With Newt Gingrich being floated as a possible GOP savior, here are a few arguments he might use with the activists:

1) He is an idea machine.  His ideas are sometimes out there (or depending upon your vantage point way way way out there) but he’s going to push the envelope and sound different from the average Republican.  Case in point, his essay in the latest Business Week where he calls for an end to adolescence.

2) He knows how to win.  He’s the only potential candidate who can claim credit for organizing a successful path to power for Republicans.  (Although I seem to recall working for someone who made a similar argument…)

3) He can keep Georgia.  Dems came on strong in Georgia and will keep working to flip it.  Gingrich can argue  favorite son status.

4) He has reached across the aisle.  His post-House efforts to bridge the partisan divide have garnered him a lot of attention.  For example, he has worked with HRC on innovative health care solutions.

Some arguments to make AGAINST him going for it are:

1) He’s another white-haired male who is “establishment” at a time when changes in the electorate demand that the Repubs either reinvent themselves or risk long-term minority status.

2) Gingrich has been able to rehabilitate his reputation over the years by not being political.  By that I mean he has been a pundit and not an office-seeker. As such, he’s been able to be much more honest/balanced in his musings than he’d be able to be as a candidate.  If he were to get into the formal political arena, those musings would be covered differently.  In fact, he’d probably stop them altogether and return to being a firebrand.

3) Voters in 2008 continued to reject many of the people who came to Congress via the Gingrich revolution.  How many of those who arrived in 1994 are still around?

4) Bobby Jindal.