Newt Gingrich is making noises like someone who could enter the Presidential race soon. Bill Sammon reports for The Examiner:

Dismissing the GOP presidential field as a "pathetic" bunch of "pygmies," Newt Gingrich hinted Monday he might step in to beat Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"If, in mid-October, it's quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don't need me to run," the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. "If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there's a radical change, then there's space for a candidate," he added. "So you'll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real."

Read the whole article at the link above. Newt appears to be hinting that if Thompson proves "acceptably conservative" - to Newt - then he would have no reason to run, but that he otherwise just might.

I'm not sure what to make of this. It could just be Newt keeping the spotlight on his current activities, or feeding his ego since his name is mentioned less frequently since Thompson signaled an imminent entry into the race.

As a serious candidate, Gingrich isn't capable of winning either the nomination or the general election, though. He absolutely would make the best philosophical case on the stump, and in the debates, but he cannot escape his own record of governance or the character flaws which ended it. Neither can he avoid the fact that lower donations to Republicans right now are in large part due to the base zipping their pocketbooks tightly, and because of the way Republican officeholders behaved in office.

He would qualify for a "first-tier" candidate with 8-10% support in many polls, but would have no practical chance at all of winning. He can't raise the money to compete with the true frontrunners, and even a brokered convention would never turn to him.

Stay with the ideas, Newt. You're good at it. Keep out of elective politics, though, because you've are poison there now.