Does the Republican Party want to remain relevant?   Or are they willing to be cast, by the not so subtle scorched earth tactics of Barack Obama, the Democrats and the mainstream media, into permanent second class status, and eventual oblivion?

The only political weapon, but a potentially powerful one, the Republicans have is control of the House of Representatives.   The Speaker of the House thus becomes, by default, the national spokesman and face of the Party.   This person is the one sitting alone across the table from the twin juggernaut of Barack Obama and his celebrity persona and the sycophantic mainstream media, with their predisposition against all things conservative. 

It is extraordinarily difficult to hold one's own against this two-headed dragon.   However, if the United States is to regain its once lofty economic and societal stature, there is no choice as there must be a guerilla action over the next four years to delay and stop Obama's plans to transform America.   This requires a Speaker of the House with a persona that is not overshadowed by the President, who is unafraid to take on the media and is able to coordinate messaging with not only Republican House members but other conservative voices.   But above all, a Speaker willing to confront Barack Obama directly and forcefully.

The current Speaker, John Boehner, while a decent man and a hard working representative for his district in Ohio, is not the right person for the job at this critical juncture in American history.   In a cogent and insightful analysis of Mr. Boehner, Peter Ferrara writes:

Boehner is no match for Obama on the national stage.  He cannot press the economic arguments articulately.   He does not have a compelling personality.  Obama is running circles around Boehner with outrageous falsehoods, and Boehner cannot raise a peep to challenge him.  Boehner has managed to allow Obama to turn the Bush middle class tax cuts passed by a Republican majority Congress ten years ago into the Obama middle class tax cuts, supposedly opposed by the House majority Republicans.

And from Mark Levin:   

We lost the presidency which was a great setback for our nation. Yet we held the House fairly easily and lost only two Senate seats.  Even in Obama's case he received millions less votes.  Boehner interprets this as a mandate for Obama and liberalism.  He's not fighting or leading.  He's dragging what little resistance there is left in the GOP down the cliff.  Far more damage will be done to the nation and the GOP than ought be done with this kind of quisling behavior.

John Boehner must go. Further, there is no one in the Republican House caucus that has the experience, personality and determination to bring the fight to Barack Obama and Harry Reid in the Senate.  With two or four more years of this kind of leadership, the Republican Party will become irrelevant, the ultimate goal of Obama, the Democrats and the media -- as their tactics in recent campaign and the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations reveal.

There is an option, (as pointed out by Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator) and one the Republican Party must seriously consider if they truly are concerned with the fate of the nation.

The Speaker of the House does not have to be an elected member of the House--per Article 1, section 2 of the Constitution.   Anyone duly chosen by a majority vote of the House can be Speaker as long as that person is nominated by a sitting member of the House.   Thus anyone could declare themselves as a candidate for the Speakership and actively campaign for the position.

There is only one person in the Republican or conservative political sphere that has national name recognition, experience, stature, as well as the proven ability to deal with the media and a popular Democratic President while coordinating an effective messaging operation-- that is Newt Gingrich.   This choice would bring howls of protest from both the Republican establishment and the Democratic Party cabal-- which is among the reasons it would be the ideal option.

In the 1990's, despite the bias of the media and Bill Clinton's ability to win various PR wars, Newt Gingrich was still able to find a way to dominate the narrative and get his message across to the American people. The accomplishments of the Gingrich-led Republican House were impressive.  Among them, the first balanced budget in a generation, an actual reduction in total federal government spending, a 30% cut in the capital gains tax rate which helped trigger the biggest run of surpluses in American history and the first meaningful reform in welfare entitlements since the advent of various "Great Society" programs.

There is no question that during this period Newt's forceful and at times abrasive personality grated on many of his fellow Republicans; but in retrospect that is why things got done.   However, as with all things, time and circumstance has mellowed Newt's approach but not his ability or determination.  

This nation is teetering on the precipice of financial and societal disaster.  With an unchecked Barack Obama, a bureaucracy issuing a flood of new edicts and regulations daily, and a spineless Senate and sycophantic media, the United States will follow Europe into chaos and decline.   It is up to the members of the House of Representatives, with their power of the purse and to ability to expose corruption and deception, to put the brakes on this headlong dash to oblivion.

If the Republican members of the House take their oath to preserve and protect the Constitution and the future of America seriously, they will replace the current speaker with someone who can and will forcefully take on Obama and his ruling cabal despite the slings and arrows sure to come his way.  That person is Newt Gingrich.