The demise of Newt Gingrich’s campaign before it even began was probably the biggest story of the week, and the former speaker of the House took to This Week to explain his reasoning:
“The McCain-Feingold Act criminalizes politics. … well, we learned yesterday morning, this was the decisive moment: I had taken leave from Fox, Randy Evan had taken leave from his law firm, we had a website set up to launch on Monday, and we were informed yesterday morning that if I had ANY communication with American Solutions after I became a candidate, it was a criminal offense. … American Solutions is technically a 527, which is a form of fundraising which allows us to develop ideas. We’ve said publicly that any polling data we release we’re releasing to both parties; we launched a workshop Thursday night and all day Saturday we had 35 different workshops being broadcast to over 2000 locations; it’s an effort to reach out on a bipartisan basis … it’s really a serious effort to say, ‘can we begin a national conversation among all people focused on solutions.’ And I’m very proud of it and we’ve had about a year of work go into it and I thought there was a way that you could continue the momentum of those ideas while I began to prepare a presidential campaign. What we learned yesterday morning was it is literally a ‘go to jail’ criminal activity.”
As Byron York points out, Gingrich probably should have known about this before the eve of his rollout. And it might not be true; Gingrich could have realized he simply had no chance by making his entry this late. Over at Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol discussed his newfound hope for the Republicans in 2008 in the wake of the most recent Democratic debate:
“Because the Democratic candidates have more passion in conducting the war on smoking than the war on terror. Most of them want to give up in Iraq, they don’t want to do anything serious to stop Iran from going nuclear or from killing American soldiers in Iraq, they want to increase taxes, they don’t want to be at all serious about illegal immigration. I think Republicans have a good shot in ’08 running against that agenda.”
Bill Richardson did his best to back up that statement in his appearance on Face the Nation. When asked about Iran, Richardson totally ignored the fact that the Islamic Republic is killing Americans in Iraq and is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel, sticking instead to the MoveOn talking points he and the other Democratic presidential nominees have subscribed to.
“I believe it would be enormously unwise for the Bush administration to start another war before ending this tragic war we’re in today. And it does sound like the administration is ramping up; you can just see it resolutions in the senate–and I regret Senator Clinton voting for this resolution labeling the Revolutionary Guard terrorists; this was provocative, it didn’t need to happen.”
On Meet the Press, Pat Buchanan tried to explain just how far to the left Richardson and some of the other Democratic nominees are being pushed:
“It was quite a debate, I think the Democratic Party doesn’t know how far to the left they are moving. I mean, they said there that it’s going to be–smoking is going to be a federal crime in public places, 18- year-old Marines can’t drink beer, and six-year-olds are going to be taught about gay marriage. You know, they can’t learn about Adam and Eve, but they can take an elective on Adam and Steve. You know, I can see the Republicans just beating them to death with this and the sanctuary city stuff.”
