Newt campaigning in New Hampshire

Newt was in New Hampshire today and said he will "doing a lot of grassroots things and developing a lot of ideas" over the next few months.

From The Boston Globe:

Gingrich is spending today and tomorrow in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and has six radio show appearances lined up. His only publicized New Hampshire campaign stop with any voter contact was a tour of Spectrum Marketing Companies, a direct mail and marketing company whose clients include numerous Republican politicians.

Spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich may do another business visit tomorrow. Otherwise, Gingrich is meeting privately with activists and business leaders. He said he met voters at a diner this morning.

...

Asked about Gingrich’s grassroots activism, Hammond pointed to public events Gingrich did on previous trips, including a town hall meeting on health care in Derry, a meeting with Tea Party activists in Dover, and a meet and greet at a Conway cafe.

More from Shira Schoenberg:

"The difference in substance and difference in experience will make a difference by January," Gingrich told reporters in Manchester. He pledged, "You'll see me here a lot just as you’ll see me in Iowa a lot."

Gingrich said he believes he will attract support from the Tea Party through a "10th amendment enforcement act." Hammond said that refers to an initiative to have citizens identify areas like education or health care where the federal government is overreaching. Republicans promoted a similar concept in 1996, when Gingrich was speaker, through legislation ensuring the federal government does not infringe on states’ rights.

Gingrich also suggested health initiatives focusing on brain science, regenerative medicine, and diabetes. He has said Congress should repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, President Obama’s reform of the financial industry.

"I'll rely on a strategy of substance and the notion that this country is in very deep trouble," Gingrich said. He pointed specifically to the problems of China outpacing the United States in science, technology, and manufacturing; the erosion of American exceptionalism; and the lack of a strategy for dealing with radical Islam. He said Washington has failed to solve the economic problems, and "there"s a very real danger we’re going to have a second dip" of the recession.

In the current impasse between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling, Gingrich said House Republicans are missing an opportunity to pass numerous potential solutions and force Senate Democrats to vote on them. Gingrich proposed increasing oil and gas exploration offshore and on federal lands, and raising the debt ceiling by $200 billion in exchange for getting that additional revenue.

"They have every right to say to the president 'here are five different ways of solving the problem, are you going to force America to default?' " Gingrich said. "If you are, we’ll have the Obama depression plus the Obama default."

Was the D.C. establishment -- gasp -- wrong about Newt's campaign?

Just a week or so ago, the common wisdom among journalists inside Washington D.C. was that Newt's campaign -- due to the comments about Paul Ryan and the surrounding dust up -- was on life support. Some even suggested he would drop out before July.

Then, the reports of overflow crowds at each and every of his Iowa appearances began to trickle in. As Newt has noted, the only national reporter to actually show up was NPR's Mara Liasson, who said the crowds and enthusiasm was nothing like she was hearing back in D.C. Chuck Todd, NBC's White House Correspondent, tweeted: "As folks prepare Sunday columns writing off Gingrich, riddle this: he's attracting large crowds; Conservative elite-Iowa grassroots split?"

Then, Newt has been in New Hampshire the past two days, talking to about 600 people total, says The Washington Post.

photo: R.C. Hammond











While the actual voters showed no interest in Newt's jewelry purchases, Nia-Malika Henderson passes along the following exchange with a fellow reporter and Newt:

Will your charge account at Tiffany sink your campaign, a Reuters reporter asked.

“I want you all to notice, finally, the citizens having failed to raise the most important question of the day. I was asked about a charge account at Tiffany’s,” he said, standing before a crowd of about 200 people, who didn’t boo but laughed at his sarcasm. “Now, I’m grateful that somebody here finally had the courage to go to one of the hot-button issues that will change America’s future.”

Henderson quotes Newt: “I’ve got to be more careful and make certain that it’s virtually impossible to misunderstand what I’m saying. I’ve got to be less academic and more explicit,” he said at the Conway Diner. “And we’ve got to get faster at responding to stories that are just totally false. We are still a half-step behind doing that. We eventually burn them out, but it takes longer than it should.”

Henderson included an interesting tidbit that I have not seen reported yet: "Over the next week, Gingrich will work on two major speeches to be delivered in June, one on foreign policy and another on the Federal Reserve."

So Newt had a great response in Iowa and New Hampshire (and he will be in South Carolina Friday, where he will discuss the federal power reach in the Boeing case.) National polls (here and here) show Newt still in good position.

With all that, it looks like the D.C. media was wrong about trying to stick a fork in Newt's campaign. Not that surprising when you consider just a few things the media has been wrong about;

It was also wrong about Ronald Reagan being unelectable. And wrong about Reagan's economic policies. (As Reagan himself said: "I could tell our economic policy was working when [the media] stopped calling it Reaganomics.") And Reagan's foreign policy.

The media laughed at Newt when he said the Republicans would gain a majority in the House. They said he would never become Speaker. Then they doubted Newt and the House Republicans would fulfill the Contract with America. Then the media doubted that welfare reform could be passed. And when it was passed, they predicted terrible things for those leaving welfare, not two of every three either going to work or school. The media said it was impossible to balance the budget.

So does it surprise anyone that they were wrong about this?