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After today’s “This Week” roundtable, I spoke more with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour about his views on the Republican presidential race, whether he regrets not getting into the contest, and his defense of his controversial pardons before leaving office in January. Barbour told me that he voted for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in last week’s Mississippi primary, saying, “out of friendship, I voted for Newt.” “I didn’t endorse anybody [before the primary],” Barbour told me. “I didn’t want to try to influence anybody’s vote, so beforehand I didn’t say who I voted for. But Newt and I have...

WASHINGTON—Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says the United States should either commit to winning the war in Afghanistan or "get out." Santorum tells ABC's "This Week" that he agrees with rival Newt Gingrich that a commitment to "winning" means recognizing the U.S. will stay in Afghanistan "to finish the job."

President Barack Obama long has been criticized by Republicans for his purportedly inadequate zeal in pursuing the war in Afghanistan. He was criticized sharply from the right for his plan to draw down troops over three years; too fast, they said. So it’s ironic that Obama now finds himself defending that timetable against GOP critics who want to pull out more quickly in the wake of news that a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred at least 16 civilians. “We’re risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may frankly not be doable,” Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich...

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney would stand to benefit just as much as Rick Santorum if Newt Gingrich exited the presidential race, according to a new poll released Friday. The Gallup poll defied conventional wisdom by suggesting Romney would peel off just as many Gingrich supporters as Santorum would. Forty percent of Gingrich supporters in Gallup's daily tracking poll said Romney was their second choice while 39 percent said they would migrate to Santorum. "If two candidates for a presidential nomination compete in the same ideological space, it would make sense that if one dropped out that the other would benefit,"...

In his ever-increasing desperation to win one more, just one more delegate if possible before being relegated to the "laughable political achronism" category in the history of American politics, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich abandoned the traditional "dog-whistle" technique of using "code-words" that racists will hear and "know what he really means." Now he's using a bull horn. Speaking to a small audience in Lake in the Hills, Ill., Gingrich put it all out for the "birthers" in the audience. "We need an American president who is for American energy," Gingrich told a crowd of about 50 people...

It was unbelievable: After Newt Gingrich failed to win both Alabama and Mississippi in the GOP race for president, most members of the mainstream media and political strategists with whom I talked readily admitted, off the record, that he was the most qualified among the Republican candidates to serve as president. Now these are objective pros that have been around presidential politics for years. I have no doubt they were telling me the truth because these folks only tell you this stuff when it is relatively clear that the candidate is no longer a viable alternative. Best on foreign policy...

LAKE IN THE HILLS ..Newt Gingrich laid out plans Thursday for how the United States can again see $2.50 a gallon gasoline and create jobs in America. ......“If we become the No. 1 supplier of oil in the world, and we are independent on energy, we can say to the Saudis, ‘Your period of subsidizing terrorism is over,’” Gingrich said. He said drilling for oil in the U.S. could put trillions of dollars into the federal government’s coffers that could help pay down the debt... “When I was speaker, we balanced the budget for four years, and when Santorum was...

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich courted Christian voters in Elgin Wednesday as he resumed his tour of Chicago’s northwest suburbs. He started at Barrington High School and is moving to the Christian Judson University on the banks of the Fox River in Elgin. At what was billed as a “Hispanic Town Hall Meeting with Newt and Calista,” about 300 mostly white Christian college students jammed a campus chapel and applauded when Gingrich slammed President Barack Obama for what Gingrich called “Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church and other right-to-life institutions.” ...Contrasting that with Obama’s apology to Muslims after reports that...

The latest FOX News poll of Republican voters supports Newt Gingrich’s strange-sounding assertion that his presence in the race is actually a benefit to rival Rick Santorum. Gingrich casts the advantage to Santorum in a tactical sense, saying that the two of them together divide Romney’s attention and bleed the Republican frontrunner of his money. Gingrich argues that Romney’s success is attributable to negative ads and out-spending that cannot be replicated in a general election and so, therefore he should be bled and blocked so that someone else can get the nomination at the end of August. Santorum supporters have...

Newt Gingrich seems to be making decent sense, in terms of apparent logic, in saying that by staying in the race he can help rack up enough delegates to keep Mitt Romney from winning on the first ballot at the GOP national convention. Sometimes, though, that which seems to make sense does not actually work in practice. Nomination arithmetic is different from normal arithmetic. And no, I am not talking about how he alters the "impressions game" by splitting the conservative vote and thus either handing pluralities to Romney or narrowing the margins of victory for Santorum. That is a...

