David Gibson on Newt Gingrich: How Far Is He Willing to Go?

David Gibson has interesting commentary at Politics Daily now about Newt Gingrich's attempt to position himself as a presidential challenger to President Obama in 2012, by ramping up his rhetoric about the president's threatening foreignness (an imagined threat, of course, but one easy to manipulate in many Americans' minds).

Here's Gibson's take:

Gingrich is positioning himself as a potential Republican challenger to Obama in 2012, and in doing so has tended to tone down the unbridled rhetoric that was his hallmark as head of the "Republican revolution" of the 1990s. Gingrich married his third wife in 2000, converted to Catholicism last year, and has been cast as the intellectual heavyweight of the GOP.

But Gingrich retains his penchant for the pungent quotation, and lately has ramped up his visibility and quotability on such issues as the controversial Islamic center proposed near Ground Zero.

Gingrich's latest comments also hit hot buttons about Obama's African heritage (his mother was from Kansas) and whether he is a socialist, and they play to suspicions among many -- especially conservatives -- about whether he was born in the United States (he was) and whether he is a Muslim (he is not) or a Christian, as Obama has been all his adult life.

"I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality," Gingrich told NRO. "If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane."

Gingrich apparently wants to be that guy.

And, linking to his Politics Daily article at Commonweal's blog, Gibson has a thread going there, asking for discussion about just how far Newt is willing to go with this extremist rhetoric.  My guess: as far as it will take him.