Monday night I got to see essentially the same man I saw a year ago at the 2010 Polk County Republican Spring Banquet.  This is a guy who has spent the past 12 years of his life dedicated to working with smart people to come up with solutions to America’s problems, and who comes across as thoughtful, smart (make that brilliant), and ready to work.

I say “the same”, because even a year ago, Newt Gingrich already seemed like a man bent on the idea that we can fix the American healthcare system without creating a yet another new bureaucracy incapable of bending to the people’s will.  A year ago he was pressing substantive health care reform ideas that acknowledged the deepest problems the Federal …