Quote of the Day

Former House Speaker and architect of the GOP's Contract with America, Newt Gingrich on Democrats and their bloggers:

This is a core problem [the Democrats] have. ... I don't think you can write a Contract with Vermont and San Francisco. ... Al Gore has refused to endorse his vice presidential running mate [Lieberman]. A party which is so driven by its left that—I don't know if you saw the blogger meeting in Las Vegas? From the standpoint of an average American, some of that stuff was weird. Candidates out there run a risk of resembling the people they're trying to appeal to. Normal people I think become distanced by that stuff. I think the Republican Party has few allies more effective than the Daily Kos. It puts them into an echo chamber of listening to each other. There was a reason [2004 Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry looked normal—because Howard Dean looked so strange. So you have Dean as national chair, you have Gore coming back as a true left winger to Hillary's left, you have Lieberman unacceptably pro-national security, you have Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco... Let's drop Nancy Pelosi into a typical exurban swing district and see how she does. You listen to her talk and it's all about the counterculture, unilateral disarmament type of babble.