Newt Gingrich’s Re-Emergence

Early on, Newt Gingrich’s non-traditional ways seemed to almost destroy his campaign.  He was always well aware of his role as a rebellious candidate, but his initial strategy as such simply did not work.  The question, then, is what has changed?  That is, what has he learned from the beginning of the summer, when over twelve of his staffers decided to call it quits?  The answer could be, in part, that he knew the potential for his re-emergence all along.  In a story reported by CNN’s Kevin Conlon in June, Gingrich was quoted as saying the following:  “In July of 2007 Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee and Rudy Giuliani the Republican [nominee].  John McCain was out of money and written off by the press.  The fact is campaigns go up and down.”

The campaign’s money situation is better than it has ever been.  When his staffers decided to quit en masse during the summer, Newt was in a very precarious chicken-or-the-egg situation:  was he broke because he did not have campaign workers to raise money, or was he unable to keep staff members because he had no funds?  It did not matter to Gingrich either way; all he knew was that he was going to continue on with his candidacy.  Throughout the summer period when he had very few campaign workers, he was able to raise a mere $800,000.  However, from September to November, reports Trip Gabriel in his New York Times article “Gingrich Eager to Be More Than an Anti-Romney,” the campaign raised $4 million.

As always, Gingrich is making it his priority to run an issues-only campaign.  He is attempting to avoid the “dirty tricks” of politics, essentially protesting the less glamorous side of campaigning.  In his June article, Kevin Conlon quoted the candidate during a speech he gave regarding his troubled campaign:  “I’m not running to talk about the nuance of campaigns.”  He stated plainly that he did not want to discuss “campaign process,” but rather the issues that the campaign would seek to address.  At the time, one of the major reasons his staff decided to leave was that Gingrich refused to do campaign-like things, such as actually touring important states like, for instance, Iowa.  Now that he has accepted the necessity of such traditional campaigning strategies, he is beginning to secure more funding and support from conservative strongholds.

He is currently showing strong poll numbers – almost overtaking Mitt Romney – and is consistently gaining more support from the “anti-Romney” portion of the electorate.  As a newly-minted frontrunner, however, he will soon find himself coming under attack.  Romney will not likely be the one making the attacks, since his strategy thus far has been to sit back and watch the candidates destroy themselves.  Yet there is still enough competition in the GOP nomination race to elicit harsh criticism of Newt’s liabilities, including his marriage history and his previous stances on global warming.  If he can survive these attacks, then he will stand a good chance of maintaining a competitive edge until the Republican Convention.