Newt Gingrich campaign confirms plan to quit race
Bittersweet end to bid for the White House
During the course of the Republican presidential primary season, Newt Gingrich branded Mitt Romney a liar, a Massachusetts liberal and a candidate so weak U.S. President Barack Obama would “tear him apart” in a general election campaign.
But as he prepares to finally end his own unlikely White House bid, Gingrich is now singing a different tune about Romney.
“It’s pretty clear that Gov. Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that he is, in fact, effective and that we as a team, are effective both in winning this fall and then, frankly, in governing,” Gingrich said Wednesday.
The remarks about Romney came as Gingrich prepared to suspend his campaign after enduring a thorough drubbing by Romney in a quintet of GOP primaries on Tuesday.
The former U.S. House speaker, whose once-promising presidential candidacy faltered after he won the South Carolina primary in late January, will formally end his campaign and endorse Romney on Tuesday.
Gingrich earlier had vowed, despite long odds, to continue his campaign through the Republican national convention this August in Tampa, Fla.
But he re-evaluated his standing after Romney won five Republican primaries on Tuesday, in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware.
Gingrich had campaigned heavily only in Delaware, hoping a victory there might help him justify staying in the race. But Romney won almost 57 per cent of the vote there. Gingrich won 27 per cent.
At a campaign appearance Wednes-day morning in North Carolina, Gingrich all but conceded the Republican nomination to Romney.
“I think you have to be honest at some point about what’s happening in the real world as opposed to what you’d have liked to have happen,” Gingrich told a group of Republican voters in Concord, N.C.
“This guy has worked for six years, put together a big machine, and has put together a serious campaign,” he said of Romney.
“I think obviously, that I would be a better candidate, but the objective fact is that the voters didn’t think that.”
The decision to end his campaign
I think you have to be honest . . . about what’s happening in the real world.
NEWT GINGRICH
was a bittersweet one for Gingrich, who soared to the top of the Republican polls in late December following a series of strong GOP debate performances.
He rebounded from a barrage of attack ads by Romney allies and a disappointing result in the Iowa caucuses to claim victory in South Carolina on Jan. 21.
But the former Georgia congressman was unable to keep the momentum going in other southern states, faltering amid more attack ads and a sometimes undisciplined campaign style.
His proposal for a moon colony drew mockery in the media and among conservatives, but Gingrich insisted he was right and his critics were wrong about the viability of the idea.
Although Gingrich won the primary in his home state of Georgia in early March, he lost to former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum in conservative bastions such as Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
A combative and frequently temperamental candidate, Gingrich took personal umbrage to the negative campaign waged against him by Romney allies who ran the former governor’s arms-length super PAC, Restore Our Future.
In an interview with CBS News on the morning of the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich accused Romney of lying about his ties to the political action committee.
“You’re calling Mitt Romney a liar?” CBS journalist Norah O’donnell asked Gingrich.
“Well, you seem shocked by it?” Gingrich replied.
“This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC — it’s baloney.”
Gingrich described Romney as a “poll-driven, consultant-guided” candidate who was running under “the pretence that he’s a conservative.”
To right-wing Republicans, Gingrich posed this question: “Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won’t level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine.”
Efforts were underway by Romney’s campaign to mend fences with Gingrich.
The former Massachusetts governor telephoned Gingrich on Wednesday, inviting him to join his campaign team, should he decide to suspend his campaign.
“Newt relayed to him that he did have plans to suspend next week and he was fully committed to helping Gov. Romney mobilize Republicans this fall to stop Obama’s second term,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told the Los Angeles Times.
Romney has now won an estimated 844 of the 1,141 GOP delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination, according to an Associated Press tally, and has a virtually clear path to the GOP nomination.