Republican heavyweight joins crowded field

Newt Gingrich puts his hat in the ring for the US 2012 race to be President

Newt Gingrich is known for many things: Speaker of the US House of Representatives for the Republican right-wing for four golden years in the 1990’s; author of the inspired Contract with America; the chief strategist of the Republican revolution in Washington after years of a Democrat hegemony; bane in the Presidency of Bill Clinton by attempting to bring impeachment proceedings during the Lewinsky scandal; and lastly for his own infamous downfall for ‘sexual indiscretions’ while holding political office.

Interestingly, however close Gingrich may have come to bringing down the then Administration, the polling at the time revealed that the scandal ironically saw Clinton’s approval rating post Lewinsky go sky high while Gingrich’s dived to an all time low. Therefore, it will be interesting to know what US voters will make of the trail blazer’s new announcement-that he is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

He joins an intriguing, yet bizarre field of candidates: Mormon multi millionaire Mitt Romney; former Minnesota Governor, Tim Pawlenty credited for erasing the State’s $4.8bn deficit; current Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels; former US ambassador to China, John Huntsman; and African-American Herman Cain, a former chief executive of American food chain Godfather’s Pizza.

Others that have yet to declare, but have strongly indicated their ambitions include: pied piper of the Tea Party movement Sarah Palin; Bill Clinton’s successor as Governor of Arkansas and Fox News’s Mike Huckabee; flashy billionaire and Apprentice Star Donald Trump; and fellow billionaire, Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

Some are seeing Obama’s re-election as almost a technicality because of the divisive nature of many of the high profile figures in the Republican race. Others caution complacency pointing out the one term Presidency of Jimmy Carter during a financial crisis and the deep fissures in US society around race that continue to plague the Obama presidency despite everything that may have been achieved. The worrying trend where a significant section of the US population believes that Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the USA (a constitutional prerequisite for being elected President) persists.

Nonetheless, the star wattage, unrivalled campaign funds and grassroots organizational capacity far outstrip anything that even the Tea Party movement are likely to assemble. So Obama certainly has a head start.

However, there’s still another 18 months before the election, and as American politics and Obama’s own rise to the Democrat candidacy and the Presidency testify-anything can happen in that amount of time…

Ashok Viswanathan

Picture: Newt Gingrich