Posted on 10/24/2011 6:17:21 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
The former speaker launches an unlikely comeback.
In June, after his top advisers bolted, Newt Gingrich was supposed to be finished. Four months later, after a series of sharp debates, his poll numbers are climbing and his coffers are stuffed. Behind the scenes, his aides aim to capitalize on the resurrection.
“There is plenty of room,” says R. C. Hammond, the campaign spokesman. He bets that by early January, when New Hampshire and Iowa are blanketed by snow, Gingrich’s “tortoise” campaign will inch ahead.
That optimism is backed up by cash, Hammond says. In the past week, the campaign has raised more money — nearly $200,000 — than it collected in July, the month the campaign nearly collapsed. The capital infusion has enabled Gingrich to hire early-state staffers, such as tea-party leader Andrew Hemingway in New Hampshire, and produce a slew of Web videos.
It is also erasing, albeit slowly, what has been a looming problem: the campaign’s debts. According to federal election filings, Gingrich reported over $1 million in debts through September 30, a figure nearly identical to when his initial senior team departed.
In presidential politics, such a hole can knock you out of the race; debt was, for example, a major factor in Tim Pawlenty’s withdrawal. Gingrich’s campaign has endured, Hammond says, by subsisting on the approximately $800,000 it has raised since July.
Gingrich’s inner circle, once a high-profile coterie of wonks and politicos dubbed “Newt Inc.,” was pared down. In recent months, only a handful of loyalists have remained on payroll, and they often work from home to save on expenses.
At one point, when prospects were dim, staffers shared a couple of Verizon wireless cards for their laptops, in order to avoid paying for office-wide Internet service.
Gingrich, for his part, has not flown on chartered aircraft since May, taking commercial flights to Des Moines and Manchester from his home in northern Virginia. He often travels with a lone staffer, if that. On the ground, grassroots activists are coordinating volunteers.
With about $500,000 in the bank, “we’ve been running lean,” Hammond says, and with much of the race centered on the debates, “that’s been the focus.”
Indeed, with dwindling funds, the campaign never attempted to engineer any grand comeback strategy, even when things were bleak and closing shop remained a distinct possibility. The immediate goal was surviving.
During a normal week, Gingrich would appear at events — maybe a speech in Iowa and another in South Carolina — but he would never spend weeks on the trail, burning cash. The little things that lead to strong debates — reviewing news items and making sure Gingrich had a Diet Coke before he went on stage — became priorities for his aides.
Back home in Virginia, Gingrich would, for the most part, keep quiet, in order to save money. Attending the next cattle call or debate was important, but unrelated political events and other potential commitments were axed from the schedule. His press load was lightened, with few interviews granted beyond Fox News and friendly radio outlets in primary states or the occasional Sunday-morning talk program.
When not on the phone with Amy Pass, his top money raiser, about fresh leads, he’d map his updated “Contract for America,” call close friends, and eye how “Lean Six Sigma,” a waste-reduction program popular with corporations, could be implemented within the federal government. He’d read and write history, taking notes about potential stories to weave into his public remarks or debate rhetoric.
Gingrich’s approach, his aides say, was to keep the entire campaign on a low simmer, slowly building support but never scrambling to join the news cycle. It took a few weeks for the campaign and candidate to wean themselves off near-daily television interviews. But for Gingrich, long a Beltway fixture with a penchant for pungent one-liners, it was a must. The campaign wanted him to avoid “becoming a reactor to events or competitors,” as one insider puts it, and reestablish his “authority” on policy and governing, not his abilities as a political pundit.
In the eyes of many Republicans, Gingrich had become a damaged candidate — respected, to be sure, but unworthy of support. He was, according to conventional wisdom, an aging veteran on the sidelines, nothing more. That had to be corrected. So running against the press, which largely dismissed his candidacy, became a key theme.
At first, Gingrich lashed out due to exasperation on the trail, irked by the media’s focus on his much-discussed Tiffany’s account and the summer meltdown. But things began to shift in Ames in mid-August, after Gingrich criticized Fox News moderator Chris Wallace for playing “Mickey Mouse games” and asking “gotcha questions” about his campaign.
As they heard the Iowa crowd roar at the comeuppance, Gingrich’s top advisers —Hammond, Pass, communications director Joe DeSantis, his wife Callista, campaign manager Michael Krull — sensed opportunity. If the former House speaker could speak up, with gusto, about the media’s horse-race obsession, perhaps he could fire up on-the-fence Republicans who agreed with the critique.
“Appealing on an emotional level was important,” says one source. “He knew that he needed to address the electability question, noting that with his record, to not consider him viable was an absurd media-driven narrative, not the GOP consensus.”
On September 7, at the GOP debate in California, Gingrich followed through, blasting the moderators, including Politico’s John Harris, for attempting to divide the field. “I’m frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other,” Gingrich replied when pressed to differentiate between the health-care positions of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. “You would like to puff this up into some giant thing. The fact is, every person up here understands Obamacare is a disaster.”
Days later, at a CNN debate, Gingrich hammered the point again, wagging his finger at the moderators for making so much of the spat between Perry and Romney on Social Security: “I’m not particularly worried about Governor Perry and Governor Romney frightening the American people when President Obama scares them every single day.”
