Gingrich cites "positive" campaign as key to rise
DES MOINES, Iowa - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the latest GOP presidential candidate to experience an uptick in his poll numbers, on Monday attributed his success in part to running a "positive" campaign -- even as he cited the "deep discomfort" among Republican voters with his rival Mitt Romney.
Gingrich was widely written off several months after an exodus of advisers from his campaign. But he has soldiered ahead on a shoestring budget. A new CNN/ORC International poll
"I have to say that I'm really humbled that millions of people watched the debates and the general conclusion was that I have real substance and real solutions and that they prefer my approach of being positive to the kind of consultant-driven negativities that I think actually hurt the candidates who are negative," Gingrich said in Des Moines.
Gingrich also discussed the unhappiness among some conservatives with Romney, whom he called "a fine person and a very good manager," in an interview with Iowa Public Radio.
"There's a deep discomfort - you see it in the polling data," he said. "They were going to look for somebody. Early on it might have been me, but I blew it and so they were floundering around and they went to a number of very nice people, each of whom had an opportunity to consolidate and I'll let you decide why they didn't. But gradually during the fall with the debates, people began to come back and say well, gee, maybe we'd better give Newt a second look."
It remains to be seen, of course, whether voters reconsider Gingrich's controversial statements - he was chastised for referring to House Budget Committee Chairman's Paul Ryan budget blueprint as "right-wing social engineering" - and his personal life, which includes two widely publicized divorces and his former line of credit at Tiffany's.
One of Gingrich's other rivals for the nomination, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, dismissed the resurge of interest in Gingrich. "My feeling is that those national polls don't mean a whole lot," Santorum, who has been hoping to capitalize on other candidates' misfortunes without much success thus far, told CNN.
Rodney Hawkins contributed to this story.