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cyberdude611 -> Gingrich says Hillary has 80% chance of winning (9/30/2007 12:30:45 PM)
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Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cited federal campaign finance laws as the reason he won't run for the Republican presidential nomination, saying the current system precludes a ``middle-class candidate.''
Gingrich said on ABC's ``This Week'' program that legal opinions he sought led him to conclude he can't run for president and lead American Solutions for Winning the Future, a tax-exempt group he established earlier this year that focuses on security, education, immigration and energy issues.
``We were informed yesterday morning that if I had any communication with American Solutions after I became a candidate, it was a criminal offense,'' Gingrich said.
Nine candidates are vying for the 2008 Republican nomination and Gingrich, 64, had been considering a bid for the past several months. He said today that while he already had taken some preparatory steps toward a campaign and had pledges of support from contributors, he had no regrets about not running.
It would be ``irresponsible'' to ``give up and kill an organization we spent a year on and that had 2,000 sites around the country where people had now invested their time and effort just to look at whether or not you could run,'' Gingrich said.
Speaking on Fox News, Gingrich said the 2002 campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold that would have forced him to sever ties with his advocacy group, which also raises money, is a ``censorship and anti-citizenship act.''
``If you're a middle class candidate, you get to raise $2,300 a person and if you're rich, you can write a $100 million personal check,'' he said.
Financial Commitments
He said he already had commitments for ``several million dollars'' in donations for his own presidential run. ``But what hit me was it would have been an underdog campaign,'' Gingrich said on ABC, adding, ``I think we would have had a chance to win.''
Gingrich, who served 10 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, said he would not endorse any other candidate. He has been critical of the Republican Bush administration's approach to war, immigration policy, health care and response to crises such as Hurricane Katrina.
He said Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, a Democrat, has an 80 percent chance of becoming the next U.S. president. ``The Clinton machine is the most powerful political machine in modern America,'' he said.
Break With Past
Gingrich said his party needs to make a break with the recent past in order to keep the White House in 2008.
``Republicans have got to get out from under Washington,'' he said. ``And if we nominate somebody who is a continuation of where we are right now, we're going to lose.''
Two of the leading Republican contenders, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, ``are beginning to articulate really dramatic change'' in the campaign, Gingrich said.
Gingrich led the House for four years after helping his party win control of Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. He was an architect of the ``Contract with America,'' a pledge to bring 10 major issues to the House floor within the first 100 days of Republican House control. He stepped down after he was widely blamed for the Republicans' loss of five House seats in the November 1998 elections.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070930/pl_bloomberg/allbjsmtady4_1
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