Gingrich on “Iowa Press” tonight

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the guest on this weekend’s edition of “Iowa Press” on Iowa Public Television.  It airs at 7:30 tonight and 11:30 a.m. Sunday.  After the show, Gingrich addressed the charge that he’s flip-flopped on Libya.  (P.S. There’s audio there if you follow that link, so you can listen to NG himself.)

During the program, Gingrich presented himself as the candidate of ideas who can best match wits with President Obama in the presidential debates of October, 2012.  (See more about that below) Gingrich suggested he hadn’t been ready to run in ’08 because his idea factory hadn’t churned up enough stuff, but he hinted he’s poised to make a “positive announcement” about his presidential aspirations in four or five weeks.  Gingrich mentioned recent visits to states like South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa — which hold the first contests in the 2012 primary election cycle — “basically testing the waters…and so far the waters are pretty warm.  I feel pretty good about this…I think it’s fair to say that we’re a lot closer to running than not running at this stage.”

Gingrich also addressed the topic of his marital history. 

AP reporter Mike Glover: “You’ve been married three times. You’ve had messy divorces.  You’re campaigning in a state where the Republican Party is dominated by Christian conservatives. How do you get past that?”

Gingrich: “I think you don’t get past that.  I think you tell the truth and I think you share your life’s experiences and you admit that you’ve had weaknesses and that you’ve had failures and you’ve gone to God to seek forgiveness and to seek reconciliation and then people make a decision. And they look at the totality of my life. I’m 67.  Callista and I have a great marriage. We have two wonderful daughters. We have two grandchildren who are terrific and people have to decide, on balance, am I a person that they would respect and trust in the White House.”

Gingrich said you don’t have to be likeable to win the presidency — he cited Nixon as an example– and when questioned about what qualifies one to be president, he cited Lincoln and Eisenhower as examples of successful presidents because they had, in Gingrich’s assessment, core beliefs.

He restated his support of corn-based ethanol fuel toward the end of the show and said there were no strings attached to his six-figure contribution to last fall’s effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices in the 2010 judicial retention election.  Gingrich added he would be willing to support an effort to oust the four justices who remain on the court who joined in the unanimous 2009 opinion which legalized gay marriage in Iowa.

At the beginning of the show, Gingrich addressed the idea voters may be looking for a “fresh face” in 2012.  Neat the end, he addressed this:

Radio Iowa news director O. Kay Henderson (me): “Given the propensity of Americans to like to promote a state-leve chief executive — a governor, given the desire of some part in your party to nominate a business person or someone with a business background, is it wise to nominate a former professor who ‘s an author to run against a former professor who’s an author?”

Gingrich: “Well, it depends on whether or not you think winning the debates in October matters.  I mean it strikes me that going up against Barack Obama is going to come down to what Margaret Thatcher used to say when she said that, ‘First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” 

Gingrich continued that thought, saying the GOP has to nominate someone who “philosophically and practically can be on the same stage” with Obama.  “I think you could see a Gingrich versus Obama range of choices that would be very wide,” he said.