Enlarge Charlie Neibergall/AP

Newt Gingrich after speaking with employees at Nationwide Insurance, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

Newt Gingrich after speaking with employees at Nationwide Insurance, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Newt Gingrich is taking the traditional frontrunner’s tactic of acting like his party’s inevitable presidential nominee to a whole a new level.

In an interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, Gingrich sounded like LeBron James vowing to bring Miami an NBA championship.

GINGRICH: “I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee. And by the way I don’t object if people want to attack me, that’s their right. All I’m suggesting that it’s not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking. So they should do what they and their consultants want to do. I will focus on being substantive and I will focus on Barack Obama.”

This is just the latest example of why “humble” isn’t a word typically associated with Gingrich. It’s also an example why Gingrich may not wear well with many voters who might prefer their eventual nominee to at least wait until voting actually begins in the Republican caucuses and primaries before he begins writing his convention-acceptance speech.

Gingrich’s position on attacking his rivals dovetails with what he has reportedly told his staff, that they aren’t to attack the other candidates for the Republican nomination, particularly the man who was previously the odds-on favorite for the nomination, Mitt Romney.

According to Real Clear Politics’ Erin McPike:

According to Gingrich campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond, “In response to the dynamics over the last 24 hours about the attacks coming our way, his instructions to us were to not say anything bad about Mitt Romney.”

COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich‘s endorsement by the New Hampshire Union Leader was front page news, but the history of the newspaper’s endorsements indicates it often much ado about nothing. According to Red State, from 1968 to 2008, the Union Leader issued nine endorsements. Only four went on to win the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Dubious Company

Gingrich finds himself in some dubious company. Rep. John Ashbrook (1972), Delaware Gov. Pete DuPont (1988), commentator Pat Buchanan (1992 and 1996) and publisher Steve Forbes (2000) were endorsed by the Union Leader. Of the three, only Buchanan went on to win the primary, in 1996.

Richard Nixon was endorsed by the Union Leader in 1968, and he went on to win the primary and the presidency. Nixon’s trip to China and détente with the USSR angered Union Leader publisher William Loeb, and in 1972, he endorsed Congressman Ashbrook, who ran in the primary with the slogan “No Right Turn”. Nixon won handily and went on to win a second term by a landslide.

Favorites

Ronald Reagan and John McCain were more successful than the typical Union Leader endorsee. Other than Pat Buchanan, Reagan has been the only candidate to win the newspaper’s endorsement twice since 1968. The Union Leader has a habit of endorsing challengers to Republican presidents it considers “too liberal,” and Reagan got the nod in 1976 over President Gerald Ford.

Reagan lost a nail-biter to Ford before winning everything in 1980.

John McCain lost out on the newspaper’s endorsement to Steve Forbes in 2000, but went on to win the primary. Eight years later, he was anointed as the newspaper’s candidate. He won again, and most likely would have done so without the Union Leader’s help.

Slap in the Face

The Gingrich endorsement was a slap in the face to Mitt Romney, the former governor of New Hampshire’s neighbor, Massachusetts. Union Leader Publisher Joe McQuaid, a hard-line conservative, has long had an antipathy to Romney, according to such sources as Commentary.

The endorsement of McCain in 2008 effectively denied McQuaid’s approval to Romney.

Surge

While Romney has long led the field among Republican candidates vying in the 2012 primary, Gingrich currently is surging. According to the latest poll of New Hampshire Republican voters by Rasmussen Reports, Gingrich has closed to within 10 points of Romney, garnering the support of 24 percent of poll respondents compared to 34 percent for Mitt.

Gingrich gained 16 points since the last Rasmussen Poll, while Romney shed seven points.

Rasmussen pointed out the latest poll was taken after the newspaper’s endorsement. However, the spike in Gingrich’s numbers is not just a New Hampshire phenomenon, but a national one, and the Union Leader endorsement likely had little to do with it. With the eclipse of former front-runners Rick Perry and Herman Cain, Gingrich has emerged as the only viable alternative to Romney.

History indicates that, like many Union Leader endorsees before him, Gingrich is unlikely to turn it into a win.

By: Terence Burlij

and
Quinn
Bowman

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks in Bluffton, S.C., as part of a three-day swing through the state. Photo by Richard Ellis/Getty Images.

