WASHINGTON, D.C.  He's riding high after a stunning South Carolina primary win, and the heady elixir of success has Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich thinking big, with a proposal yesterday for a colony on the moon and today, in an appearance at a Florida assisted living facility, a plan to bring peace to the mideast through beach volleyball.

 
"There's something very exciting about beach volleyball--I can't quite put my finger on it."

"They've got sand coming out the wazoo over there," said Gingrich at a news conference to announce his latest policy initiative.  "We won't have to spend a lot of money on groundskeeping--just buy a couple of rakes."

"Wedgie!"

Gingrich caused a stir when, at the Republican National Convention in 1996, he launched into a misty-eyed tribute to beach volleyball as a characteristic product of American values.  "Forty years ago beach volleyball was just beginning," Gingrich said in an unscripted departure from his prepared text.  "No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.  That and bodacious babes in bikinis."

 
"Lower marginal tax rates--yes!"

Gingrich's remarks were ridiculed at the time as the product of a mind frazzled by the partisan battles he had fought as the leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994 and the principal author of its "Contract With America."   He withdrew from public life in 1998 to spend time cataloging his collection of "Gong Show" VHS tapes.

Classic Gong Show episode, 1976

Gingrich will propose a 10-team league with franchises in major cities such as Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Samarra, and playoffs that will include "wild card" slots, which Gingrich also hailed as a product of the American genius.  "Now that the oppressed peoples of Arab nations have tasted freedom," Gingrich said, "they will be quick to embrace the wild card format."

"Cold beer here--get your cold beer.  Somebody--anybody?"

Asked whether the scantily-clad females that have propelled beach volleyball to top TV ratings during U.S. winters would be a tough sell in Muslim nations where women must be clothed from head to toe, Gingrich laughed.  "You've got to be kidding," he replied.  "Next thing you'll tell me is the guys in the stands won't want cold beer."