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The conservatives are restless. Enter Newt Gingrich (maybe).

The former Republican House speaker, who on Thursday launches American Solutions for Winning the Future, said he would be inclined to run if his aides could raise $30 million in campaign pledges in October.

By Ariel Sabar | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 27, 2007 edition

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WASHINGTON - Newt Gingrich has shilly-shallied over a presidential bid for more than a year. In May, the former Republican House speaker said that his candidacy was a "great possibility." In June, he put the chances at "4-to-1 odds" against.

So when Mr. Gingrich told a Fox News program Sunday that he would "feel a responsibility to run" if his aides could rustle up $30 million in campaign pledges in October, the questions only sharpened: Is he serious about running for the Republican nomination or just drawing attention to his newest cause as the party's gadfly in chief?

His latest rumblings come a few days before the launch Thursday of Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future, a nationwide series of workshops spotlighting his ideas on immigration, healthcare, and a raft of other issues.

Still, in interviews Sunday with Fox News and The Washington Times, he set a specific fundraising goal and timetable, evidence, some analysts say, of a deepening determination to run.

"I took this last announcement more seriously than all the rest," says Scott Reed, a GOP strategist who managed Robert Dole's presidential campaign in 1996. "I'm not prepared to predict he's going to run, but he's going to have a big impact on this race."

Gingrich's periodic threats to enter the race and his regular trips to early-primary states have certainly kept him in the news. Best known as the "Contract With America" author who led the historic GOP takeover of the House in 1994, Gingrich, now a prolific writer and public speaker, has not been shy about trying to shape Republican campaign strategy from the sidelines. At a July breakfast sponsored by The American Spectator, a conservative magazine, he tarred the Republican field as a "pathetic" bunch of "pygmies."

Elsewhere, he has pressed the GOP hopefuls to distance themselves from President Bush, declare that government is broken, and take up a message of "very bold, dramatic change."

He has dismissed the campaign of Sen. John McCain as a nonstarter and reportedly told GOP insiders in July that he would run if actor and former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, whose campaign launched three weeks ago, stumbled.

Gingrich's spokesman, Rick Tyler, told the Monitor this week that Mr. Thompson's lackluster start had raised the odds of a Gingrich candidacy.

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