The response to the slams, coupled with some sharp policy jabs, was immediate, campaign sources say, and to this day remains the campaign’s sustenance — it fuels interest, garners headlines, and generates donations. The buzz, of course, is far from enough for Gingrich to win, or even get close to, the nomination. But in the minds of his advisers, it has kept him on stage — an achievement of its own.
Of course, “we’re never going to have Romney or Perry money,” cautions a source close to Gingrich. “Regardless, I think we’re going to have enough to compete because we’re going to continue to be a much lighter, leaner campaign than the rest. We plan to make up for it with energy.”
Energy, buzz, and debate acclaim may not be enough. Gingrich’s poll numbers remain steady, but unlike Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann, he has not had a moment where he has leaped above the rest. Gingrich insiders shrug this off, saying they’d rather peak late than early.
Still, there has not been a breakout. Only now, after countless debates, are they seeing the beginning of a boomlet. A Cain-like poll gain is hard to imagine. More likely would be a Cain fade, a Perry fade, and an eleventh-hour Gingrich bubble, should he continue to impress and connect with social conservatives in Iowa, in spite of his marital history.
As November nears, the RealClearPolitics average of national GOP polls shows Gingrich within reach of the top tier. He’s holding onto fourth place with 9.2 percent support, only 3 points behind Perry. And two October surveys — one by Public Policy Polling and another by Rasmussen — show him in double digits.
Even with the positive debate response, however, Gingrich’s nose remains pressed to the glass, as he hopes for a final, fleeting shot. In background conversations, top GOP consultants say the rise of Cain and Perry’s bank account may be too much for him to overcome in a compressed time period. “He’s calm, we’re calm,” Hammond says, when pressed on the odds. “Things in all the states remain fluid, even in New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney’s support is as thick as a November ice on Lake Winnipesaukee.”
Wait and see — that is the Gingrich mantra. In coming days, his team does not expect him to go negative against Cain, the latest Republican hotshot, but to poke holes, in a friendly manner, in aspects of the 9-9-9 tax plan. When Perry unveils his flat-tax proposal this week, look for Gingrich to trumpet his own flat-tax plan, which he released earlier this year. He’ll also likely challenge Perry to explain specifics, such as his chosen rate.
Meanwhile, finally, the campaign will spend some coin, opening offices in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. An outpost in Miami will expand, as will the operation in Atlanta, where the campaign’s main call center is housed.
And to the joy of political junkies, Gingrich will join Cain for a one-on-one discussion at a tea-party forum in Texas next month, an event the campaign hopes will spark tea-party voters to reconsider, on a policy basis, their Cain support. The battle for the “non-Romney” slot in the primary, at least in Newt World, has only begun.
Newt can actually win.
Perry took a dive with his immigration policies.
Cain’s 999 plan wont work, and it will not get passed. Even if it did pass, adding a new tax, adding a national sales tax while continuing to keep the income tax is a bad idea.
Michelle is really running either for 2016 or she is running for the US Senate. It is almost impossible for a sitting House member to win the presidency.
Ron Paul can’t win.
Romney is not going to help us.
Nobody else currently running can even get noticed in public.
I sent him something after the last debate.
If this fails, he can always become a spokesman for Geico.
“Newt is not presidential material. Smart? Yes. Presidential? No. He needs to serve in a cabinet position”
Newt is enormously more qualified than any Community Organizer.
Unfortunately he has a past history of self destructing and doing the dumbest crap at the wrong time. It's a problem for him, it may be his character or some kind of jinx, but one thing for sure, if he rises to the top, he could self destruct in a hundred different ways. I think he could be a great VP candidate, but lord help us if he were to get strong enough to win the nomination.
I really like Newt,,,he could give Romney some competition.
I have an idea!
As you know many, many people have said that they would pay their hard-earned money to see Newt debate Obama because they “know” he would annihilate him in such a debate. Indeed Newt himself has said that if he is the nominee he would challenge B.O. to several three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-type debates...just him and B.O. without a moderator. He said he would even allow B.O. to use his teleprompter.
Unless Newt can gain more traction in this Republican race, we will never get to see any such debates.
Here’s my idea, which I think would FORCE Obama to respond and gain HUGE attention to Newt:
Newt should do an on-going series of fairly short You-tube videos in which he would illustrate to the public just how those debates between him and B.O. would go. Newt would debate a stand-in for Obama who would be using Obama’s own words in the past which demonstrate his positions (and world-view) on just about any policy position Newt wants to debate him on. This stand-in for Obama would read his debate responses to Newt directly off of B.O.’s teleprompter. Newt would be facing the camera, the stand-in for B.O. would have his back to the camera with the teleprompter and the words he is reading from it in full view of those watching the video.
I think You-tube videos of these “debates” would immediately “go viral” and force B.O. to try and deny that he would answer Newt the way his stand-in is. In effect, he would have to disavow his own past statements to do it, and would give Newt the opening he needs to force a one-on-one back and forth with B.O., himself.
What do you and other FReepers think?
