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When Gingrich’s senior advisers resigned en masse last spring, Gingrich cast the ensuing negative coverage as a misreading of his historic bid for the presidency. “It’s going to take a while for the news media to realize that you’re covering something that happens once or twice in a century,” the former speaker said, “a genuine grass-roots campaign of very big ideas. I expect it to take a while for it to sink in.” .... Each Gingrich setback, it seems, has been a historic event. Remember when his campaign compared its failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot to the Pearl...

There's been a fair amount of chatter/concern that the importance of Florida's Republican primary could be dramatically diluted if the RNC further penalizes the state for its early primary by allocating its delegates proportionally, rather than winner-take-all. After all, divvying up 50 delegates four or five ways would make the state a lot smaller prize for the winner. On a conference call with reporters today, however, RNC officials all but dismissed the prospects for Florida losing its winner-take-all status. As it is the state's number of delegates will be slashed from 99 to 50, and there is no mechanism to...

About 200 people showed up to see Newt Gingrich at the Drake Restaurant in Burlington, Iowa, today. The former House speaker’s performance was excellent. His talk was certainly the most intellectual of the candidates. And Gingrich, to his credit, keeps it on a level that the average person can understand. While occasionally veering into a professorial lecture, he was good a recapturing the crowd’s attention with a stark comment about President Obama. After he was finished, he and and his wife, Callista, stayed to chat and have pictures taken with attendees. When that was done, he spent a few minutes...

Live thread to cover today's GOP caucus. News, predictions, opinions, totals, and the like. Will be heading out about 4 pm or so to get our site ready and do a final review with the precinct chairs. I expect it to be bigger than 2008 with very heavy turnout and we are preparing for that. We are also ready for disruptions. They simply won't be tolerated. The state party sent us a memo saying if there's any trouble call the cops immediately. Anyone trying to cause problems is going to get a rude awakening. My predictions of the outcome are...

It’s making the rounds that the Gingrich campaign’s internal polls show Mitt Romney winning Iowa with 22 percent of the vote and Gingrich and Rick Santorum tying for second with 17 and 16 percent respectively. The internals also show 41 percent remain undecided. Internal polls are highly suspect, so take this tidbit with a huge grain of salt.

Romney 24% Gingrich 23% Paul 13% Perry 7% Santorum 6% Bachmann 5% Huntsman 2%

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose support in Iowa has withered after riding on top of the polls, on Tuesday called former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a liar who would mislead the American people if elected to the White House - but added that he would still vote for him if Romney won the GOP nomination. On CBS' "The Early Show" this morning, CBS News chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Gingrich about comments he had previously made about his chief rival and the Super PAC whose negative campaign ads have hurt his campaign: "You scolded Mitt Romney, his...

Prior to the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia had earned an A rating with Gun Owners of America. But that all changed in 1995, after Republicans were swept to power and Gingrich became Speaker of the House. The Republicans gained the majority, thanks in large part to gun owners outraged by the Clinton gun ban. And upon taking the reins of the House, Speaker Gingrich said famously that, “As long as I am Speaker of this House, no gun control legislation is going to move in committee or on the floor of this House and there...

I’ve put off getting this out, but for Iowa it’s the last minute now. A few weeks ago, George F. Will was asked if he thought voters would ultimately consolidate around Mitt Romney. Will, who has himself pointedly remarked on Romney’s historical pliability on the issues, answered yes, that it was hard to see how Romney doesn’t wind up the answer to William F. Buckley’s advocacy for nominating “the most conservative candidate, who can WIN.” Well especially in the wake of Obama’s abuse and devastation of America’s most vital elements, we still want to elect the best potential winner. Despite...

As Florida voters begin to focus on the state’s pivotal GOP presidential primary at the end of January, the leading contenders are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, according to a poll by TelOpinion Research, reports Brandon Larrabee of the News Service of Florida. Romney and Gingrich are essentially in a statistical dead heat, with Romney leading with 27 percent of the vote to Gingrich’s 26, according to the telephone survey of 780 Republican voters, conducted from Dec. 15-19. Bill Lee, a Republican pollster who co-founded TelOpinion, said that matches the national...