The GOP-e is starting to blame the GOP Primary and Newt Gingrich for what they see as a weakened Romney going into the General Election. BLAME Romney! BLAME the GOP Establishment! Newt Gingrich is the only conservative still running in the GOP primary! By employing a drumbeat of damaging headlines, using misleading delegate counts and by calling for him to leave, the GOP-e and their friends in the MSM have hurt Newt but they have not succeeded in knocking him out or silencing the base.

Great interview. - 14:00 video of Greta's interview with Newt Gingrich. As is VanSusteren's style, she gives her guests time to answer her questions. Newt takes each one and expands on conservatism. Some points discussed: The delegates, brokered convention, minority groups - Hispanics, blacks, unions, gay marriage -- inner city outreach, Ron Paul's "deal" with Romney.

March 13, 2012 Gingrich Is in No Hurry to Bow Out Even After Falling Short of Double Wins in Deep South, Former Speaker Still Sees a Way to Push Fight to the Convention By JANET HOOK and DANNY YADRON BILOXI, Miss.—Even as pressure mounts on Newt Gingrich to drop out of the Republican presidential contest, the former House speaker is preparing to stick it out—with a new short-term goal of keeping Mitt Romney from securing the nomination. Mr. Gingrich faced crucial primary tests Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi, states where he campaigned hard to jump-start his flagging campaign. He lost...

Newt Gingrich's campaign is blasting the White House over what they are characterizing as "attacks" on the former Speaker - and his energy plan - during the daily White House press briefing. Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that he was wrong to have ascribed "motivations" when saying Gingrich was "lying" about his energy policy lowering gas prices to $2.50 per gallon. "I shouldn't have gone to motivations," Carney said. "I should have said that anybody who said that doesn't know what he's talking about." ......."What [President Obama] is not willing to do is to look the American people in...

Thankfully, former Speaker Newt Gingrich is every bit a social conservative as the former senator from Pennsylvania, and so would have that historical advantage that, along with the “It’s the economy, stupid” rule, regularly results in the election of Republican presidents and congressional majorities. So how did the young whippersnapper who previously won our Super Tuesday endorsement by avoiding anti-Bain venture capitalism-pile-ons while also contrasting his unblemished record against individual health care mandates as opposed to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts RomneyCare and 2009 advocacy for the individual mandates in ObamaCare? Unprompted, he essentially took the economy off the table for the...

The Alabama GOP will host the first-ever presidential forum in the state tonight in the Alabama Theatre. Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have confirmed they will attend. Doors to the Alabama Theatre will open at 3:30 p.m. and the forum will begin at 5:30 p.m. The forum is open to the public and free. There are 2,000 seats in the historic Alabama Theatre and they will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. In addition to live streaming this event, FOX6 News and staff will live tweet from the Alabama Theatre. You may follow us from this story...

Voters in Alabama and Mississippi may still be split on which Republican they want in the White House, but they agree on this much — in their minds, President Obama is a Muslim. A stunning 66% of Mississippi respondents to a survey done ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary have bought into the false notion that Obama worships Allah, Public Policy Polling reported Monday. Some 36% said they weren’t sure. In Alabama, 45% responded in the affirmative when asked the same question and 41% said they weren’t sure, pollsters found. Obama is a Christian. But many conservative Republicans just refuse to...

Mitt Romney on Monday laughed at Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that he is a weak frontrunner who is failing to win over conservatives, saying of the former House speaker, “If I’m a weak frontrunner, what does that make Newt Gingrich? Because I’m well ahead of him.” Celebrating his 65th birthday on the campaign trail in Mobile, Ala., Romney said in an apperance on “Fox & Friends” that he finds it “funny listening to these guys” trying to attack his standing in the 2012 race. “They’re saying what they wish were the case but happens not to be the case. Don’t forget...

HOOVER, Ala. – Newt Gingrich typically qualifies his insults on Republican presidential rival Rick Santorum: He’s a friend; they accomplished things together in Congress; he’s an honorable man. But Gingrich has opened up new and more aggressive lines of attack against Santorum in the past week as he seeks to top his former colleague in Tuesday’s Mississippi and Alabama primaries. “When we had a team he was a good part of that team,” Gingrich said Saturday night at a packed rally in Hoover, outside Birmingham. “And when I left [after the 1998 election] balanced budgets disappeared, the deficit started going...

This Republican primary season has been one of the most contention, and interesting, that I have seen in a while. As never before, we see that the heart and soul of the Republican Party really is at stake, as four different visions for the GOP, and the nation as a whole, compete to see who will represent the Party in the general election. I think the general consensus (which I share) is that none of the four candidates left — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul — are who most conservatives and Republicans would like to have...