Two videos of Newt in Louisiana on Friday

Here is Newt discussing how he would a general election against Obama:



Video of Newt discussing what he would do for the economy of the nation and Louisiana specifically.

Gallup: Newt's voters would split evenly among Romney and Santorum

Gallup has the latest evidence that, contrary to Senator Santorum's talking point, if Newt was to leave the race, it would only help Romney.

I've already quoted Newt and others who have said that if it was just Romney versus Santorum, Romney's money would sink Santorum since there would only be one target.

What Gallup found is that when asked who their second choice was, those voters who are supporting Newt would split their votes -- with 40% going to Romney and 39% to Santorum.

What that means is that Romney would get many more delegates much more faster, and would almost assuredly get to the magic number of 1,144. As it stands, he is being held to ~30% in the polls (and roughly the same percentage of delegates.)

That road to 1,144 is much, much tougher.

The White House keeps attacking Newt over energy policy

While Rick Santorum is discussing issues that, um, aren't very high on the list of voters' concerns (to say the least) and Mitt Romney is running on -- well, what is he running on? -- Newt's central focus has been on energy prices.

And the White House has noticed, attacking Newt -- sometimes by name, sometimes not -- several times over the past few weeks.

Thursday was the latest example.

And Newt was ready to pounce.

From the New York Times:

Newt Gingrich used a campaign rally on Thursday afternoon to respond to President Obama’s charge earlier in the day that Republicans were pandering to voters by promising lower gas prices.

Mr. Obama compared the presidential candidates to members of the Flat Earth Society for dismissing alternative energy sources like solar and biofuels and emphasizing only versions of “drill, baby, drill.”

The president did not name anyone, but Mr. Gingrich had no doubt that it was him in the cross hairs, since he has repeatedly mocked Mr. Obama as “President Algae” for extolling biofuels.

“The president maligned me, suggesting I don’t like biofuels,” Mr. Gingrich said at a rally in Illinois, which holds its primary on Tuesday and where, he noted, he drove past a station selling gas for $4.59 a gallon. “That’s baloney. I am in favor of science and technology.”

But he argued that “no serious study” showed that algae could replace a significant amount of oil in the short run. He announced that his campaign would make coffee mugs and mouse pads comparing his promise of $2.50-a-gallon gas with a $10-a-gallon projected price under the president’s policies. It will be a winning issue for Republicans, Mr. Gingrich said, if he becomes the nominee.

And regarding Energy Secretary Chu's "reversal" earlier this week, again from the Times:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu backed down this week from a controversial comment he made in 2008, when he said the best way to encourage conservation would be an increase in gas prices in the United States to the levels seen in Europe.

“Of course we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up, we want it to go down,” Dr. Chu said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Mr. Gingrich accused Dr. Chu of election-year pandering of his own. “Dr. Chu’s turnaround is entirely a function of the election, and the day after the election he’ll be right back” to his earlier position, he said in Illinois.

Who do you want in the general election against Obama: Santorum talking about issues the vast majority of voters don't care about, Romney campaigning on no ideas at all, or Newt taking on Obama's failed policies and ideology, fighting for a conservative vision?

Great article about a family of big Newt supporters

The whole article is worth reading, but here's an excerpt:

Scott Jensen has been supporting Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich even before Gingrich wanted to run for office.

“In 2008 I wanted him to run [for president],” said Jensen. “I was looking at all the different people who were prospects and he was the most intelligent person that I had heard.”

On Thursday, Jensen finally got to shake the hand of “his ideal” president. He finally got to shake the hand of one of his heroes.

...

When Gingrich arrived at the hangar, the Jensens applauded loudly over hundreds of other supporters. After Gingrich gave his speech on American energy solutions, Gingrich and his wife shook hands with their supporters. The Jensens, who stood in the second row from the stage, were in good position.

Just around 3:15 p.m., Jensen shook Gingrich’s hand and wished him good luck.

“I’ve been following him for years and just the fact that I got a handshake from him, and I got his autograph, and his wife’s autograph, and he signed my daughter’s little book, and my daughter got a picture with Newt on top of it is totally awesome.” said Jensen.

More on Newt's strategy moving forward

Byron York writes:

"Our goal first is to keep Romney well below 1,000," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said an hour before Gingrich addressed a small crowd of disappointed supporters gathered at the Wynfrey Hotel. "It doesn't have to be 1,000, or 1,050 -- it has to be below 1,100." If Gingrich succeeds, Hammond continued, "This will be the first time in our party in modern politics that we're going to go to the convention floor."

On election eve, after a long day of campaigning, Gingrich relaxed on a couch at the Wynfrey and vowed to keep challenging Romney through the summer -- long after the primaries have ended. If he can keep the former Massachusetts governor from hitting the 1,144 delegate mark, Gingrich said, "Then on the 26th of June, there's a real conversation. We haven't seen in our lifetime a situation where you actually had a political process beyond who wins the primaries." As he has several times in recent days, Gingrich brought up the case of Leonard Wood, the Army general who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920.

"The reason I keep citing Leonard Wood is because in 1920, Wood goes into the convention as the frontrunner," Gingrich said. "[Warren G.] Harding goes in as the guy who's in sixth place, and at the end of ten ballots, Harding is the nominee and Wood is gone." More than 90 years later, that's the scenario Gingrich sees as his own path to victory.

