Newt Gingrich – the Strategist

Artful Solutions

Newt’s artful solution to illegal immigration stops the Democrat’s strategy of rapidly populating the U.S. with welfare clients who will become Democrat voters. His EPA solution to turn it into a consulting operation is certainly more acceptable to environmentalists than other candidates’ instinct to abolish it. Newt’s embrace of peace through strength recognizes that Romney Republicans are against any reduction in military spending. He believes abortion should be illegal. Newt says U.N. Agenda 21 implementation should be stopped. He will cancel previous Executive Orders. His positions are generally in line with Tea Party goals and Ron Paul’s positions.

He knows the McCain campaign failed because it offered a “moderate” Republican when a Conservative Republican would have rallied more support. The “big tent” theory was disproved. His style though, is to defang bad laws and practices without becoming a target.

Unanswered Questions

Newt’s pledge to balance the budget and his assertion of states’ rights are good signs, but they lack specifics. He has not come out against K Street and has not come out for a full 10th Amendment solution to the federal government’s malaise.

He appears to prefer to say he is going to restructure and control the Federal Reserve, the U.N., K Street, the EPA and all the other departments and agencies at a time when most of us are angry enough to want them dissolved. This may be Newt’s Bush I moment when General Schwarzkopf suggested that we go to Iraq and arrest Sadam Hussein and Bush said no.

If Glen Beck is right and Newt is a Statist, he may be taking the role of pulling back the Progessive movement’s rapid advance, but leaving the structure alive to resurrect itself later. If this is true, Raon Paul is all we have left. Knowing Newt is an Army brat, he has mentioned his genuine fondness for government employees; that’s certainly not what we’ve been feeling lately. He does admit, he will need to clean house in many agencies, which is code for de communistification.

It’s hard to imagine Newt supporting giving federal lands back to the states, but it’s a good idea. It would send environmentalists scrambling to state capitols. We can no longer afford environmentalists; they are unsustainable. He would opt instead to allow permits to drill, harvest and mine and take the fees as revenue. He would let states determine environmental policy for their state.

Standard Fare

Newt joins all other Republicans in pledging to cut spending, repeal Obama-care, Sarbains Oxley and Dodd Frank. He would stop the “green movement” advance to economic oblivion. Newt, like the others know it will take tax reductions and a pull-back on regulations to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Candidates’ general take on revenue is that tax increases are not needed or wanted.

Prognostication

If Newt is elected in 2012, he will probably be re-elected in 2016. He will preside over a federal government he intends to reform using Lean Management and his knowledge of the agencies. Because of our banking problems, it will likely feel like our version of Japan’s lost decade. We will continue to have high debt and low interest rates, but we should have a budget balanced enough to begin to bring the national debt back down to $10 trillion. We will need to slog along another decade to move it closer to the $5 trillion it was before this mess began. If we restore manufacturing, we will be improving the fundamentals for our economy. It’s likely that Dodd Frank will be rewritten to end bank bailouts, but with a year or so grace period to allow banks to cease overleveraging. Government will get out of the loan business and Fannie, Freddie and Sallie will be sold. The Federal Reserve will have pulled back its Quantitative Easing to avoid higher inflation, but damage has already been done that will elevate inflation during Newt’s terms. Allowing a period of deflation may mitigate the inflation we would ordinarily experience with the Fed’s 300% increase in the money supply.

We should see a continuation of Social Security and Medicare for retirees with a cut-off where younger citizens will have opted to provide their own retirement. Banking, Healthcare, Education and Environmentalism will have experienced significant reform and cost reduction without the hysteria that normally surrounds sacred cow diets. We should be well on our way to energy independence and increased productivity and the dividends should go toward debt reduction.

The U.N. will still be a den of thieves. K Street will continue to make the congress ineffective. The Federal Reserve will still protect the banks. Environmentalists, Communists and Democrats will carefully plot their return to power. Congress will still meddle in things the Constitution has forbidden them to do and they will consistently screw it up.

We still prefer a clean sweep of the federal government to compliance with the 10th Amendment as the ultimate solution.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party