Fascinating to see Lloyd Grove’s byline back in the Washington Post. Today he takes on — skewers? — Newt Gingrich, who’s “sounding less and less like a future candidate and more and more like a guy who can’t stop reaching under the sneeze-guard and loading his plate with tasty morsels from the all-you-can-eat intellectual buffet.”

Grove captures all of Gingrich’s big ideas about America, such as:

• “If, in that process, I become president — that’s fine.”
• “I don’t have to be president. I’d be willing to be president.”
• “I’d forgotten how big a tourist attraction I am.”

Bold ideas for bold times, indeed.

Newt Gingrich is full of crap — or, more precisely, craps.  Today’s Washington Post reports former Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich “jump-started his new political group with a check for $1 million from a source many in his conservative base would shun — the gambling industry.”

Best part of the story:

“The problem is the income comes from what we call a vice, and that is an issue,” said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, which has long been a powerful voice on social issues inside the GOP.
“I certainly could never have done that and I certainly can’t encourage it, but if good will comes out of it in terms of these issues . . . then that remains to be seen. There’s an old expression that the devil’s had the money long enough, it’s about time the good people got their hands on it,” he said.

Or that other old expression, when in Rome …

Will anyone go out and win one for the Gingrich?

We’ll have to wait a year to find out.

Until then, the crack staff down the hall at Blog P.I. remind us of this 1995 moment.

And we still have more time to mull over one of the oddest-written editorials ever written in the Manchester Union Leader, from 1998:

If the man behind the ‘Contract With America’ has a new plan in mind, we would like to hear more about it.  Unlike so many who talk about what to do, he is a nice man who gets things done.

Great slogan: A Nice Man.  He Also Gets Things Done.

Drudge Report tells us that Tuesday’s Washington Times editorial will call for Speaker Dennis Hastert’s resignation over the Mark Foley scandal.

The Washington Times editorial page, of course, is led by Tony Blankley, who was once former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s press secretary, who himself resigned in 1998, after Blankley was gone.

Remember 1998? Another sex scandal rocked Washington and the nation — President Bill Clinton’s. Gingrich vowed that Spring that “never again, as long as I am Speaker, make a speech without commenting” on Monica Lewinsky.

Will the Democrats make a similar pledge five weeks out from Election Day 2006?

In today’s column, Bob Novak writes this about Newt Gingrich:

He depicts failed efforts to broadcast the truth to Iran and North Korea. The problem is that Gingrich has played fast and loose with facts, understating the actual U.S. effort.  Gingrich ignored a personal correction from Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and continued the misrepresentation. … Unfounded accusations about U.S. international broadcasts point to a longtime carelessness with facts.

The fact of the matter, as Novak points out, is that America actually has a robust and expanding satellite TV news broadcasting operation to Iran (I used to work for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees America’s nonmilitary international broadcasting.)

Is it having an impact?  Tomlinson wrote this in the Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2006:

Small satellite dishes are proliferating in Iran and there are strong indications that VOA’s nightly programming is becoming a staple for large numbers of Iranians. Telephone polling (which tends to undercount audiences living under repressive regimes) show that better than one-in-five adult television viewers say they regularly watch VOA’s satellite television programs.   As was the case with RFE/RL and VOA in the Cold War, it is important that our broadcasts are provocative — and credible. Intense journalistic supervision is critical to achieving this goal. Truth does not lie half way between the views of Washington and Tehran. But talk and debate programs give Iranians a taste of freedom — and enlightenment.

This is precisely the model that worked during the Cold War — broadcasting the truth to repressed people.  Ultimately, the furture of Iran is up to the people of Iran.  But with the mullahs oeprating four 24/7 satellite channels of their own, beaming throughout the region, America’s efforts should be applauded by leaders like Newt Gingrich.

We’re approaching the 10 year anniversary (August 13, to be exact) of that great moment when Newt Gingrich instructed the 1996 Republican National Convention this.

A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. Now it is not only a sport [but] in the Olympics. … And there’s a whole new world of opportunity opening up that didn’t even exist 30 years ago or 40 years ago, and no bureaucrat would have invented it. And that’s what freedom is all about.

Looking back, Gingrich’s declaration never really did create a groundswell of public opinion for or against beach volleyball.

But what he said just four days ago, that “this is, in fact, World War III,” surely has.

A Technorati search turns up 850 posts which mention World War III and Gingrich.  World War III alone ranks fifth on Technorati with over 16,000 posts.

Gingrich is surely aware how much chatter he’s created, boldly explaining to Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” last night about “what led me to speak out so decisively and so clearly.”

World War III — it’s no day at the beach, with or without volleyball.

Newt Gingrich nailed it:

For North Korea, we are currently broadcasting I think it’s 90 minutes a week into North Korea. We’re currently broadcasting a trivial amount into Iran. You had riots in Iran—at Tehran University for weeks. You’ve had trade union movements that are upset, 49 percent of the country is non-Persian. And the amount of effort we’ve made to help those who would like to be free and would like to replace the current dictatorship is trivial.

Indeed.  U.S. foreign policy needs aggressive public diplomacy and public diplomacy needs aggressive U.S. international broadcasting.

Following last night’s “The Sopranos” was quite a 10 p.m. two-fer:  Newt Gingrich on C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” simulatenous with MSNBC’s rebroadcast of Newt Gingrich on “Meet the Press.”  Couldn’t figure out if Newt looks less like Johnny Sack or Paulie Walnuts.