One of Newt Gingrich's campaign staffers widened her eyes after stepping into West Towne Pub Sunday. The event, intended to be a simple meet-and-greet, became frenzied as a few hundred people, including about two dozen members of the media, packed the Ames restaurant. Photographers representing media outlets in Massachusetts, Louisiana, and others balanced tenuously on the half-walls separating the booths to get a shot of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who did not make a speech or answer questions from reporters, as he slowly moved through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. "This is crazy," said one of the waitresses,...

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa--Here's where we stand in the final day before the caucuses. According to the latest survey from Public Policy Polling, it looks like a statistical dead heat between Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum for the top slot in the state. With a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, Romney leads with 19 percent, followed by Paul with 18 percent and Santorum with 17 percent...

John Kerry has never hidden his contempt for the armed forces very well, not even when he served as an officer in the Navy. Yesterday the mask slipped a little bit, as John Ziegler at KFI notes on his website, and Allahpundit mirrors at Hot Air. At a political rally for California's Democratic challenger to Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, Phil Angelides, Kerry told the Pasadena City College crowd to study hard and get an education -- or wind up like the losers in the military: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and...

This is a longish clip from Reuters in which Newt talks about the Iowa race. About two minutes in Newt makes clear that he’s not very pleased with Romney. Asked specifically why his appeal is limited to 22-23% he replies that Romney is a a moderate pretending to be a conservative then adds “people aren’t that stupid.”

"I think the people of Iowa have  a chance to send a message: That negative ads written by dishonest consultants  -and made possible by irresponsible candidates-  don't deserve any votes." -Newt Gingrich on CNN If you didn't catch the show, the Georgia doughboy acquits himself pretty well for anyone interested in the truth... [YouTube] Video/more at Reaganite Republican

Newt Gingrich was an early foot-soldier for Ronald Reagan. He was inspired by Reagan’s charisma, convictions and leadership. He supported Reagan in 1976 and witnessed the attacks by the Ford campaign to tar Ronald Reagan, the conservative, as unstable and dangerous. Sound familiar? Newt was also among the small band of conservatives, led by Jack Kemp in the late 1970s, who saw the tremendous potential for growth in Art Laffer’s supply-side economics. When President Reagan embraced the Kemp-Roth tax cut, Newt Gingrich was on the frontlines working to pass the legislation. First, Newt led the drive to build the Republican...

And they're pulling out all the stops to prevent it... Even in the wake of a really unprecedented series of attacks on Newt Gingrich from Team Mittens, the GOP Beltway suits, and allied media types, the Georgia doughboy stands up a couple points nationally... while the upcoming primary slate still seems to heavily favor a Gingrich nomination. You scoff? OK, assume worse-case for Newt in Iowa (although one fresh poll still has him right at the top, with many undecideds expected to break back Gingrich's way).  Then -say- Newt scores a second or third in NH... he won't be doing any...

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich blasted the Justice Department for blocking a South Carolina voter identification law and suggested the Obama administration wants to “steal elections.” During a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the former House speaker questioned why Attorney General Eric Holder is “so determined not to identify if people are not eligible to vote”

Newt Gingrich likely became the first candidate to say he would not vote for Ron Paul if the Texas Congressman were the nominee on Tuesday when he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “the choice of Ron Paul or Barack Obama would be a very bad choice for America.” Gingrich was critical of Ron Paul’s foreign policy and the recently surfaced newsletters printed under Paul’s name, which had racist remarks on them. Gingrich also said in Columbia, S.C. that Paul should explain “how he could have had a decade of newsletters that had his name on it that he apparently wasn’t...

Newt Gingrich, plunging in the polls, dropped this bomb Wednesday: he would consider asking Sarah Palin to serve as his number two or in his Cabinet if he became president. "She is certainly one of the people you would look at," Gingrich said Wednesday, according to Right Wing Watch, when asked if he would consider tapping the 2008 vice presidential nominee for a second try. "I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she's somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would...