"Face the Nation" transcript: March 4, 2012

GINGRICH: Oh, I think there will be basically Santorum and Romney in the lead, me in third place, but coming back and gaining ground. If you look at the Gallup numbers, for example, I closed the gap on Santorum pretty dramatically in the last two and a half weeks. You know this is the seventh time as you and I have talked about it, this is the seventh time I've been through this up and down cycle. We survived Pawlenty, and Bachmann, and Donald Trump, and then Cain, then Perry, then Cain again, and now Santorum. So we wanted to keep -- twice I've been the frontrunner.

And by focusing on big ideas like a national energy strategy and American energy strategy with 2.50 a gallon gasoline and an ability to say no future president will ever again bow to a Saudi king, I think I'm beginning to come back to my real job which is to be sort of the visionary conservative who offers bigger, better solutions for the future. That's what I do best. And twice that's put me in the lead nationally, and now I have got to convert that into delegates.

SCHIEFFER: So you see multiple winners on Super Tuesday. And I take it you're thinking if you win in Georgia, then that gives you a good chance in Alabama and Mississippi. So you don't see this thing ending any time soon.

Do you think there's a chance anybody else will get in to this race?

GINGRICH: I think it would be very hard for anybody else to get in the race. We chatted briefly when we were doing -- Governor Huckabee's forum, and Romney and Santorum and I chatted just for a minute or two together. And we all agree that, you know, the American people expect somebody to come out and earn it the hard way. Lots of people look really good sitting at home being talked about. They don't look as good once they get on the campaign trail as you know because you've covered it for so many years.

This is a rough and tumble business. And I think one the three of us is going to end up being the nominee. And my hope, of course, is that as people get attracted to things like $2.50 gas, then we now have over 173,000 donors, 95 percent under $250.

We keep growing, we keep getting stronger. Governor Perry has told me that he thinks I'll carry Texas the last weekend of May by a huge margin, which would lead into California, our biggest state, the following week where we already have 17 Hispanic co-chairs statewide in California and a number of folks in the Korean and Chinese and Thai and Vietnamese communities. So we're reaching out across all of California.

So my hope would be to go into the summer as the guy who could best debate Barack Obama.

And a lot of these delegates are not legally bound. There are a lot of opportunities to go back and rediscuss this.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you about something. You know, Governor Romney has been hitting and you and Senator Santorum for being "creatures of Washington," as he put it. And he has criticized you for going after millions of dollars in federal earmarks.

But we have gotten a hold of a video that was taken back in 2002 when he was taking a very different tack. He was telling a group then that he knew how to get federal money and he wasn't bashful about going after it. He was also proud of how much money that he got for the Olympics.

I'd just like to play a little of this for you and see what you have to say about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm a big believer in getting money where the money is. And the money is in Washington. And I've learned from my Olympic experience that if you have people that really understand how Washington works and have personal associations there, you can get money to help build economic development opportunities.

And I want to go after every grant, every project, every department in Washington to assure that we're taking advantage of economic development opportunities.

We actually received over $410 million from the federal government for the Olympic Games. That is a huge increase over anything ever done before. We did that by going after every agency of government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: So your thoughts?