You can call him Newt Gingrich 2.0. Or simply The Come Back Kid. Whatever you call him, Newt Gingrich is back on the block. He is making real waves, with the White House clearly in his sight. And now that Speaker Gingrich has won the South Carolina Republican primary, his dreams of Napoleonic, grand ambitions will appear on global radars more than ever before. Newt is no stranger to Washington corridors of power. He was once the third most powerful man in America, as the Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives. He is also no stranger to controversy. Once a staunch opponent of President Clinton, Gingrich proclaimed the so-called Contract with America document and even nursed presidential ambitions until he was forced to bow out ungracefully from the Washington political theater. At the time, he was regarded by some as the most hated man in America. Now Gingrich is back on the block, this time with a re-engineered version of his document which he now calls the 21st Century Contract with America. He claims “developing the 21st Century Contract with America will help restore the bonds of trust between the American people and their elected representatives. This is a larger and more complex developmental challenge than any Presidential campaign has undertaken in modern times. The scale will seem impossible to some and grandiose to others. However, I believe it is the minimum necessary to mobilize the American people, change the entrenched elites and their system, and get America back on the right track”. Really? In debates, he comes across as very knowledgeable. He appears to have strong convictions. He knows how to use the right political sound bites. He recently boasted that he will use knowledge, not Teleprompters to beat President Obama! Gingrich is not the one to run away from controversy. And he never apologizes for his grandiose, Reagan-like plans for America. As a former Washington insider, he understands better than most how to play the Washington political game. On immigration, an issue dear to the heart of Africans in the United States, Gingrich appears to be in the center, much to the displeasure of his conservative followers. His strong, progressive position on immigration reforms including some form of ‘amnesty’ for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in America has been welcomed by many analysts in the African communities. But is Gingrich 2.0 back with a bang? Will the Second Coming of Newt Gingrich last? Is he the true believer, the Reaganite or the Messiah the Conservatives have been waiting for? Will the backing of billionaires like Sheldon Adelson help propel Gingrich to the White House? Your analysts at AFRICAN LEADER will be watching closely. Will Gingrich 2.0 fizzle out? Only time will tell.