#gingrich intellectual

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Supervillain? Or Newt Gingrich?

"Celebrating our next president's best ideas:" This wonderful little website presents you with a proposal, and then asks you to guess whether it came from Newt Gingrich, or a supervillain from a movie/comic book/etc. It's harder than it looks; we follow Gingrich pretty well, and we only scored 50%. source

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Gingrich and Pelosi, reachin' across the aisle

418 bills co-sponsored by Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich source

» Bipartisan support: For twelve years, Pelosi and Gingrich served together in the House of Representatives, and supported a total of 418 bills together. That's an average of 34.83 pieces of legislation per year that enjoyed Pelosi/Gingrich support (at least, that's what our team of math experts tells us; we didn't have time to check their work). One such bill was the Global Warming Prevention act of 1989, the memory of which probably won't do Gingrich any favors in the Republican primary (relatedly, neither will this). It should be noted, however, that much of this was non-contentious legislation, such as one honoring the 50th anniversary of the National Heart, Lung and Blood instituted.

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Gingrich leads in Iowa...but so what?

8 points Newt Gingrich's  (average) lead in Iowa, one month before the caucuses

73% historical win record (in Iowa) of presidential candidates who lead one month out. However...

40% historical win record of candidates, like Gingrich, who only lead by single-digits source

» The point here isn't that Gingrich won't win. It's that that attempting to predict election results based on polls is tricky, and remains tricky even when you factor in historical precedent. To drive the point home even further: Ronald Reagan led in Iowa polls by about 9 points a month prior to the caucuses. He ended up losing (to his future VP, George H.W. Bush), but then ultimately came back to win the nomination, making his Iowa loss more or less irrelevant. Every election has its own quirks and nuances; Gingrich is looking good in Iowa right now, no doubt, but so was Herman Cain before him, and Rick Perry before him, and Michele Bachmann before him.

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