Newt Gingrich Invokes Reagan and Freedom in Address to CPAC

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addressed a huge audience at CPAC Saturday offering his plan to save America.

"I think this is the most important CPAC meeting since Ronald Reagan came and said that we have to have no pale pastels but bold colors," the Speaker stated to thunderous applause.

"I believe we are now in a struggle over whether or not we are going to save America."

Of course, one of the threats is a liberal press.

"Part of why the Tea Parties so deeply threatened the elite media is the Tea Partiers suddenly looked around and realized there are more of us than there are of them" (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights):

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think this is the most important CPAC meeting since Ronald Reagan came and said that we have to have no pale pastels but bold colors. [...]

Because I am a historian by training, I want to correct one thing that Senator [Evan] Bayh said the other day that I was shocked by. Sen. Bayh said that if he resigned and went into the private sector and created one private sector job, then that would be more jobs than the Congress has created in the last six months. I think that's an exaggeration. President Obama has created at least three jobs I know of: Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown. And I guarantee you as a historian, without Barack Obama, Scott Brown could not have won in Massachusetts. [...]

I can tell you that the coming massive conservative majority that will re-center this country decisively for the first time in 70 years would not have been possible without the Pelosi-Reid-Obama machine which has convinced the country that if the choice is radicalism or conservatism, let's go ahead and defeat the radicals and put the country back on the right track. [...]

I believe we are now in a struggle over whether or not we are going to save America. I believe that the radical Left is a secular, socialist machine so dedicated to values destructive of America that if it is allowed to remain in power, whether that's in Sacramento, whether that's in Albany, or that's in the city council, or that's in the federal government, that machine is antithetical to the survival of America as a prosperous, healthy country based on sound principles. [...]

Part of why the Tea Parties so deeply threatened the elite media is the Tea Partiers suddenly looked around and realized there are more of us than there are of them. [...]

It is time to pass a balanced budget amendment and return this government to limited spending. And let me remind anyone who challenges you on this: for four years of principled bipartisanship while I was Speaker, we kept spending at 2.9 percent a year including the entitlements which is the lowest rate of increase since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. We balanced the federal budget for four years by controlling spending while cutting taxes to raise jobs.