Gingrich targeting ‘Super Tuesday’ states

KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

DALTON, Ga. — Plot­ting a come­back, Newt Gin­grich looked beyond Tuesday’s Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­maries in Michi­gan and Ari­zona to the South­ern vot­ers he hopes will reju­ve­nate his strug­gling cam­paign once more, includ­ing in his home state.

Gin­grich is pin­ning his hopes on win­ning Geor­gia and show­ing strength in Ten­nessee, Okla­homa and other Super Tues­day states vot­ing March 6. The for­mer House speaker opened a three-day bus tour in Geor­gia, which he rep­re­sented in Con­gress for 20 years, to fend off rivals Mitt Rom­ney and Rick San­to­rum on the path to claim­ing the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion at the party’s con­ven­tion next sum­mer in the swing state of Florida.

“Win­ning next Tues­day moves us toward Tampa in a big way,” Gin­grich said. “Geor­gia is the biggest group of del­e­gates out there on Super Tues­day so this is a big deal and it really, really matters.”

By skip­ping Tuesday’s pri­maries in Michi­gan, where the race was close between Rom­ney and San­to­rum, and in Ari­zona, where Rom­ney was favored, Gin­grich was bet­ting that one of his rivals will emerge as a weaker can­di­date. That would give Gin­grich a chance to become the main alter­na­tive to the front-runner and claw his way back into the topsy-turvy race.

Gin­grich has acknowl­edged that win­ning Geor­gia is cru­cial to his cam­paign but has stopped short of say­ing a loss there would force him out of race.

Gin­grich said Tues­day that tak­ing a week away from the lat­est pri­maries to develop his mes­sage about gas prices and advance a plan to drive pump prices down to $2.50 a gal­lon would pay off. He quipped that a sup­porter told him that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 9–9-9 plan — a ref­er­ence to for­mer GOP can­di­date Her­man Cain’s tax plan — “is $9.99 a gal­lon for gasoline.”

Speak­ing to a few hun­dred sup­port­ers in Dal­ton, he urged them to pass out leaflets at gas sta­tions and have peo­ple cal­cu­late how much they’d save if gas prices dropped. He also asked them to “go on Face­book and put Newt(equals)$2.50 a gallon.”

With­out men­tion­ing Gin­grich by name, the White House called his energy plan unrealistic.

“There are numer­ous fac­tors that go into a spike in global oil prices, and any politi­cian who tells you oth­er­wise is not being hon­est,” said White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney. “When a politi­cian comes out with a three-point plan to reduce gas prices to $2.50 a gal­lon, they are blow­ing smoke.”

Tar­get­ing Rom­ney, Gin­grich said a man in Chat­tanooga, Tenn., told him the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor “is the kind of guy who would have fired Christo­pher Columbus.”

“I need your help because the truth is Rom­ney can raise from Wall Street mas­sively more than I can,” Gin­grich said.

Gin­grich has dis­puted talk that his cam­paign is in decline, say­ing he’s work­ing method­i­cally to build up his del­e­gate sup­port. Gin­grich said he believed he’d do well in the Super Tues­day con­tests and then go on to win both Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi, which hold pri­maries March 13.

Asked on Fox News Chan­nel about spec­u­la­tion that his rel­a­tively poor stand­ing could force him to the side­lines, Gin­grich said such talk isn’t new. “I’ve been down this road before,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Feb 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.