PS: I am a Cain supporter (while hating his sales tax idea unless we first repeal the income tax)-—but would love to see Newt “debate” Obama....ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. :)
Most people I talk to during and after the debates says they like Newt first and Cain second.
woops: “says” s/b “say”
nope,cant vote for Newt or Romney.Newt for breaking his promise in his original contract with americs,and Romney for Romneycare.If either of them is on the ticket I wont vote.
You’re right...very well done.
Anyone but Mitt Romney.
Anyone but Jon Huntsman.
Anyone but Ron Paul.
Gingrich remains a contender.
I’ve been amazed at his comeback, thought he was done in July. Regardless of the outcome, I just hope we can utilize his knowledge of history and his political intelligence to help get the country back on track.
He could make a meaningful contribution as an adviser to a strong president with his/her own agenda and enough smarts to recognize those times when Newt has lost his way.
No one who has made some of Newt's bone-headed statements and mistakes in judgment should be trusted with power.
I like 9-9-9. It has bold, powerful ideas but that alone isn't enough.
Newt & Cain would make a great team.
This article makes it clear Newt lives in Virginia now so there's no impediment to those two on the same ticket with Cain in Georgia.
There's plenty of agreement between them. Moving to the Chilean Model on entitlements, for example, along with bringing business world best practices to reforming and restructuring the executive branch. They agree on the Fed moving back to a single charter focused on sound money.
Honestly, it would be a nice victory of lower key, more fiscally efficient primary campaigns won out against big money boys. Success running that way will be more important in the general anyway because the GOP nominee won't match Obama's fundraising.
Here is Newt’s latest newsletter entitled:
Tax Simplification
Dear [Matchett-PI],
A significant amount of attention during this campaign has focused on simplifying the tax code. There is no question that our tax code has become a burden to the American people and must be reformed. In our 21st Century Contract With America, we address tax simplification in a way that is both bold and pragmatic. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, I led the effort to reform welfare, resulting in 66% of those on welfare getting a job or going to school. So I know what it takes to actually pass historic reforms. The 21st Century Contract With America has a tax simplification plan that I am uniquely qualified to pass through Congress. Here is the plan you have helped us develop:
All tax filers would be given the option to pay their income taxes under the current income tax provisions or choose to pay income taxes under a lower single rate of taxation of 15% or less with limited deductions.
This optional flat tax reform could save taxpayers more than an estimated $400 billion in compliance costs each year such as record keeping, paying for tax advice, and filling out complicated tax returns. This savings doesn’t even account for eliminating the countless hours of aggravation and worry and the sheer complexity of tax compliance. These tax compliance savings are the functional equivalent of a permanent, pro-growth tax cut and will provide a substantial boost to our annual growth rate.
This faster, flatter, fairer tax structure would also be simple: tax returns could be done on a single page. Subtract from your income a standard deduction and deductions for charity and home ownership, multiply the result by the fixed single rate of taxation of 15% or less, and the process is over. Gone will be the stressful hours spent figuring out whether you qualify for this or that deduction. No more headaches trying to determine where estimated tax payments go. Tax preparation fees could be money spent on something more rewarding.
Such an optional flat tax system would create a new standard deduction, which would be above the established poverty level, meaning an optional flat tax would not unfairly target the poor. And because the flat tax is optional, it does not raise taxes on a single person or unfairly impact seniors or lower income workers.
Once we combine these pro-growth tax reforms with my other reform proposals for welfare reform, social security, and lower spending contained in the 21st Century Contract with America, we will experience a stunning and swift turnaround in the economy.
It is realistic proposals like this that are causing this campaign to surge. This is a campaign based on big ideas and grassroots support. I remain honored and humbled by your continued support of this historic campaign!
Sincerely,
Newt Gingrich
Post Office Box 550769
Atlanta, GA 30355
Cain’s 9-9-9 does “add a new tax” it replaces the existing corrupt failed system.
“Here’s his recent campaign ad ..... Newt Now
Excellent video, Newt is the best choice of those running.
The “perfect” candidate isn’t running.
It does not broaden the tax base thus leaving the current system of payers and payee in play for future political exploitation.
It maintains the current focus on taxing income instead of consumption thus punishing the producer at the expense of the users.
It leaves in place the current ability for trust funds and the massively wealthy to avoid paying any tax by structuring their payouts in forms other then income.
It does nothing to tap the underground off the books economy.
So while Newt's Flat Tax is a massive improvement over the current system, it is merely rebuilding the existing tax code on the same corrupt, flawed foundation.
Of the two, Cain's 9-9-9 is the better plan.
And .... remaining Newt staffers ... if you're lurking ... have him definitively and clearly recant the "brain fart" with nan on the couch ... once and for all.
He's made a great start with these but a full renunciation is needed ...
Since that appearance, Gingrich, who once ran an environmental studies program at a Georgia college, has called for the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. He's also spoken out against a Democratic bill that passed the House in 2009 that would have limited emissions of greenhouse gases and created a market for pollution permits to be bought and sold.
"The planet used to be dramatically warmer when we had dinosaurs and no people," Gingrich told The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph last week. "To the best of my knowledge the dinosaurs weren't driving cars."
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