Newt

COUNTDOWN TO TAKEOVER 21 days THE SPEAKER HAS SPOKEN "I think of myself as the player-coach. " - INCOMING HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH, R-Ga., who intends to call the legislative shots, lead the political offense and work defense, too. DANGER ZONE. The new House sergeant-at-arms is on the lookout for angry Congress fans, saying Gingrich's outspoken ways may call for additional security. "I see today Mr. Gingrich is very visible and he is very controversial," Wilson Livingood said Monday after being named to the post.

The Good Ship Gingrich, launched 10 days ago in South Carolina but scuttled Tuesday night in Florida, faces some rough sailing ahead if history is a guide. A peek at the upcoming GOP calendar suggests a near future not good for Newt. Not that he's having a terrific present. Mitt Romney's double-digit win in the first large, diverse state of the primary season blew Newt out of the water. In a victory speech, Mitt ignored Newt and went straight for President Obama: "My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity.

THE START of last night's Republican debate seemed to promise a whack-a-mole evening for the GOP's latest front-runner, Newt "Not-a-lobbyist" Gingrich. Two of his opponents for the party nomination introduced themselves by saying how long they've been married: Rick Perry, 29 years of "wedded bliss" to his Anita; Jon Huntsman, 28 years just last week to his Mary Kaye. Newt's a three-time groom; nice of Perry and Huntsman to remind the party's Christian conservative base. But that was about the only slap at Gingrich.

It was a remarkable case history. The focus of endless conferences and learned papers. Like the famous patients Anna O. and Sybil, this tale fascinated the public for years. Billy and Newt. Or, as they are known in the annals of the American Medical Association: the Brothers Who Would Ruin Everything. Two fatherless adolescents out to annihilate each other, not caring one whit if they brought the whole house down with them. Both boys suffered from hero complexes, though each handled his a different way. Newt, the fatter and more ornery one, was a classic example of oppositional defiant disorder.

Hundreds of protesters chanted "No More Newt!" while other demonstrators answered with an obscene phrase about what could be done to Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A sweet grandmother from Oak Lane called him a "leprechaun gone wrong. " A disabled woman said he broke his personal promise to her to support laws to help disabled people live on their own. The convergence of anti-Gingrich protesters, representing senior citizens, environmentalists, AIDS activists, campaign-finance reformers and organized labor occurred outside the Mellon Bank building, at 18th and Market streets.

From time to time, we will run excerpts from columnist Dick Polman's blog, "Dick Polman's American Debate. " Watch this page for Polman high points - and check out the blog. A couple of Sundays ago, I surfed over to Fox News and there he was again - the biggest flirt in the Republican party. And Newt Gingrich said this about himself: "People may decide that, in fact, they want to take a second look. . . . Nothing in America is irreparable. This is a country where second, third, and fourth chances seem a permanent part of our culture.

In the take-no- prisoners attack on poor folks now under way in Washington, the bull's-eye is unwed mothers - specifically teen-agers. The Newt Gingrich cure for teen pregnancy can be summed up in a word: starvation. Unwed girls would be ineligible for welfare under his Personal Responsibility Act. Newt also believes in the power of "shame. " Harking back to Victorian England, the House speaker asserts that "they reduced the number of children born out wedlock almost by 50 percent.

THE GOOD Ship Gingrich, launched 10 days ago in South Carolina but scuttled last night in Florida, faces some rough sailing ahead if history is a guide. A peek at the GOP calendar suggests a near future not good for Newt. Not that he's having a terrific present. Mitt Romney's double-digit win in the first large, diverse state of the primary season blew Newt out of the water. In a victory speech, Mitt ignored Newt and went straight for President Obama: "My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity.

There's an unwritten rule: If you want to be a soccer player in Philadelphia, you have to play at Newt's in Fishtown, maybe the last cinder field in the city. First, though, you have to find it. Legend has it that a car carrying soccer players from Bucks County pulled up several years ago and parked on the cinder. The driver called out, looking for Newt's. 'You're on it!" he was told. And then, "Get off it!" Newt's offers one of the outstanding home-field advantages in local sports to the Fishtown AC. Whenever the Frankford El rumbles into the Berks Street station over one wall, opposing players invariably are distracted.

After forcing Fishtown kids to play with pain for more than 50 years, Philadelphia's last cinder ballfield is finally going green. Shissler Rec's grass baseball/soccer field will be the crown jewel in a $1.2 million, six-block "Green Connection: Shissler to the River" plan that the city's newly merged Department of Parks and Recreation unveils today. "We're living the merger before we actually merge in July," said Michael DiBerardinis, parks and recreation commissioner, announcing that other major improvements include: Replacing Shissler Rec's blacktop parking lot - which sends storm-water runoff flooding into Blair Street - with a permeable surface that will prevent those floods.