Newt Gingrich is looking to bring some certainty to a Republican presidential race that has been anything but settled.

“I’m going to be the nominee,” the former House speaker told Jake Tapper of ABC News in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday. “It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.”

Gingrich is certainly correct about his standing in the polls. According to Real Clear Politics, his average spread in recent polls is more than 6 percent over Mitt Romney.

It’s worth noting that Republican caucus-goers in Iowa are still a month away from weighing in, and if one were to glance back at where things stood a month ago, Herman Cain was leading most national polls. Cain’s rise followed similar surges by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and even real estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump.

Sensing a possible threat, Romney has started to go after Gingrich directly, referring to the former Georgia congressman as “a life-long politician” who has spent decades in Washington.

For his part, Gingrich told ABC News that he doesn’t plan on returning fire. “I don’t object if people want to attack me, that’s their right. All I’m suggesting that it’s not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking. So they should do what they and their consultants want to do. I will focus on being substantive and I will focus on Barack Obama.”

Still, it’s clear Gingrich doesn’t want to be labeled as a Washington insider at a time when anti-establishment sentiment in the country is high. “The way I think, the degree to which I challenge the establishment and the degree to which I’m willing to follow ideas and solutions to their natural consequence without regard to Republican or Democratic political correctness makes me probably the most experienced political outsider in modern times,” Gingrich said Thursday in an interview with Radio Iowa’s Kay Henderson.

Gingrich’s move to the front of the GOP pack has happened so suddenly that his staff is still trying to keep pace, reports Politico’s Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman.

Even as Gingrich takes on the status of a national frontrunner, he continues to drive his skeletal campaign operation forward with seemingly individual force. He writes memos to staff outlining his vision for the campaign. He fields and personally answers emails from influential supporters. He largely relies on a core group of longtime friends and confidants — including his wife, Callista — for support.

But as Gingrich prepares to do battle with Mitt Romney’s well-funded, national-scale primary campaign, the powerhouse candidate needs an organization to match, and the former House speaker’s mom-and-pop political operation is now rushing to narrow the gap.

At the moment, Gingrich has only a spare operation in the early primary states — he didn’t have an Iowa headquarters until this week. At a recent Republican Party of Iowa dinner, several Republicans discussed how impressed they were by Gingrich and said they wanted to help his campaign, if only they could find someone to contact.

As former Des Moines Register political guru David Yepsen once put it, the key to campaigning is “organize, organize, organize, and get hot at the end.”

Gingrich needs to hope that he hasn’t gotten too hot too soon. And if he is able to maintain his place atop the polls, he then must count on the second part of Yepsen’s equation being more important than the first.

ELIMINATING THE OPTIONS

The Senate blocked two payroll tax extension proposals late Thursday night, forcing Democrats and Republicans to compromise if they want to extend or enhance the tax cut before it expires at the end of the year.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times explains what happened:

Votes late on Thursday left the issue at an impasse. The Senate voted 51 to 49 for Democrats’ measure to further reduce Social Security payroll taxes next year for both workers and employers and to impose the surtax, but the tally was short of the 60 votes needed. One moderate Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, supported it. A Republican alternative, which would have extended the current more modest tax cut and slashed the federal payroll to pay for it, was rejected 78 to 20, with more than half of Republicans opposed.

The maneuvering suggests that the parties will agree to some continued relief before the current payroll tax cut expires on Dec. 31. But how much of a cut and how — or if — it will be paid for remain to be settled, with some in both parties saying that the tax break would further weaken the Social Security system’s financing.

The payroll tax fight is likely a preview of the 2012 campaigns for Congress and the White House. Democrats will be eager to paint Republicans as supporting the wealthy over the middle class during hard economic times.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., chastised Republicans after the vote.

“I was encouraged to see one Republican join Democrats in asking millionaires to pay their fair share. But because every other Republican continues to insist on protecting millionaires, middle class families could face a $1,000 tax increase next year. Democrats will not stop fighting to avoid that outcome. I hope Republicans will decide that the economic security of hard-working Americans is more important than protecting the wealthiest one percent,” Reid said.

Republican leaders have expressed support for extending the tax but want to pay for it through spending cuts. As evidenced by the split vote for the Republican measure in the Senate, however, the party is divided over whether to extend the cut. Bernie Becker and Russell Berman of the Hill newspaper highlight the divide:

“You’re allowing more Americans, frankly, every working American, to keep more of their money in their pocket,” (House SpeakerJohn Boehner, R-Ohio) added. “Frankly, that’s a good thing.”

