Fleischer: Gingrich Is ‘Fabulous’ Dinner Entertainment, But Won’t Be ‘The Next Nominee’ Of The GOP

After much controversy, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich finally spoke yesterday at the big annual GOP congressional fundraising dinner. Although fellow Republicans often call him “the man of ideas,” his speech last night focused more on attacks of President Obama rather than new policies and visions.

Even though Obama is just five months into his presidency, Gingrich said that the President’s plan to fix the economy has “already failed.” He also peddled Frank Luntz’s misleading talking points on health care, saying, “No government bureaucrat has the right to take from you the rights that God gave you, and rationing under health care is inevitably limiting your life at the whim of a bureaucrat and at the manipulation of a politician.”

Additionally, Gingrich used his speech to again mock Obama’s recent speech in Egypt, saying — to loud applause — that he resented the President’s diplomatic outreach to the rest of the world:

Let me be clear. I am not a citizen of the world! I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous. There is no world sovereignty. There is no world system of law. There is, in fact, no circumstance under which I would like to be a citizen of North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba or Russia. I am a citizen of the United States of America, and the rest of this speech is about the United States of America!

Watch it:

This speech wasn’t enough for former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who went on ABC’s Good Morning America today and said that even though Gingrich is great dinner entertainment, he is “not going to be the next nominee of the Republican Party”:

Newt is a wonderful, fabulous dinner speaker, full of ideas and entertainment. But Newt is not going to be the next nominee of the Republican Party. We don’t know who the next nominee will be. I think it’s going to be somebody who we don’t know a lot about right now. Someone new, someone fresh, someone exciting. The Republican future can’t be back to the future. It has to be a new future. That’s the direction Republicans will go.

Watch it:

Fleischer also downplayed the emergence of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), saying that although he was an early fan, “she has a long way to go to prove she’s presidential.” He added that she needs to focus on “substance” and has “a long distance to go before she rises to the level of being a serious presidential candidate.”

Journalists were divided on how well dinner attendees received Palin last night, who was originally supposed to be the event’s keynote speaker. (She then pulled out, asked to be re-invited, pulled out again, and finally agreed to attend). Palin did not give a speech, since Republican leaders were afraid that she would upstage Gingrich. CNN ran a headline reading, “Palin center of attention at big GOP dinner.” Politico’s headline, in contrast, read, “Sarah Palin makes little splash at dinner.”