Opinion: Sarah Palin out, Newt Gingrich in: Republicans get ready to rumble

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It’s official. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the darling of conservatives as John McCain‘s running mate during the 2008 campaign, will not be the keynote speaker at this year’s House-Senate Republican Dinner.

The Alaska governor informed Washington that her duties in Juneau would keep her from locking in to the June 8 event until the end of the legislative session up there.

So, congressional Republicans are turning to the man who first rescued them from out-of-power status and then left office in a blaze of corruption and ego. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Georgia back-bencher who catapulted the GOP to control with his ‘Contract With America’ in 1994, left office after four years, having lost GOP seats and exhausted patience with his complaints that President Clinton made him deplane Air Force One after one trip from the back.

As the Ticket reported Tuesday, Gingrich over the weekend converted to Catholicism, fueling speculation about his ambitions for 2012 and his outreach to the party’s values voters.

But maybe the selection has nothing to do with politics. After all, as one writer to the Washington Post put it, maybe the senators and congressmen just wanted to hear from Gingrich, a man of ideas with a PhD from Tulane, and not Palin, a passionate defender of Joe the Plumber who graduated from her fourth college.

— Johanna Neuman

Register for Twitter alerts to each new Ticket item by clicking here.

Photo Credit: Associated Press