By IPS Correspondents
OAKLAND, California, Nov 24 2008 (IPS)

Ten years ago, Newt Gingrich was forced to resign as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, in a desperate search for leadership, Republican National Committee members are debating whether to turn back to the past and tap the ever-ready Gingrich.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gingrich “let it be known that, if Republicans want him…[he] is willing to serve as chairman of the national party and lead it out of the wilderness it’s blundered into.”

Other reports maintain that while Gingrich will not become the national chairman, he will still play a formidable role in shaping the party’s future.

Never accused of being a shrinking violet, Gingrich, a regular commentator with the Fox News Channel, recently appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” programme to assess the election. He boldly told host Bob Schieffer that he expected his fellow Republicans to “within a short time focus on new ideas and new solutions, and within a very short time come back as a stronger and healthier party.”

Ironically, perhaps the only thing worse for Gingrich than the defeat of Sen. John McCain on election day would have been a McCain victory. Although the former House Speaker would have been given elder-statesman/advisor in residence status, the sight of McCain taking the oath of office would have forced Gingrich to cool his heels while McCain ran the country – and the Republican Party – for at least four years.

McCain lost, and now, Gingrich is once again ready to lead. But what is he going to lead?

Might there be a kinder, more pragmatic party in the offing? Or is the Republican right not in the mood for conciliation and still spoiling for a fight?

To many in the party, Gingrich represents a hybrid answer to all of the above. On the Fox News Channel, where Gingrich is a regular contributor, he doesn’t spare the rod in attacking Democrats. In other forums, including the website of his organisation, American Solutions for Winning the Future, he is liable to be more circumspect, claiming to have a non-partisan bent.

Since he was forced to resign as speaker of the House over a series of ethical issues, Gingrich has been no shrinking violet. Not from politics; not from speaking engagements across the country; not from courting the Religious Right; not from being a commentator for Fox News; not from coming up with new ideas, plans and programmes to stimulate the political debate; not from controversy; and not from ably filling his financial coffers.

Since leaving Congress, Gingrich has worked with a number of neoconservative and right-wing think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Hoover Institution. In November 2001, he was appointed to the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board (DPB), an advisory body for the Department of Defence.

Despite the fact that he was, according to some polls taken before the presidential primary season, one of the least liked politicians in the U.S., Gingrich has always played with the big boys, raising millions of dollars from some of the Republican Party’s most generous longtime backers.

Not so coincidentally, Gingrich’s American Solutions is awash in money.

The organisation received more than 16 million dollars during the election season, including major donations from Carl H. Lindner and Sheldon Adelson. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and who has an estimated net worth in excess of 26.5 billion dollars, is one of the ‘Funding Fathers’ of the Republican-oriented lobbying group Freedom’s Watch. He has given Gingrich’s group a total of 5.4 million dollars.

The Centre for Public Integrity reported that Gingrich’s “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” campaign reported a total 1.9 million dollars in contributions for August, its second-best fundraising month. The Centre also reported that American Solutions’ best month was June, which yielded 2.1 million dollars “when the group rolled out its campaign to end the 27-year-old U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain took up the cause.”

The 16 million dollars has pushed American Solutions to the No. 2 fundraising spot among so-called 527 political groups this election season,” the Centre for Public Integrity pointed out. “Only the Service Employees International Union’s issues-advocacy arm has raised more; SEIU has voluntarily filed with the Federal Election Commission as a campaign committee, making it subject to donation limits.”

Before the financial crisis dominated the national conversation, rising prices at the pump had politicians and pundits focused on oil. And no one was more focused on oil than Gingrich. Through his American Solutions for Winning the Future, Gingrich owned the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” mantra.

At Newt.org, he breathlessly announced that The Drill Here, Drill Now “movement” had “inspired a song”. Written and sung by “country music star” Aaron Tippin, the song has taken “the grassroots support for the ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less’ movement to a whole new level with his new hit single ‘Drill Here, Drill Now.'”

And in a video at the American Solutions website, Gingrich promoted “Solutions Day 2.0,” held on Sep. 27, at the Cobb Galleria in Cobb County, Georgia. This year’s Solutions Day was entitled “We Have the Power.” “The fact is, “Gingrich states, “we have a lot of ideas, a lot of solutions and they’re tri-partisan; they’re backed by Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike…We Have the Power is focused on energy and the economy, education and health.”

Newt Gingrich is now, and has been for more than 15 years, a formidable presence in the U.S. political landscape. Whether he will be able to harness his hubris and become a broadly palatable political hybrid remains to be seen.

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column “Conservative Watch” documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.

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