Gingrich Campaigns in Oskaloosa

Newt Gingrich speaks in Smokey Row Tuesday with his wife Callista at his side. (photo- K.Allsup)

Oskaloosa, Iowa- Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich was campaigning in Oskaloosa Tuesday evening. Gingrich spoke to a very crowded Smokey Row. “I decided to run because I think, the scale of change we need to get America back on the right track, so that younger Americans have a real chance to have a kind of future that our parents and grand parents gave us,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich offered three things he believes a President needs. “This is a really hard job. And I think it requires three things. It requires solutions big enough to really make a difference, not just the normal political bologna, but really profound change.” “You gotta have solutions big enough to be real. And if you go to my first name, to newt.org, you will see a proposed 21^st Century Contract with America which meets that requirement. The second thing you have to have is somebody who knows what they’re doing. With all due respect to my friends who are running, we’ve tried an amateur, and that didn’t bring a good experience. Fact is, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he proves it almost every day,” Gingrich said.

The former speaker also talked about several of his accomplishments when he was in Congress. “I worked twice to help create a national majority; 1980 with Reagan, 1994 with the Congress. I helped pass the first spending cut that was a real cut, not a decline in the rate of increase, a real cut. The first domestic discretionary spending cut since World War II. It was 1981with Reagan. I helped pass the second real discretionary spending cut since World War II in 1995 as speaker.”

Gingrich also addressed some of the attacks from his opponents. “Bologna,” is what he called different negative campaign mailers, tv ads, and phone calls. “Well I want you to know two things. First, I am not going to change. They can’t hit me with enough negative ads to make me go negative because I think it’s bad for America. The only person who profits from Republican negative ads is Barack Obama. Second, I want to challenge my friends to take the negative ads off the air. I had a very rare press conference a little while ago and I challenged Governor Romney, who was on morning Joe on msnbc, and said well he didn’t really like it but he had no control,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich continued. “If he can’t influence his former staff, and his friends, how’s he going to influence the Congress? How’s he going to influence the Russians or the Chinese? This is just silly.”

Gingrich also announced his plans for the General election debates next year, if he is to win the nomination. “I will challenge the President to 7 three hour  debates in the Lincoln Douglas tradition with a timekeeper, but no moderator,” Gingrich said. “I will tell you that I’m going to concede in advance that he can use a teleprompter. After all, if you were going to try to defend Obamacare, wouldn’t you want to be able to use a teleprompter?” Gingrich also said.

The former speaker also talked about why he believes Barack Obama will agree to debate him. “I believe that he will agree to debate. People think that I’m too optimist but I’ll tell you what. Three  reasons. Number one he announced in Springfield in February of 2007 quoting Lincoln. Number two. Just pure ego. This is a guy who graduated from Columbia University. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is the best orator in the Democratic Party. How does he look in the mirror and say that he is afraid to debate at West Georgia College? I just don’t think he’ll do it.”

Gingrich continued. ” If I become the nominee, when I’m in Tampa accepting the nomination, if the President has not yet agreed to the debates, I will announce in my acceptance speech that from that point on, the White House will become my scheduler, and wherever the President goes, I will show up four hours later to answer his speech. In the age of talk radio and 24 hour cable news, I think one or two weeks of Gingrich answering Obama and he will decide that the debates are less painful.”