Former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich on Thursday edged toward becoming the first big-name Republican to challenge US President Barack Obama in next year’s election.
Gingrich, known for budget battles with then-US president Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, said he would explore a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in the weeks ahead.
“We are excited about exploring whether there is sufficient support for my potential candidacy for president of this exceptional country,” Gingrich and his wife, Callista, said on newtexplore2012.com.
He stopped short of announcing a formal presidential exploratory committee. That gives him time to work out his extensive business affairs before becoming a formal candidate.
Gingrich’s tiptoe closer to a race reflected the slow pace of the Republican campaign to decide who will challenge Obama next year. No prominent Republican has yet made the plunge, although several are close to announcements in the weeks and months ahead.
While Republicans won big in November congressional elections, most agree that it will be difficult to unseat Obama, particularly if the US jobless rate shows improvement from its current 9 percent.
Gingrich, 67, should be considered a “long shot” because some evangelical voters are wary of the fact that he was twice divorced before his current marriage, said Merle Black, political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
“Gingrich has a lot of political talent. He can make succinct arguments and criticisms. But he has had a lot of problems in the past with indiscipline ... and in a presidential campaign that can be a big problem,” Black said.
Gingrich, who believes Obama has saddled the US with deeper debt and deficits, has flirted with a presidential race for years. He led the Republican “revolution” that took control of the House in 1994 elections and he was House speaker from 1995 to 1998.
Gingrich’s Republicans shut down the government in a standoff with Clinton. Republicans were seen as losing that fight because the Democratic president was re-elected in 1996, but Gingrich argues the standoff set the stage for a 1996 budget deal that led to a big drop in spending.
Government spending is again a major bone of contention with Republicans, and the budget deficit is set to reach a record US$1.65 trillion this year.
Gingrich is now chairman of American Solutions, a group that advances conservative causes, and has been traveling frequently to the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to test the waters.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
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