That combination, he says, allows him not only to win the hearts of conservative primary voters — notably tea partyers, who have helped beef up his organizations in the early-voting states — but also to make the case that he can go up against President Obama in the fall.
“Most of our lives we’ve never seen the House and the Senate so ineffectual, at total odds, which totally leaves the American people out of the process,” Gingrich told an audience of more than 800 supporters jammed into a hotel ballroom last week. “We’re watching total insanity go on. We could begin to break up the gridlock very rapidly if I were president.”
Gingrich draws on his experience to fend off controversy, too, including his statement at a debate last week that he favors creating a path to legal residency for some illegal immigrants.
Answering charges over the weekend from Bachmann and Romney that his position would lead to amnesty, Gingrich said: “I have a deep history, going back to 1986, of supporting efforts to solve the problem of illegal immigration.”
He said in an interview that the depth of familiarity of so many of his supporters is “sobering.” He also attributed it to a nugget of political trivia that helped launch his national career: the start of C-SPAN, in March 1979, just two months after he entered the House. Gingrich was a regular guest, and he quickly understood — and began taking advantage of — the power of live broadcasts from the House chamber.
Gingrich also got people’s attention through audio tapes he recorded when he was chairman of GOPAC, a Republican political action committee that he used in the late 1980s and early ’90s to train Republicans across the country seeking political office. His recordings — along with workbooks, seminars and other educational tools — detailed the party’s message and how to organize at the grass-roots level.
Along the way, Gingrich created an endless number of memories for political supporters. Dorothy Nichols, 78, a homemaker from Bonita, Fla., said he spoke to her son’s war college class a dozen years ago — and individually critiqued each student’s work. “We were so impressed with Gingrich, it made us follow him all the way,” she recalled.
Dan Seufferlein, a lawyer in eastern Iowa, remembers the night, in November 1994, when the Republicans took over the House. He was 19 and working at a grocery store, and he was reprimanded for repeating to customers and co-workers alike: “Newt Gingrich is going to be speaker! Newt Gingrich is going to be speaker!”
Today, Seufferlein is volunteering for Gingrich's presidential campaign. “He’s just kind of an iconic figure for me,” he said. “He’s been involved in the discussion of politics for such a long time. And he was at the height of that when I became politically aware.”
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