The cause was stomach cancer, said his wife, Lynda Davis.
Mr. Blankley also became a familiar presence on political talk shows on radio and television, most prominently on The McLaughlin Group, for which he was a regular panelist.
As a press secretary he was a staunch defender of Mr. Gingrich, who as an often embattled speaker engineered the Republicans first House majority in 40 years in the 1994 elections.
But while he routinely dismissed ethics complaints against the speaker, who was fined more than $300,000, he also had a sense of humor about him. In a 1995 interview with The New York Times, he echoed his boss in comparing Mr. Gingrich to such transformative world leaders as Churchill, De Gaulle and, most memorably, Gandhi.
Photo Tony Blankley in 1996. Credit Keith Meyers/The New York Times Newt is a tad like Gandhi, he said, a combination of visionary and practical tactician not often seen in politics. But obviously, Gandhi dressed better.
Mr. Gingrich said in an e-mail on Sunday: Tony was a remarkable life force. Tony came to work with me when I was the House Republican whip. He helped develop and communicate the Contract With America. He was a wonderful friend, a sage adviser and a man who loved life.
In a 1996 interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Gingrich acknowledged that one of Mr. Blankleys duties was to try to rein him in. Tony, he said, is one of the people who go around all day picking up on whats not working.
Anthony David Blankley was born in London on Jan. 21, 1948. He was 3 when his father, who had been Churchills accountant, moved the family to California for a position in the movie business.
Tony became a child actor. He appeared on Highway Patrol and other television shows and played Rod Steigers son in the 1956 movie The Harder They Fall which, he often joked, was the last movie for Humphrey Bogart, and for him, too.
Mr. Blankley, a naturalized American citizen who retained a mild British accent all his life, earned a law degree at Loyola University and worked as a prosecutor in California from 1972 to 1982; after that he went to Washington to work in the Reagan administration as a speechwriter. He moved on in 1989 to write for the California congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, and joined Mr. Gingrichs staff in 1990.
He stayed through Mr. Gingrichs rise to the speakers chair and left in 1997, becoming a columnist and then editorial page editor at the conservative Washington Times, a position he held until 2007. In recent http://www.simsurbanoasis-by-guocoland.com years he served as executive vice president for global affairs for Edelman International, a public relations company. He lived in Great Falls, Va., on a gentlemans farm where livestock included horses, chickens and llamas.
Besides his wife, he is survived by three children, Spencer, Trevor and Ana; his mother, Beatrice Blankley; and a sister, Maggie Blankley.
Mr. Blankley retained his loyalty to Mr. Gingrich throughout his life. Late last year, in one of his last syndicated columns, he wrote that the Republican Party needed a presidential candidate who could make sense of the terrible events and forces that weigh down our country; be capable of vividly describing our plight and what needs to be done; and convince the http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/real-estate.html public that he or she has the intelligence, courage, experience and sheer willful capacity to force events favorably to Americas historic interests and needs.
As I have chosen to phrase that question, he continued, the question answers itself. It is the G.O.P. candidate currently at the top of the polls my former boss Newt Gingrich.
Correction: January 11, 2012
An obituary and a headline on Monday about Tony Blankley, the opinion columnist and former aide to Newt Gingrich, misstated his age, and the obituary also misstated the year of his birth. He was 63, not 62, and he was born on Jan. 21, 1948 not on Jan. 21, 1949. The obituary also omitted two survivors. Besides his wife and three children, Mr. Blankley is survived by his mother, Beatrice Blankley, and a sister, Maggie Blankley.
