USA: Republican Newt Gingrich announces his run for president on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, his campaign web site and in an appearance on Fox News Channel

Record ID: 345620

  • Title: USA: Republican Newt Gingrich announces his run for president on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, his campaign web site and in an appearance on Fox News Channel
  • Date: 14th May 2011
  • Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MAY 11, 2011) (REUTERS) COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING NEWT 2012 WEB PAGE WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MAY 11, 2011) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE NEWT GINGRICH, APPEARING ON NEWT 2012 WEB SITE, SAYING: "I'm Newt Gingrich and I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States, because I believe we can return America to hope and opportunity, to full employment, to real security, to an American energy program, to a balanced budget. I worked with President Ronald Reagan in a very difficult period. We got jobs created again, Americans proud of America, and the Soviet Union disappeared. As speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, to balance the budget, to control spending, to cut taxes to create economic growth. Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under four. And for four years, we balanced the budget and paid off 405 billion dollars in debt. We've done it before, we can do it again. I want your help, because no one person in the Oval Office can get this done. We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together, and insist on imposing those solutions on the forces that don't want to change. There are some people who don't mind if America becomes a wreck, as long as they dominate the wreckage. But you and I know better. We owe it to our children, our grandchildren, our country, and frankly to ourselves. So let's get together, look reality in the face, tell the truth, make the tough choices, get the job done. There's a much better American future ahead, with more jobs, more prosperity, a better health system, longer lives, greater independent living, and a country that is decentralized under the Tenth Amendment, with power once again back with the American people and away from the Washington bureaucracy. No one person can accomplish this. It can't be done from the Oval Office. We have to work together, we Americans have to get it done. I hope you'll decide to join me." WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MAY 11, 2011) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING GINGRICH CANDIDACY ANNOUNCEMENT ON TWITTER VARIOUS OF COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING GINGRICH FACEBOOK PAGE WITH CANDIDACY ANNOUNCEMENT
  • Embargoed: 29th May 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa, Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5TICMZ7D0L0IZRHT8FKWTWPF3
  • Story Text: Republican Newt Gingrich touted his record as speaker of the House of Representatives on Wednesday (May 11) in launching an uphill battle for the presidency in 2012 with a vow to get "America back on the right track."
    Gingrich, who has long flirted with a run for the Republican presidential nomination, joined a slowly forming field of challengers to Democratic President Barack Obama with an announcement on Twitter. He also announced his candidacy on Facebook and appeared on a Fox News Channel program.
    "Today I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States," Gingrich posted on Twitter, providing a link to his campaign web site.
    In a recorded message on the Newt 2012 site, Gingrich told viewers "we have to work together, we Americans have to get it done. I hope you'll decide to join me."
    Gingrich, 67, is a conservative famed for budget battles with President Bill Clinton after he led the "Republican revolution" in 1994 elections that brought his party to power in Congress.
    During the message, Gingrich preached an anti-Washington message aimed at uniting Republicans against Democrats without mentioning Obama by name.
    "We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together and insist on imposing those solutions on those forces that don't want to change," he said.
    "There are some people who don't mind if America becomes a wreck as long as they dominate the wreckage. But you and I know better," he said.
    Credit for the 1990s economic boom is generally given to Clinton, a Democrat, but Gingrich claimed some of the credit for himself. He was House speaker from 1995 to 1999.
    "I think that this country has an enormous potential to break out and to once again be at four percent unemployment, to have a surplus of American energy, to be the leading industrial power in the world, to balance the budget as we did for four years when I was speaker, to reform entitlements as we did with welfare when I was speaker. And that's a great future, but it's not a future we're going to get to until we clear away the liberal policies, the liberal bureaucracies, the Washington-centered system," he said during an appearance on Fox News Channel's "The Sean Hannity Show."
    A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Wednesday said Gingrich trailed Obama by 18 percentage points, 53 percent to 35 percent.
    Gingrich is known within Republican circles as a politician who brings a lot of ideas to the table but who party officials believe will need to show a great deal of discipline as a candidate and not be tempted to comment on all issues of the day.
    Gingrich, who has appeared as a Fox News commentator and written books since resigning from the House in 1999, is taking steps to ease concerns among the religious right about his personal life. Gingrich is married to his third wife, Callista, with whom he had an affair in the mid-1990s while he was married to his second wife.
    He told a Christian television network this year he had sought God's forgiveness over the affair.
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