Boehner’s comments stood in contrast to those of both veteran and rank-and-file Republicans, who said there was little evidence the payroll tax cut in 2011 had boosted the economy.

“If they could show me a lot of increases in jobs or something, that’s a different matter,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, said Wednesday. “But I don’t think they’ve been able to show that.”

The Washington Post reports that negotiations continue on a way forward on the tax cut, which saved the average working family around $1,000 last year, and that lawmakers are also looking for a way to extend the emergency unemployment benefits that expire at the end of the year.

DECISION TIME

Herman Cain acknowledged Thursday that he helped Ginger White with “month-to-month bills and expenses,” but did not tell his wife about the assistance.

The revelation came during an hour-long interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Cain again rejected allegations by White that the two had a 13-year extramarital affair, insisting that they were just friends.

Pressed about dozens of text messages exchanged between the two over the last few weeks, Cain said White had been reaching out for financial help. “She wasn’t the only friend who I had helped in these tough economic times, and so her messages to me were relating to ‘needed money for her rent’ or whatever the case may be. I don’t remember all the specifics.”

Cain told his staff earlier this week that he would reassess his presidential bid, given the toll the accusations were taking on his campaign and family.

Asked by the Union Leader if leaving the race was a possibility, Cain responded, “Yes, it is an option.”

“You will know by next week,” he added.

Cain has said he wanted to discuss the matter in person with his wife, Gloria, before making a final decision, a meeting that he said would take place Friday.

AW SHUCKS

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has fallen to become one of the lower tier candidates in the 2012 Republican primary, is hoping he can win back some fans in Iowa and the rest of the early primary states with a new ad. In it, he makes fun of his disastrous debate gaffe in November when he couldn’t remember the name of the third government agency he would eliminate as president.

He remembered it this time. “Department of Energy” Perry states confidently after a clip of debate moment plays:

The ad aired as part of Perry’s appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Said Perry campaign communications director Ray Sullivan, “While the rest of GOP field is busy handling scandals, inconsistencies and contradictions on important issues, Gov. Perry’s appearance on Leno and his special Leno ad show he is confident enough to use the attention from last month’s Michigan debate to highlight his status as the true outsider conservative in the Republican field.”

ON THE TRAIL

All events listed in Eastern Time.

• President Obama is in Washington, delivering remarks on investments in energy upgrades to public and private buildings at 11:10 a.m. and speaking at the White House Tribal Nations Conference at the Interior Department at 2:20 p.m.

• Michele Bachmann is in South Carolina for a pair of book signing events: Rock Hill at 3 p.m. and in Greenville at 6:30 p.m.

• Rick Santorum speaks to students and faculty at Merrimack High School in New Hampshire at 9 a.m., hosts a Toys-for-Tots drive at his New Hampshire campaign headquarters in Bedford at 6 p.m. and does some shopping to support locally owned businesses in Concord at 7:30 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

“Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon is known for performing with his famous musical guests, including Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen and Blake Shelton, so it seems only natural the comedian and music enthusiast would release a new album.

Sorting out the truth in politics

By Eric Stirgus, PolitiFact Georgia

In Print: Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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The statement

Says Newt Gingrich “has said that we should make the 11 million illegal workers that are in this country legal.”

Michele Bachmann, Nov. 23 in a PBS NewsHour interview

The ruling

We wondered about what Bachmann claimed since Gingrich seemed to say something different during the Nov. 22 debate on CNN.

“I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century,” Gingrich said at the debate. “And I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, ‘Let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.’ “

Bachmann’s campaign website has a link to an article that seems to defend her statement. The December 2010 article, on Fox Nation news website, has a quote from Gingrich using the 11 million illegal immigrant number.

“We are not going to deport 11 million people,” Gingrich is quoted as saying at a forum on Latino issues. “There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.”

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond pointed to the latter part of the candidate’s quote to argue Bachmann’s claim was misleading.

“Newt’s quote about the need for a zone between deportation and (amnesty) is proof alone Bachmann’s claim is false, an outright lie,” Hammond told us via e-mail.

The Fox Nation article quotes Gingrich as saying his position is “not a call for amnesty.”

