Despite floundering campaign, Gingrich plows ahead
Amid signs that the battle for the Republican presidential nomination has increasingly become a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich appears to be fighting an uphill battle of Everest-size proportions toward clinching the nomination for himself.
The candidate, who has won only two primary contests so far - one of them in Georgia, his home state - trails Romney in the delegate count by more than 400, according to CBS News estimates. Recent polls show Gingrich behind Romney and Santorum (and even, occasionally, Ron Paul) in a slew of upcoming primary contests, and Romney has recently racked up a number of key Republican endorsements. Gingrich, by contrast, has become so cash-strapped that he recently started charging supporters $50 for a photo with him.
On Tuesday night, the former speaker's campaign announcedthat he would be slashing the size and scope of his operations. And on Wednesday morning, a new CNN/TIME/ORC poll showed that more than 6 in ten Republican voters think he should bow out of the race.
Nevertheless, Gingrich remains adamant that he's in it to win it.
"We're staying in," Gingrich said Wednesday morning in a radio interview with WTOP radio in Washington. "That's exactly why we're downsizing and doing what we need to to be able to stay in."
In the interview, the former House speaker acknowledged his dwindling campaign funds, and said the campaign was doing "the appropriate things to be able to campaign."
"I think you have to respond to reality and we have cash flow shorter than we'd like it to be so, we're doing the appropriate things to be able to campaign," Gingrich said.
In an interview with MSNBC later in the day, his chief of staff, Patrick Millsaps, accepted the fact that "it's not possible for us to get 1144 delegates" ahead of August's Republican presidential convention in Tampa, Florida.
According to the campaign, securing the nomination in advance of August's convention is no longer part of the political calculus.
"This is just a change of strategy," said Millsaps. "When you're in a contest like this and something isn't working or you get to a point where you need a change - it shows that we're nimble and willing to make an adjustment."
Millsaps argued that even while Gingrich will not secure the 1,144 delegates needed to get the nomination, it could well be that no other candidate does, either. In which case, he says, the convention would be a "jump ball."
"The fact of matter is it's not possible for us to get 1144 delegates before the convention - but it looks like neither will Romney or Santorum," Millsaps said. "If that's the case, we go into the convention, you go through first vote and then the nomination is a jump ball. In order to participate you've got to be there. So this is simply a change in our strategy to get to the convention in Tampa."
Gingrich's slim hope of winning the Republican presidential nomination depends primarily on his ability to triumph at a contested convention this summer. The idea is that if Romney falls short of the 1,144 delegates he needs to secure the nomination before the convention, his rivals will seize the opportunity to win over the Republican faithful during the convention process.
If Gingrich can remain relevant until then, even on a bare-bones campaign apparatus, he could still take a final shot at the nomination this August.
"It's got to be an open convention," said Rick Tyler, senior adviser to the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future, in an episode of CBS News' web show "Face to Face." "If Mitt Romney does not arrive in Tampa with the requisite number of delegates, I suspect there will be an initial vote and if he were to fail that vote I don't think there'd be a lot of support for him on the second or subsequent votes, and therefore it would be a race between Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul," said Tyler. "And in that situation I can imagine that a Newt Gingrich could emerge."
Tyler argued that after the first round, delegates who had come to the convention bound to vote for Romney would drop him for an alternate candidate.
"The people who go to Tampa are delegates. These are not casual observers. These are people involved in the party a long time. They've watched the party, they've seen Newt's career, they know who's done what," he said. "They know Mitt Romney's career, they know Rick Santorum's career they know Newt Gingrich's career. And so I think there's a very real possibility."
As Romney continues to rack up primary wins - and the delegates that come with them - it looks highly unlikely that Republicans will see a contested primary in Tampa this August. But Gingrich, for the meantime, is banking on that possibility.
