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 revive 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 between Romney and Santorum was close, and in Arizona, where Romney was favored, Gingrich was betting that one of his rivals will emerge as a weaker candidate and give him a chance to climb back into contention in 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 spending a week developing his message about gas prices and advancing 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.”
Later in the day, Gingrich targeted Romney, calling him a moderate “pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase governor” who would hurt the party’s chances in the fall against Obama.
“I don’t believe a moderate can beat President Obama. We tried a moderate in 1996, we lost badly. We tried a moderate in 2008, we lost badly,” Gingrich said in Rome, Ga. Referring to separate health plans backed by both men, Gingrich said: “I don’t think there is enough difference between Romneycare and Obamacare to have a debate. I think it would be silly.”
Gingrich has disputed talk that his campaign is in decline. “I’ve been down this road before,” he told Fox News Channel.
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