Democratic strategist James Carville, a longtime confidant of the Clinton family, is supporting the super PAC devoted to luring Hillary Clinton into the 2016 presidential race. 
 
 
 
 James Carville (Alex Wong/Getty Images) 
 
 A person familiar with Ready for Hillary PAC's outreach efforts tells Post Politics that Carville has joined the effort and will send an e-mail Thursday asking supporters to do the same. He is thus far the most high-profile and well-known Clinton supporter to lend a hand. 
 
 "He is the first of several heavy hitters who will be rolled out by Ready for Hillary PAC," the person said. 
 
 In an interview after this item first posted, Carville emphasized he has not joined the super PAC in any official capacity but is happy to lend a hand to promote Clinton. 
 
 "I’ve been pretty clear that I’d like to see her run," he said. "But I’m not a member of the organization or anything like that." 
 
 In the e-mail, Carville says that Clinton needs a legion of people behind her if she is to run again in 2016. 
 
 "I’m not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she’d be – you know it all already," he says in the e-mail, which was shared with Post Politics. "But it isn't worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain't any gas in the tank -- and that's why the work that Ready for Hillary PAC is doing is absolutely critical. We need to convert the hunger that's out there for Hillary's candidacy into a real grassroots organization." 
 
 Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and has remained close to the family, has made little secret of his desire for Hillary Clinton to give it another shot after she lost the 2008 nomination to President Obama. 
 
 Carville said in December: "We just want to win. We think she’s the best person…. And that’s across the board.” 
 
 This post and its headline were updated at 8:51 a.m. to reflect Carville's comments. ||||| WASHINGTON -- Newt Gingrich walks into a room, still short of breath from the three-flight walk-up that leads to the National Review Washington bureau, and sits down next to bureau chief Robert Costa. 
 
 Former House Speaker Gingrich, 69, briefly shakes hands with the small group of reporters invited to the early morning session Thursday. Then almost immediately, he launches into a soliloquy on how his grogginess is caused by his favorite TV show -- which just so happens to be an apt metaphor for why the Republican party is in trouble. 
 
 "I have to tell you, I'm slightly not awake yet because once again last night we watched an additional episode of 'Downton Abbey,'" Gingrich says. "One night last week we were up until two in the morning because it was one of those, 'We have to see the next one.'" 
 
 "We're trying to finish it this week," he adds. (Gingrich's obsession with the show was evident even a year ago when he released a photo of his campaign advisers that looked similar to the show's promotional materials). 
 
 Downton, he says, is "a great study in plot." 
 
 "We'll get back to Republicans in a second, because there's actually a lesson in this -- 'Downton Abbey' is about 15 subplots, plus four or five that come and go," he continues. "At any given moment, you could list all these different developments going on with these different personalities, and then occasionally someone will come in and go out again. 
 
 "I mean it's just, sort of MTV designed into long form," he says. "They have enough different things going on that your mind never gets bored." 
 
 He then launched into his love of James Bond movies, saying, "We saw 'Skyfall' recently and I was very impressed with how well it was done, so I went back and looked at a couple of the early Bond films which I love because they're part of, you know, my life." 
 
 Gingrich pauses for effect, then says with emphasis: "They're really slow." 
 
 Next he brings it home, in classic Gingrich style. "This is part of the Republican Party's problem, is that it's kind of a silent film, black-and-white short, in an age when people are used to quadraphonic sound, jump cuts, full color and HD," he says. 
 
 Gingrich exhales a bit, finally having caught his breath from the stairs, and remarks slyly: "How's that for a start?" 
 
 The Republican from Georgia never lacks self-regard. He can't help being a little impressed with himself, but it's more than that. He is genuinely interested, fascinated even, in the subject matter he chooses to delve into. And so for nearly 20 minutes, Gingrich talks without taking a question about his current obsessions: driverless cars, Google glasses, fracking, making college education accessible online, Gavin Newsom's book on a digital reinvention of government and the Republican National Committee's recent "Growth and Opportunity" report. He calls the report a "very good first step" but says that real change "requires a resetting of the Republican party." 
 
 When the conversation turns to pure politics, Gingrich tunes out a bit. Asked to comment on reports that he and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) had been in talks to form a unity ticket during the 2012 Republican primary, but that he insisted on being at the top of the ticket, Gingrich shrugs off the question. 
 
