Newt calls the G.O.P. Presidential slate a "bunch of pygmies"

Newt Gingrich yesterday called the GOP presidential field a "pathetic bunch of "pygmies," and said he may very well step in to take on Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"If, in mid-October, it's quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don't need me to run," the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. "If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there's a radical change, then there's space for a candidate," he added. "So you'll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real."

Gingrich mocked Republican presidential candidates for subjecting themselves to a May debate hosted by Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball. Newt didn't much cotton to "The idea of 10 or 11 people standing passively at microphones," where you "shrink to the level of 40-second answers, standing like a trained seal, waiting for someone to throw me a fish."