The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

Newt Speaks

By Philip Klein on 3.22.07 @ 10:00AM

Newt Gingrich spoke with reporters after his Wednesday talk, and here are some tidbits that I couldn't fit into my piece this morning.

ON FRED THOMPSON:
Gingrich said Thomspon's entry into the race would not affect his decision to run. "He's very talented, a good friend…and I think he'd add to the race."

ON THE EARLY ELECTION COVERAGE:
"Most Americans have good enough sense that in March a year before the campaign, they don't pay any attention. So it's very hard to communicate to normal, healthy, rational people in March of 2007 about an office you take in 2009. They just have better things to do with their lives than to be absorbed in this stuff."

ON WAITING UNTIL SEPT. 30 TO DECIDE WHETHER TO RUN:
"Barack Obama rose in three weeks, right? Howard Dean collapsed in three weeks. That teaches me the cycles in America are three weeks. So there's plenty of time to come to that decision. Either somebody will have sealed it off, in which case it's moot, or, the game will have started."

ON PAKISTAN:
"I think we have to have a permanent planning process that worries about Pakistan. If Musharraf were to be replaced by a radical, you would have an extraordinarily dangerous situation that day. And my hope is that we have contingency planning that recognizes how dangerous that can be."

topics:
Barack Obama, Pakistan