 He acknowledges that "there was a serious effort to find an alternative to [Mitt] Romney," and for a moment delves into talk at the time of dividing up states between he and Santorum to try to prevent Romney from winning the nomination. But when Costa presses him on wanting to be in the number one spot, with Santorum as the number two, Gingrich shows no more interest in discussing the idea. 
 
 "It was a joke," he says. 
 
 One of the topics that does draw a more sober tone from Gingrich is the gay marriage debate. Back in December, Gingrich took much more affirmative tack on the topic in an interview with The Huffington Post, saying that "the reality is going to be that in a number of American states -- and it will be more after 2014 -- gay relationships will be legal, period." 
 
 After watching the debate take shape over the last few months, however, Gingrich's focus now is on religious liberty, and he has extremely strong words to describe the danger he sees from gay marriage proponents. 
 
 "The great danger, I think today, is that you're going to see a real drive to outlaw and limit Christianity, to limit it, to say, 'It's ok to be a Christian as long as you're not really Christian.' It's a very serious problem," he says. "You look at the various hate language arguments, you look at [how] the Catholic church cannot have an adoption service that obeys Catholic law. So you can't actually have an adoption service that's run by Catholics unless they're willing to be not Catholic." (This is a reference to developments over the past several years in Massachusetts, Illinois and D.C.) 
 
 "And I think that should bother people, that you're now seeing a secular tyranny begin to set in that is very dangerous, and we need to have a national debate about it," he says. 
 
 Gingrich's view of who has the momentum in the gay marriage debate also seems to be in a different place now than it was a few months ago. 
 
 "I'm actually intrigued as a historian for how long this cycle will last, because if you look at the long history of Christianity and the long history of traditional religions, you know, things come and go. Overall, betting on the historic survival of the Bible has been a reasonably good bet now for several thousand years," he says. A few moments later he describes the gay marriage debate as "one more fight in the long struggle between paganism and Christianity." 
 
 "It's nothing new." 
 
 Gingrich moves back to politics. He mentions he is going to give a speech in May in South Carolina, the state that he won in the 2012 primary, shocking the Romney campaign. And he doesn't rule out another run for president in 2016. 
 
 “I don’t rule it out, but we’re not spending any energy on it," he says. He adds: "My instinct is that there will be a new generation of ideas, and a new generation of candidates. That's my instinct. But, you know, I would like to be somebody who plays a role in developing a new generation of ideas." 
 
 As the session wraps up, Gingrich accepts a compliment about how much fun his campaign was to cover in 2012, and adds a note of agreement to it. 
 
 "Right after I stepped down as speaker I was up here one day doing something," he recounts, "and this one reporter looked up and said, 'We miss you so much. It was so much easier to figure out stories to write when you were here.'" 
 
 Also on HuffPost: ||||| Republican Sen. Rand Paul is set to appear in New Hampshire next month, becoming the first potential 2016 presidential candidate to deliver a formal speech in the state likely to host the nation's first presidential primary. 
 
 The New Hampshire Republican Party confirmed Wednesday that the first-term senator from Kentucky will deliver the keynote address at its first Liberty Dinner on May 20. The location has yet to be determined. 
 
 "Sen. Rand Paul has been a leader in the fight for smaller government, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility in Washington," said state GOP Chairman Jennifer Horn. "I am honored that Sen. Paul has agreed to address our party and I look forward to welcoming him to the Granite State." 
 
 Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is also scheduled to attend the New Hampshire event. 
 
 Paul, the son of former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, himself a veteran of presidential campaigns, has said he's "seriously considering" running for the White House. A favorite of the tea party movement, the senator delivered a tea party response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address earlier in the year and scored a narrow victory in a symbolic presidential preference poll of conservative activists last month. 
 
 New Hampshire law requires the state to host the nation's first presidential primary election, while Iowa hosts the first caucus. But the voting calendar also depends upon party rules and state legislatures. The final schedule won't be set for years. 
 
 Other Republicans thought to be weighing presidential bids have already visited Iowa, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. 
 
 Iowa also figures into several upcoming appearances by potential 2016 candidates. A 2012 presidential candidate, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, is scheduled to address Iowa faith-based groups on April 15. Paul is set to deliver an Iowa GOP Lincoln Day dinner speech on May 10, and Walker is scheduled to speak in Des Moines on May 23. ||||| Will she run or won’t she? 
 
