To the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, Gingrich doesn’t merit that description: The former House speaker doesn’t meet Boaz’s definition because he doesn’t drill down on ideas, integrate them into a larger philosophy or bat them around with peers.

“He strikes me as a guy who thinks of lots of ideas and never runs them through a sanity test before spilling them on a stage,” Boaz said. “I think he has had a tendency to just have idle thoughts occur to him as he’s reading the newspaper and then announce them without even running it by a colleague.”…

“Nobody thinks of Gingrich as a wonky type. Nobody thinks of him as someone who has serious positions, white papers, policies on a wide array of issues coming from deep knowledge and experience,” said Roderick Hills Jr., a constitutional law professor at New York University who’s active in the conservative Federalist Society. “I don’t think of him that way, and I don’t know of any professor who thinks of him that way.”…

“He may not be as deep a thinker as Russell Kirk or an F.A. Hayek or Richard Weaver, but certainly I’d say he’s as intelligent and as thoughtful as any politician who comes along,” Edwards said. “I haven’t read one of his more recent books, but I think he pays proper attention to and gives credit to all the right people in the conservative movement.”