Rick Tyler, a former longtime aide to Newt who is now with the main pro-Newt Super PAC, said on the radio:

"In many ways Newt is Lincoln in 1860 who went to his convention third. Newt will arrive, it I may propose this, he will arrive in Tampa on equal footing with the other candidates. That is, he will arrive with less than the required number of delegates to win the nomination.

If that happens, my prediction is that Mitt Romney will lose the first ballot and if he loses the first ballot he will be abandoned. And then Newt, I believe, would have better than a 50-50 chance of winning the nomination among the remaining three candidates.

In brokered conventions, which we haven't had in my lifetime, in my recollection all bets are off. Once the first ballot fails, all the delegates are released. And Newt will have a case to make. And I believe he will have a strong case to make.

Jonathan Karl of ABC wrote Wednesday:

Newt Gingrich is not getting out of the race any time soon.

Here’s why: Gingrich firmly believes that staying in the race is the best way to prevent Mitt Romney from clinching the nomination before the convention in August. And he actually may have a point.

...

Gingrich knows that it is virtually impossible for him, or Santorum for that matter, to beat Romney on delegates, but he makes the case — and it is not far-fetched — that unless Romney starts winning delegates at a faster pace he won’t clinch nomination by end the end of the primaries.

He quotes Newt of what that would mean:

“This thing is going to go on. You guys need to relax and cover the most interesting nominating process in your lifetime,” Gingrich told me. “Be not anxiety-ridden, this is going to be good for America. This is a good conversation to have.”

Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation and who endorsed Newt back in September -- wrote an article called "Newt Gingrich Needs to Stay in the Race."

Newt does the Republican Party and the conservative movement a great favor by staying in the race.

If Newt can stay in the race and pull enough votes to block the nomination of Romney, then the Republican Party has a chance this fall. We must select a conservative to take back the nomination and the White House.

Newt at this point must stay in the race. If the race goes down to a one-on-one race between Romney and Santorum, Romney will win. Despite Santorum thinking most of Newt's supporters would automatically back him if Gingrich were no longer in the race, that is not true. Some would peel off and vote for Romney, which could possibly give him the delegates he needs to win the nomination.

The only way we can stop a Romney nomination now is for Newt to stay in the race.

To add to Phillips' point about Santorum not having a chance to win one-on-one with Romney, all the money from Romney's campaign and Super PAC would be squarely focused on Santorum -- which would destroy him. (Think of what happened in December in Iowa and late January in Florida when Romney went after Newt with everything he had.)

I'm still #withNewt

(I apologize deeply for the long gap in between posts, but aside from work (including on Newt's campaign) and school, my family has had some medical issues the last few months, which has taken away free time.)

I've been meaning to write a post like this for a while now, and nothing that happened Tuesday night changes my feelings.

I'm still, to use the popular Twitter hashtag, #withNewt.

I'm still standing with him because he's the best candidate. He's not tons more conservative than Rick Santorum, but in terms of vision and having the ability to marshal a conservative agenda through Congress, he's worlds above the former Pennsylvania senator.

Newt is the only one who knows what needs to be done to drastically change Washington D.C. -- and he's the only one who knows how to implement the changes.

But I have said essentially the same thing for over a year now on this blog.

Now to the state of the GOP nominating race. Yes, Newt trails in delegates, but the laughable delegate projections that have Santorum beating him by a hundred or more are just that -- laughable.

Many of those delegates are in no way bound to vote for him on the first round of voting at the GOP convention.

So the actual, binding margin between him and Newt is rather small.

And while Romney has many more delegates than either Santorum or Newt, the math is not clear as to how he can get to 1,144 delegates before the convention.

Newt's political director, Martin Baker, and senior adviser Randy Evans released a memo on Tuesday in which they argue that the race is just nearing halftime. (Louisiana, which will vote on the 24th of this month, is technically halftime.)

I encourage you to read it, but the gist is that the final weeks of the campaign -- when states are winner-take-all -- will largely determine the race.

They don't explicitly state it, but my thinking is that whoever wins, for example, Texas and California (if it's the same candidate, that is) will pick up many of the non-binding delegates and possibly secure the nomination.

The odds may be a little longer for Newt than they were the few days after South Carolina, but I still stand with him because he's, by far, the best candidate -- and not just of this cycle. He's the best candidate we've had since Reagan.

I stood beside him after the Meet the Press interview back almost 10 months ago. In fact, it was after this interview that I first contacted the campaign to see what I could do.

I stood beside him after much of his national staff -- and the whole Iowa team -- quit on June 9 of last year. I will admit, however, that there were a few seconds of serious doubt about his viability.

I was still there when two of his finance team quit weeks after that. I was literally with Newt the day the fundraising report came out on July 15 that showed the campaign in debt and that fundraising dried up after the Meet the Press interview.

I wrote about that weekend with Newt, his press secretary R.C. Hammond, and campaign manager Michael Krull here and here.

I stood with Newt through all that -- and more -- because I knew he was the one with a big vision for the country and the ability to implement that vision. He still is the only candidate with those qualities, so I still stand with him.

Sorry again for the gap between posts, but I hope to post at least one piece daily from now on, if not more.

Thanks for reading and being great supporters.