Meanwhile, Gingrich is clearly having a good time, even as he continues to campaign on a shoestring.
“I have no conflicts,” he said. “I have no consultant near me trying to get me to be who I’m not.” His stump speech lasts an hour, touching on an eclectic array of subjects that include brain research and “rebalancing” the judicial system.
And having spent decades as one of the leading figures of the conservative movement, he has a well of goodwill and loyalty upon which to draw. Many of today’s Republican activists came of age listening to Gingrich’s motivational tapes and following his rise on C-SPAN in the 1980s and 1990s.
As of Thursday morning, he said, his campaign had raised $1 million in October, which is more than it did in the previous months combined. With the new resources, he expects to open five offices in each of the three earliest states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — within the next two weeks.
The polls, however, are showing only a modest uptick for Gingrich. Real Clear Politics has him averaging about 9 percent nationally, about double where he was in September but still 15 points or more behind Romney or Cain.
In a New York Times-CBS News poll released last week, he reached 10 percent, up three percentage points since mid-September. Cain, meanwhile, made a fivefold leap over that period and led the poll with 25 percent.
Several of those who showed up to hear Gingrich in South Carolina told him they are having a hard time deciding between him and Cain.
“He’s a very likable person,” Gingrich said. But Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, which would establish a national sales tax, suggests that the current leader in the polls “has a great slogan without any substance behind it,” the former speaker added.
Gingrich has also begun framing the argument he will make against Romney, should it come to that. In a not-so-veiled reference to the management skills that the former Massachusetts governor touts as his chief asset, Gingrich has in recent days been asking audiences: “How many of you think what we need is a better manager of the current system, and how many of you think that what we need is fundamental change?”
As he finished off his ice cream, Gingrich predicted that the GOP race would come down to “ ‘Mitt and Newt’ — sounds better than ‘Romney and Gingrich,’ don’t you think?”
“Probably by March, there will be one-on-one debates. It will be fun. He’s very smart,” Gingrich added. “We will give the party a very serious set of choices.”
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