CPAC 2012: Newt Gingrich hits the reset button

◼ Day One will be epic, and then he’ll get really busy. - John Hayward/Human Events

No one else at CPAC had a speech as packed full of specifics as Newt Gingrich. He’s got a broad and deep agenda, and he can run through it from memory. He loves talking about every aspect of it. Whether you like his ideas or not, you can’t say he’s trying to hide any of them....

According to Gingrich, we face now an hour similar to 1980, 1984, and 1994, when a bold conservatism presented with vigor can rally independent and moderate voters, who might otherwise be cowed by the Left’s moralistic commands to continue America’s downward spiral. A timid and leashed America that needs 23 years to cut through the bureaucracy, incompetence, and red tape to add a runway to an airport, where its forefathers needed only 3 years to smash the Axis, is hungry for energetic leadership to lead it back into a mostly private-sector “world that works.” It is “not a theory” that UPS and FedEx can track 28 million moving packages a day, while the federal government “cannot find 11 million illegal immigrants, even if they’re sitting still.”

Wit is a sign of confidence, and Gingrich got big laughs by suggesting illegal aliens could be tracked down by sending them a UPS package… then scored again by reminding the media (ahem, make that The Media Establishment) that he was engaging in hyperbole, and did not need to be fact-checked....

For Newt Gingrich, the historic election ahead will be a choice between those who cleave to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Federalist Papers, versus Barack Obama and the Saul Alinsky radicals. He calls for hitting the “reset button” and rebuilding America, instead of managing its decay. None of the Establishments talk like that.