 The obsessive speculation about Hillary Clinton’s plans for 2016 promises to be the longest and most intense parlor game in the history of American politics. It is a consuming fixation already, not just among the operatives and reporters who always inhale this stuff but to an extraordinary degree among average Americans. 
 
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 reset Maggie Haberman's clues to look for if Hillary Clinton is running Roundtable: Clinton's first 2016 move: gay marriage 
 
 The official Clinton line — she hasn’t decided and won’t for perhaps two years to come — has done nothing to quiet the national argument. She’s too tired, and, in her mid-60s, just wants to enjoy life, says one line. Nonsense, says the other: Why would anyone, especially someone as ambitious as she is, decline a historic presidential nomination that many believe is hers for the asking. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary, 2016?) 
 
 Of all the possible 2016 candidates, Clinton can most afford to take her time deciding. But there are a number of different choices — about her financial future, about her public profile, about whom she surrounds herself with — that will make clear whether Clinton is organizing her life in anticipation of a second presidential run or has decided to liberate herself from ambition and just do what she wants. 
 
 Here is a checklist of things to watch about Clinton’s future — a kind of viewer’s guide to Hillary Fever: 
 
 Her business choices 
 
 In many ways, Clinton’s path will be revealed as much by the choices she does not make as the ones she does. 
 
 How she chooses to make money over the next two years could be particularly telling. She could easily follow her husband or, more dramatically, Al Gore in amassing a fortune that would be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars (and do recall she has already spent a fair amount of her own money to retire her 2008 campaign debt). 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Clinton returns to public stage) 
 
 The problem is that many of the most obvious ways to do this would not necessarily be helpful to an aspiring presidential candidate. It could involve speaking fees to groups that she would just as soon not be associated with, or serving as an adviser or director of corporate interests that are lightning rods for one part or another of the Democratic coalition. 
 
 If she were to join, say, the board of Walmart, it would be a deal-breaker in a Democratic presidential primary. 
 
 The same holds true for her public speeches: Which ones she gives, and where, and who pays for them will be scrutinized closely (Speeches paid for by hedge funds, for instance, might be radioactive for the Democratic base.) 
 
 (PHOTOS: The Clinton-Obama relationship) 
 
 For that matter, any new property she and her husband buy will be factored into the equation — a report that they were looking at a home in the rich Long Island enclave the Hamptons was denied by her aides and would have been an odd choice in the post-Mitt Romney presidential cycle. 
 
 Clinton will lead a very affluent lifestyle under any scenario. But a future campaign is constraining by nature, and the choices Clinton makes about her earnings will reveal the extent to which she is preserving her options. 
 
 Caution versus candor 
 
 If there has been a flare pointing to a likely Clinton campaign, it was the nearly six-minute video she released explaining her shift in favor of gay marriage last month. 
 
 (WATCH: Hillary Clinton backs gay marriage) 
 
 It allowed Clinton to make a necessary policy shift. But it came at virtually the last minute possible before the U.S. Supreme Court took up arguments in two gay marriage-related cases. 
 
 Caution has been a hallmark of Clinton’s candidacies — going for the bold statement has not been. That’s unlikely to change now, especially as she is poised to continue using her own videos to circumvent the press and the unruliness of interviews.
– Count James Carville among those who really want Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016. He's supporting Ready for Hillary PAC, a super PAC whose mission is to get Clinton into the race, the Washington Post reports. In an email Carville is sending today, he will ask other Clinton backers to join him—preferably with cash in hand. "I’m not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she’d be—you know it all already," reads the email. "But it isn’t worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain’t any gas in the tank." Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992, tells the Post he's helping the super PAC but is not an official member. USA Today notes that he's the first member of the "Clinton family's inner circle" to get onboard with the super PAC, which was started by Clinton supporters and former campaign staffers. A source adds that Carville is just "the first of several heavy hitters who will be rolled out by Ready for Hillary PAC." In other 2016 news: In a lengthy interview with the Huffington Post, Newt Gingrich says he's not ruling out another run for president. (And also reveals he's a big Downton Abbey fan.) And in the latest sign that he'll run, Rand Paul will be the first potential candidate to give a formal speech in first-primary-in-the-nation state New Hampshire. He'll be giving the keynote at a dinner next month, the AP reports. If you're more interested in whether Clinton will run, Politico has a "viewer's guide" on what to watch for as you await a decision.