond Times-Despatch that "if we think it's necessary, we will probably do it".

Gingrich is even making a play to "restructure" the Republicans' religious base. He has dumped the discredited fundamentalist protestants and evangelicals to convert to Roman Catholicism. His third wife is Catholic, and he wanted to join her in her faith. That, of course, is possible. But then again, the single biggest church in America, and growing with every Hispanic immigrant, is that of Rome, and it has not been associated with the destruction of the moderate Republican vote.

Gingrich is uncannily close to being Bill Clinton's dark-side twin

This is all Gingrich the smart guy. But there are already reports of Republican grandees trembling at the prospect of Gingrich disaster zones.

Gingrich is uncannily close to being Bill Clinton's dark-side twin. Both were born poor and grew up in the South. Both have good-ol' boy charm and rhetoric. Both have unrivalled political instincts. Gingrich, as Speaker, was the perfect opponent for the political fight-to-the-finish that ended in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the attempt to impeach Clinton.

But it was Gingrich who lost. He blew the budget showdown when he forced Clinton to shut down the government, and then told reporters that he did it because he felt insulted when Clinton forced him to sit at the back of Air Force One. And he blew the Lewinsky scandal when it turned out that his own "family values" included committing adultery at the very time he was persecuting Clinton for his Monica dalliance.

To complete the circle, the wife that Gingrich was then betraying revealed that his modus operandi with his mistresses was oral sex. He believed, just as Clinton did, that oral sex was not sex, as such, and was therefore easier to lie about.

The Grand Old Party is Gingrich's for the taking. But if hubris does lead to a run in 2012, it will be Obama who can celebrate with a satisfied pat to the head of his dog Bo. ·