On his campaign website, Gingrich has a 10-step plan on immigration. He talks about creating a system of committees that would determine which illegal immigrants can stay and which ones must return to their homeland. Gingrich also says illegal immigrants who are criminals and/or gang members should be deported promptly.

“We need a path to legality, but not citizenship, for some of these individuals who have deep ties to America, including family, church and community ties,” Gingrich wrote. “We also need a path to swift but dignified repatriation for those who are transient and have no roots in America.”

Bachmann transformed Gingrich’s nuanced statement into an all-or-nothing pronouncement.

We find Bachmann’s statement misleading and rate it False.

This ruling has been edited for print. Read the full version at PolitiFact.com.

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November 30, 2011, 8:58 AM EST

By Lisa Lerer

(For more campaign news, go to ELECT.)

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is trying to prove he’s got something his rivals don’t: staying power.

After a surge in the polls that revived a candidacy long dismissed as nothing more than a promotional book tour, the former House speaker is positioning himself as the party’s strongest alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney.

“When you have a 90 percent American Conservative Union rating for your entire lifetime,” he told reporters yesterday in Bluffton, South Carolina, where he was opening a new campaign office, “there’s a clear contrast.”

Gingrich’s jab at the former Massachusetts governor, coming after months of urging his rivals to focus their criticism solely on President Barack Obama, signaled the start of a new phase of his campaign in a primary that has been notable for its lack of friendly fire.

On a three-day campaign swing through South Carolina, Gingrich packed town-hall meetings, wooed fundraisers, courted state party officials and served notice to his rivals that he is prepared to fight to hold his newfound front-runner status.

An American Research Group survey released yesterday showed 33 percent of likely South Carolina Republican primary voters backing Gingrich, up from 8 percent in October, compared with 22 percent supporting Romney.

Romney made his first direct attack on Gingrich last night, signaling the growing threat posed by his candidacy. “I think to get President Obama out of office, you’re going to have to bring something to the race that’s different than what he brings,” Romney said. “He’s a lifelong politician.”

Re-energized National Strategy

Gingrich’s South Carolina visit illustrated the campaign’s re-energized national strategy. Book signings have been replaced with town-hall meetings. Field teams and state-specific websites are being launched in New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. And the campaign says it has raised more than $4 million since the end of September, enough to infuse a new sense of confidence about its ability to compete in a drawn-out primary.

“If we do well in South Carolina and win in Florida, down goes Willard,” said R.C. Hammond, Gingrich’s campaign spokesman, referring to Romney by his formal first name.

Gingrich is working to avoid the fate of some of his rivals, who surged in the polls only to plummet after weak debate performances or other self-inflicted errors. Herman Cain, the former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza who is facing sexual misconduct allegations, has been the latest victim of that boom-bust cycle. A Nov. 14 CNN poll found that Cain’s support among Republicans fell to 14 percent from 25 percent in October.

Cain Reassessing Candidacy

A new accusation this week that Cain was involved in a sporadic, 13-year affair prompted the Atlanta businessman to announce that he is reassessing his candidacy, a move that could benefit a rising Gingrich.

Evidence of the former speaker’s revival since June, when more than a dozen top advisers quit citing disputes over campaign strategy, is growing.

Some aides who remained, such as Hammond, had resorted to sleeping in supporters’ homes, bunking together above garages or in spare bedrooms, when fundraising slowed to a trickle in the summer. As of Sept. 30, Gingrich was $1.2 million in debt, according to campaign disclosure reports.

South Carolina Offices

Today, the Gingrich campaign has 10 paid staff and has opened five offices in South Carolina. In New Hampshire, six aides are working out of a new office in the center of downtown Manchester. And in Iowa, Craig Schoenfeld and Katie Koberg, two of six staffers in the state who resigned on June 9, rejoined the campaign mid-November as senior advisers. Hammond has now stayed in enough hotels to earn frequent guest status with Marriott Hotels.

“We first started going across the state in early September,” said James Epley, the campaign chairman for Beaufort County, South Carolina. “We’ve seen it grow from there.”

Still, with less than five weeks before the first round of voting in Iowa, some Republicans question whether Gingrich has enough time to build an effective operation.

“The short time frame will make whatever it is less effective,” said Jim Dyke, a South Carolina-based Republican strategist. “Highly motivated volunteers can trump a lot of things — just not time.”