IS NEWT GINGRICH the wave of the future or just the flavor of the month? I'm not quite sure. But I do know this: Sometimes when I listen to Gingrich I have to scratch my head and wonder: "What the heck is he thinking? Does this guy's ego know no bounds whatsoever?" This man has compared himself to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Clay, Charles De Gaulle, William Wallace, Pericles, the Duke of Wellington, the Vikings, Thomas Edison, Vince Lombardi, the Wright brothers and Moses.

THE GOOD Ship Gingrich, launched 10 days ago in South Carolina but scuttled last night in Florida, faces some rough sailing ahead if history is a guide. A peek at the GOP calendar suggests a near future not good for Newt. Not that he's having a terrific present. Mitt Romney's double-digit win in the first large, diverse state of the primary season blew Newt out of the water. In a victory speech, Mitt ignored Newt and went straight for President Obama: "My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity.

The Good Ship Gingrich, launched 10 days ago in South Carolina but scuttled Tuesday night in Florida, faces some rough sailing ahead if history is a guide. A peek at the upcoming GOP calendar suggests a near future not good for Newt. Not that he's having a terrific present. Mitt Romney's double-digit win in the first large, diverse state of the primary season blew Newt out of the water. In a victory speech, Mitt ignored Newt and went straight for President Obama: "My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity.

MIAMI - Newt Gingrich slammed GOP rival Mitt Romney yesterday for the steady stream of attacks he likened to "carpet-bombing," trying to cut into the resurgent front-runner's lead in Florida in the dwindling hours before tomorrow's pivotal presidential primary. Surging in polls, Romney kept the pressure on Gingrich, casting him at an appearance in South Florida as an influence peddler and continuing his heavy advertising blitz that questions the former House speaker's ethics. In what has become a wildly unpredictable race, the momentum has swung back to Romney, staggered last weekend by Gingrich's victory in South Carolina.

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. - Mitt Romney blasted as "repulsive" Newt Gingrich's criticism of his views on immigration, as the two Republican presidential candidates engaged in a fierce war of words last night in the final debate before Florida's presidential primary on Tuesday. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, had labeled Romney the most anti-immigrant candidate. "That's simply inexcusable. That's inexcusable," a clearly angry Romney protested. He cited a Gingrich ad, pulled Wednesday, that charged Romney with holding anti-immigrant views.

Newt Gingrich has spent the past 17 years in a box. It's an aquarium, actually, and a modest one. It measures about 500 cubic inches, which makes it a pretty small place to spend 17 years. Newt Gingrich is a fire belly newt. In 1994, shortly after we moved from Bucks County to rural upstate New York, our boys, then 8 and 10, urged us to buy "him" (though Newt may actually be a "her"). They wanted a pet, and we weren't ready for the Labrador retriever that eventually became a big part of our lives.

TAMPA, Fla. - A newly aggressive Mitt Romney charged in campaign debate last night that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" from Congress after four years as speaker and then spent the next 15 years "working as an influence peddler" in Washington. Gingrich shot back that Romney's attacks were riddled with falsehoods, and he referred to statements by two men who ran against Romney in 2008 in contending that the former Massachusetts governor "can't tell the truth. " The clash occurred in the opening moments of the first of this week's two debates before the Jan. 31 Florida primary.

AS THE GOP primary shifts to a Mitt/Newt Deep South skirmish in Florida, two questions arise: Can Mitt change? Can Newt maintain? Can Newt, who for so long was all too human, maintain his "New Newt" stance? Can Mitt, the Richie Rich of politics, morph into a more human persona? For example, a Romney recovery could start with announcing during tonight's Tampa debate that he'll release tax returns for the last dozen years. What's the harm? What's there? Are there tons of money to the Mormon Church and concerns over how that plays in the South?

BEAUFORT, S.C. - Newt Gingrich angrily denied that he asked his second wife for an "open marriage" and denounced the moderator in last night's Republican presidential debate for raising the issue in the leadoff question. Gingrich blasted what he called the "destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media. " The former House speaker slammed CNN moderator John King during the debate, saying that he was "appalled" that King would begin a presidential debate with the topic.

THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL race today hits South Carolina, where Newt Gingrich has a plan for attacking Mitt Romney that resembles a murder-suicide pact. It's "I'll get Mitt even it means that I go down, too. " It's desperate, hard-core politics; at least Newt's in an appropriate state. It was first to secede from the Union and among the last to certify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote - in 1969. (The amendment was ratified in 1920 by the required 36 states.)