Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich promises he’ll let us know officially early this fall whether he’ll be a GOP presidential candidate this election. But there’s no need to wait for the official announcement. He’s in. Almost all of the signs say so.
There are four in particular that his entry appears to be a near certainty.
1) HE’S VIRTUALLY SAID SO Gingrich has been all over the place regarding his plans for candidacy, but when Diane Sawyer asked him about it on Good Morning America in May, he was pretty blunt. “[I]t is a great possibility,” he said. Besides, his organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future (a Gingrich-esque name if there ever was one), has been the perfect front for him to get organized in all 50 states while pretending never to be a candidate.
2) IT’S NOW OR NEVER Gingrich is 64 — in his prime as a presidential candidate. Next election he’ll be pushing 70 and might face the impossibility of unseating a GOP incumbent, or at least a slew of candidates (such as, say, Mitt Romney) who may end up using 2008 as a healthy practice run for 2012.
3) THE STANDARD HE’S SET FOR GETTING INTO THE RACE IS EASILY MET According to columnist Robert Novak, Gingrich has said he’ll get into the race if Fred Thompson’s candidacy doesn’t take off. Of course, it’s Newt who’s going to do the deciding as to Thompson’s success, but there are early signs that the Thompson effort may already be faltering. Sure, he’s done well in the polls — though not well enough to unseat the current front-runner, Rudy Giuliani. And the early buzz on Thompson is that he’s no Law and Order’s Arthur Branch on the campaign trail.
Moreover, Gingrich is counting on the fact that, once voters learn more about Thompson’s extensive record as a lobbyist, and about his campaign staff — which is full of GOP veterans, including former Dick Cheney advisor Mary Matalin — he’ll look a lot less like the breath of fresh Tennessee air that he appears to be now.
4) GINGRICH SEES A STRATEGIC OPENING IN THE GOP RACE — AND HE’S RIGHT Gingrich realizes that the long campaign and frequent debates that have diminished everyone in the field. More important, although George W. Bush is almost as despised within the Republican Party as he is among Democrats, none of the GOP candidates has positioned himself as the “anti-Bush” on a host of issues, including immigration or even the war. There is, Gingrich knows, an opening for a candidate who promises to change the direction of conservatism — someone willing to run against the Bush legacy and paint the current president as a big-government, know-nothing apostate who turned his back on true GOP ideals.
Could it work? Perhaps. The dismal fundraising record of the GOP candidates so far compared with their Democratic rivals indicates that there’s widespread disenchantment with the Republican field. Thompson may be able to fill some of that gap, but Gingrich is likely counting on his anti-establishment strength among the grassroots and talk-radio faithful to overcome any Thompson advantage.
Here, then, is how a Gingrich entry — and the latest news about second-quarter fundraising — affects the current GOP-nomination front-runners.
Ranking the Republicans
RUDY GIULIANI Apparently he has more cash on hand than any other Republican in the race. And a Gingrich entry wouldn’t hurt his candidacy very much because the former Speaker appeals to a different wing of the party than does Giuliani. There’s even a way that a Gingrich candidacy might help Giuliani, by making it easier for the former NY mayor to run against a candidate whose intellect matches his own. And, if the race is reduced to Giuliani and Gingrich, Giuliani has the advantage of looking comparatively more electable.
NEWT GINGRICH Newt has the grass roots wired — both literally and figuratively. He also knows how to play the media better than anyone in the field. Money likely wouldn’t be a problem.
MITT ROMNEY To the extent that Romney’s candidacy is all about winning Iowa and New Hampshire and then hoping the momentum carries him through, Gingrich helps Romney, at first by further dividing the opposition to his front-runner status in those first two states. Still, with Gingrich in debates, will Romney look more like the weathervane his opponents think he is? Romney continues to fundraise well, but the fact that he’s already loaning his campaign millions out of his personal funds shows that he’s burning the money faster than he can raise it. Not a good sign.
FRED THOMPSON A Gingrich entry hurts Thompson the most since it is an implicit indicator — at least to Newt devotees and in the talk-radio universe — that Fred can’t cut it. Besides, it makes the former Tennessee senator look like an old face, before he even had a chance to enjoy his status as the new face. He wasn’t an official candidate in the second quarter, so no one knows his fundraising prowess. The guess is that he’ll do well among establishment Republicans — which will only fuel the Gingrich insurgency.
JOHN MCCAIN He’s virtually broke and laying off staff. His only chance is to pour everything into Iowa and hope that, in a highly divided field, he can win the caucus with 20 to 25 percent. Still, with Gingrich in the race, will he just be eclipsed for good?
Gingrich’s presence in the race will give the GOP five major contenders, thus reducing the rest of the field to complete irrelevancy (from its former status of almost complete irrelevancy).
THE REST OF THE FIELD
REPUBLICANS
RUDY GIULIANI Odds: 2-1
NEWT GINGRICH Odds: 3-1
MITT ROMNEY Odds: 5-1
FRED THOMPSON Odds: 6-1
JOHN MCCAIN Odds: 9-1
MIKE HUCKABEE Odds: 300-1
SAM BROWNBACK Odds: 1000-1
TOMMY THOMPSON Odds: 20,000-1
DUNCAN HUNTER Odds: 20,000-1
JAMES GILMORE Odds: 40,000-1
TOM TANCREDO Odds: 75,000-1
RON PAUL Odds: 500,000-1
DEMOCRATS
BARACK OBAMA Odds: 4-3
HILLARY CLINTON Odds: 3-2
JOHN EDWARDS Odds: 7-1
BILL RICHARDSON Odds: 40-1
JOE BIDEN Odds: 65-1
CHRIS DODD Odds: 150-1
DENNIS KUCINICH Odds: 25,000-1
MIKE GRAVEL Odds: 1 million to 1