Immigration Issue

As Gingrich works to catch up organizationally, he also must defend the sort of debate remarks that have gotten his competitors into trouble. When Texas Governor Rick Perry was deemed too soft on illegal immigration after a Sept. 22 debate that highlighted his support for in-state tuition of American- born children of undocumented workers, he lost his front-runner status and has never recovered.

Gingrich spent much of the week defending his plan to grant legal status to some immigrants who entered the country illegally long ago, after Romney and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann labeled it “amnesty” during a Nov. 23 candidate forum in Washington.

“It is an absolute falsehood to say that I favor amnesty for 11 million people. Period,” Gingrich told voters gathered on a town green in Bluffton, South Carolina.

“Anybody who says it from now on has been served notice that they are saying something which is not true, which in itself should disqualify them as a candidate,” he said.

The former speaker also emphasized to voters that he didn’t work as a lobbyist after leaving office. Gingrich made millions through a network of advocacy organizations, think tanks and consulting firms he founded after resigning the speakership and his House seat in 1999.

Freddie Mac Ties

His clients included Freddie Mac, a mortgage company taken into government conservatorship in 2008 after its stake in failed subprime loans pushed it to the brink of collapse.

“I can’t tell you which distortion my opponents are going to raise,” he said. “I can tell you this: I will be prepared to answer every one of them.”

Republican Representative Tim Scott, who hosted a town-hall meeting with Gingrich in Charleston, said the presidential hopeful’s immigration position will likely be a liability with the state’s conservative Republican voters.

To ease that opposition, Scott is urging voters to take a broader look at Gingrich’s experience. “You don’t have to find the perfect candidate,” he said, in an interview on CNN’s “State of The Union.” “What we need is someone who can beat President Obama.”

Newspaper Endorsement

New Hampshire’s Manchester Union Leader’s Nov. 27 endorsement of Gingrich took a similar position. “We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear,” the newspaper wrote.

In appearances across South Carolina, Gingrich said that his shortcomings don’t mean that he isn’t the best candidate to take on Obama.

“I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate,” he told WSC- FM radio on Nov. 28. “I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney, and a lot more electable than anybody else,”

Gingrich promised retirees in Bluffton, a few miles from Hilton Head, that his general election campaign would deliver a “crushing defeat” to Obama.

Still, the former speaker’s background bothered some voters, who said his past advocacy work, two divorces and admissions of infidelity would make it difficult for him to win in 2012.

“My concern is that Gingrich has had a high negative image in many, many areas in the past,” said Jim McGrath, of Sun City, South Carolina. “How is he going to overcome that with the independent voter?”

–Editors: Jeanne Cummings, Jim Rubin.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Lerer in Washington at llerer@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is edging closer to a full-scale attack on surging rival Newt Gingrich.

In an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News last night, Romney called Gingrich “a lifelong politician”–a serious accusation at a time when many voters are upset with Washington and the status quo.

Romney, a former venture capitalist and ex-governor of Massachusetts, said Gingrich is “a good man” but made sure to refer to him as “Speaker Gingrich,” a reference to his service as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s, one of the ultimate insiders in the capital.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Mitt Romney]

Romney said Gingrich has spent “30 or 40 years in Washington” while Romney was learning how to create jobs in the private sector.

“I think I’d stand by far the best shot of replacing President Obama among the Republicans in the field,” Romney told Fox.

Without mentioning Gingrich by name, he said some politicians have changed their views on important issues such as global warming and cap-and-trade measures to reduce harmful emissions. That’s what Gingrich has done. This remark was designed to defuse critics who say that it is Romney who has flip-flopped on too many issues, including abortion and immigration.

[See a collection of political cartoons on immigration.]

Romney also repeated his criticism that Gingrich is endorsing a form of amnesty for some illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for many years.

Romney’s remarks last night marked a significant departure for him. He has up to now assiduously focused his criticism on President Obama and what Romney calls the current administration’s failure to improve the economy and create jobs. By attacking Gingrich, he is making a strategic shift in order to raise or renew doubts about the former speaker now that the first nominating caucuses in Iowa and the first primary in New Hampshire are only several weeks away.

–See a collection of political cartoons on the GOP hopefuls.

–See photos of 2012 GOP candidates.

–Vote for your pick for the 2012 GOP nomination.