Newt Gingrich Climbing Back Into the Race

Howard Kurtz sees him kinda sorta making a comeback
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 18, 2011 10:04 AM CDT
Newt Gingrich Climbing Back Into the Race
In this Oct. 11, 2011, file photo Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, participates in a presidential debate at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.   (AP Photo/Melina Mara, Pool)

Don’t call it a comeback—because that would probably be overstating it—but Newt Gingrich is starting to show up as high as third in some GOP primary polls, Howard Kurtz notes in a Newsweek profile. Gingrich was largely left for dead after much of his campaign staff bolted, but the ex-speaker was undaunted. “This is football season,” he told his remaining loyalists. “We got hit. Get up.” The goal, he said, was to survive the summer and hope for a fall surge.

And survive he has, thanks to a strong grasp of policy and competent debate showings. “If they could have a debate a night, he’d be the nominee,” former Gingrich strategist Rich Galen says. Of course, Gingrich has flaws too; just ask him. “I am a very complicated candidate, right?” he said recently. “We live in a society where gossip replaces serious policy.” Being written off has kept Gingrich’s gossip out of the spotlight of late, but “if he ever popped up to No. 2 or No. 1,” Galen warns, “all that stuff would just crush him." (More Newt Gingrich stories.)

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