Gingrich starts ‘big conversation;’ says ethanol good for economy, security

Former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich is spending four of the next five days in Iowa kicking off a “big conversation” about the future of the country with the folks who kick off the 2012 presidential nominating process.

Gingrich is on a 17-city tour of Iowa starting what he expects to be “the most idea-oriented and conversational campaign in your lifetime.”

“We need a big conversation with all of us if we're going to have the authority to have the kind of changes we need to be successful,” he told more than 50 Republicans during a stop at The Eastern Iowa Airport May 16.

There's no shortage of problems, Gingrich said as he outlined his plans to get power out of Washington and into the hands of more Americans.

“This is not about putting one person in the White House to perform magic in the Oval Office,” the 67-year-old former Georgia congressman said at PS Air. “It involves millions of Americans deciding to commit themselves to rebuild the country.”

One of the keys will be an American energy plan that will include traditional forms of energy – coal, natural gas and nuclear, for example – as well as wind, solar and biofuels, including ethanol.

Ethanol is in a much different place than when he first voted for “gasohol” back in 1984, Gingrich said.

“My original goal was to help launch a biofuels industry because I felt we had a chance to increase the income not just to farmers, but if you go to these small towns, some of the best paying jobs are at the ethanol refinery,” he said.

Now the industry has matured and with the development of flexible-fuel vehicles it is competitive in a way different than it was 30 years ago, Gingrich continued. Ethanol can be produced for about 80 cents a gallon less than what the U.S. pays for overseas oil.

“So I take very seriously threats to undermine and destroy the ethanol industry both because it's good for natural security and good for the economy and it's particularly good for people in rural America,” Gingrich said. “If I have to choose to send money to Iowa or South Dakota or Illinois or to send it to Iran, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, I pick sending it to American farmers to create American jobs to keep American money at home.”

He told reporters he's not surprised by the wide-open nature of the GOP nomination process. Gingrich isn't bothered that 2008 Iowa precinct caucus winner Mike Huckabee, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and real estate and entertainment icon Donald Trump have decided not to run.

“I'm actually comfortable if nobody else runs,” he joked. “It will probably mean very limited debates.”

He thinks voters, sensing this may be the most important election of their lifetimes, are biding their time.

That doesn't mean the stakes are high.

“Four more years of Barack Obama would move us so far to the left, so far toward Washington-centered government, so far toward massive debt that we might well not recover for a very, very long time,” Gingrich warned.