Newt Gingrich dazzled Saturday’s Conservative Political Action Conference audience with ideas on how the GOP can capture the White House.

“If you want to see a fight where we can be on the side of young Americans and the left is hopeless, go and talk to any campus and ask, ‘How would you like Washington bureaucrats to slow down the number of applications you can have on your smartphone?’” he said, according to video posted by Fox News and other outlets. “The smartphone will be the leading health care device of the 21^st century. It will be the leading learning device and the leading management tool.”

One congressman, a doctor, has eight medical applications on his phone, he said.

“He can do an electrocardiogram with his smartphone!” he said. But “the Food and Drug Administration, seeing the dramatic rise in applications that improve your health, now wants to take over approving them.”

Gingrich urged the audience to seize the technological revolution and lead it.

“The first great breakout was in North Dakota, and it was the development of fracking,” he said. “We’re now the largest producer of natural gas in the world. If this president had any sense of seriousness about Russia, he would already have issued an executive order allowing American natural gas to be shipped to Europe, he would already be opening up offshore and federal properties for exploration, and he would explain to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that we are going to drive down the price of oil enough that Russia will once again be bankrupt.”

Gingrich warned that limiting political campaigns to messaging about Obama would guarantee fewer victories. And only campaigning against Hillary, he said, “would guarantee the election of the first Democrat in 70 years to hold a third term in the White House.”

The former speaker of the House said the key to winning the future is taking advantage of the many possibilities on the horizon.

“I think that this synthesis of core values that have made America great, with the capabilities of science and technology, can reduce the cost of Medicare because we have solved the challenge of Alzheimer’s, and we can reduce the cost of dealing with autism in children, because we have solved the challenge of autism,” he said, adding that America has been hamstrung by short-sightedness.  “You just saw the mayor of New York close charter schools in a way that clearly hurts black and Hispanic children, because he represents the teachers’ union, who are the biggest prison guards of the past stopping children. … And Hilary Clinton is the leading prison guard of the past, propping up every failed bureaucratic institution in America.”

Gingrich, a former history professor, added: “If we had had a giant government in the 1840s, the Stagecoach Association would have hired lobbyists to pass a bill that limits the speed of a railroad to the speed of a horse, on the grounds of unfair competition.”

Gingrich ended his spellbinding speech by attempting to “defend the president.”

“A lot of people have criticized him for going to Key Largo in Florida while there is a crisis underway in Ukraine,” he said. “Now I just want you to know that the president spent all last week proving that he was capable of being ineffective. I believe that he can be as ineffective in Key Largo as he was in the White House. So stand up for Obama’s right to be ineffective no matter where he is.”

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Richard Berkow

Former political news reporter Richard Berkow lost his idealism in the Kennedy years, and his innocence in Vietnam, Lebanon, and the Soviet Union. He hasn’t mellowed since, and can be harassed at [email protected]

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