Newt Gringrich, who seems unlikely to win the Republican nomination at this point, announced his foreign policy team this week. The reliably good Josh Rogin at The Cable at FP describes:Newt's team, which has been working together informally for months, is led by Herman Pirchner, the founding president of a small, conservative think tank in Washington called the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). Also on Team Newt is AFPC Vice President Ilan Berman and AFPC Senior Fellow for Asian Studies Stephen Yates, a former staffer for Vice President Dick Cheney.Rogin posts a little biography:
Cheney's top Middle East advisor David Wurmser is also part of the Newt campaign advisory team, along with former President Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Reagan-era National Security Council (NSC) senior directors Norman Bailey and Ken deGraffenreid, Reagan-era Undersecretary of State for security assistance, science, and technology Bill Schneider, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and others. We're also told Newt is talking to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace and former Central Command head Gen. John Abizaid.
Stephen Yates has been the president of DC International?Advisory, a consultancy, since 2006. Before opening DC International Advisory, Mr. Yates served in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 through 2005. During his tenure in government, he was deeply involved in the development and execution of U.S foreign policy priorities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Mr. Yates previously served as Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation from 1996 to 2001, and from 1991 to 1996 he served as an international affairs analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense.Yates is very good news: one of the brightest, merriest people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, he is a former Mormon missionary in Kenting, a frequent visitor to The Beautiful Isle, and knows and loves Taiwan.
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4 comments:
You do NOT want to see Newt the puke as the next US president...t'would be the end of it all. Seriously...
I've heard Mr. Yates speak and found him to be a very knowledgeable person with balanced perspectives. But I would really like to know what he sees in The Gingrich Who Christmas that would cause him to ally himself thus.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I suspect that Mr. Yates may know something the rest of us do not.
Gingrich is a really smart guy and I've enjoyed watching him beat up the moderators at the debates.
His only advantage is we already know what he's done and have had time to get over it because no one likes Romney that votes in republican primaries.
It'll be interesting to see how he keeps on doing. The highly skilled pick for foreign policy doesn't surprise me. This guy was sharp enough to flip the House of Representatives to republican for the first time in like 50 years.
Will Mr. Yates be willing to give a talk anytime soon in Taipei re his support for Gingrich? I would gladly attend and keep an open mind if he did!
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