Republican US presidential contender Newt Gingrich dealt a blow to longtime frontrunner Mitt Romney on Sunday, picking up a major newspaper endorsement in the pivotal US state of New Hampshire.
The race is heating up with barely five weeks to go before Republican voters start choosing their nominee and Gingrich is the candidate with the momentum, surging in the opinion polls after some strong debate performances.
Rebuffing Romney, who served as governor in the neighboring state of Massachusetts, editors at the New Hampshire Union Leader praised Gingrich’s “innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership.”
Gingrich, the former US House of Representatives speaker who was a giant of Republican politics in the 1990s, is now leading nationwide polls and has doubled his showing in New Hampshire, where he still trails Romney.
The endorsement of the Granite State’s top-circulation newspaper could help him close that gap before New Hampshire votes on Jan. 10 in what is being billed as a vital early matchup.
“We don’t back candidates based on popularity polls or big-shot backers. We look for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job,” the newspaper wrote.
The editorial was also a thinly veiled assault on Romney, whose campaign, while slick and bulging with cash, has struggled to persuade the Republican base that he is a man who shares their deepest convictions.
Gingrich, a party intellectual credited with ending 40 years of Democratic Party hegemony in the US Congress in 1994, has performed strongly in debates, while less-seasoned rivals have faltered in the spotlight.
US Representative Michele Bachmann, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former pizza executive Herman Cain enjoyed opinion poll surges only to fall back into the pack.
With the Iowa caucuses, the first event in the state-by-state voting process, just five weeks away from today — on Jan. 3 — polls suggest the battle is boiling down to a two-way race between Gingrich and Romney.
Iowa, however, is notoriously unpredictable, and several candidates, including Cain, veteran libertarian Ron Paul, and even Bachmann, could make a splash there and use it as a springboard going into New Hampshire.
If Gingrich comes unstuck in socially conservative Iowa, it could be due to remarks last week that offered a softer tone than the Republican base is used to on illegal immigration.
Bachmann seized on the comments, accusing Gingrich of offering would-be immigrants “powerful magnets” to illegally enter the country.
If Gingrich becomes the nominee, a more liberal stance on immigration against US President Barack Obama in November next year would help him compete for the massive Latino voting bloc that has traditionally voted Democrat.
Gingrich, and particularly his immigration stance, won praise from an unlikely source: Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president with whom he famously sparred in the 1990s while speaker.
“I think he’s doing well just because he’s thinking and people are hungry for ideas that make some sense,” Clinton told conservative media group Newsmax. “He’s being rewarded for thinking.”
Gingrich has an average lead nationally of 2.5 percentage points over Romney and is now 5 percentage points clear in Iowa, according to RealClearPolitics, a US news organization that aggregates opinion polls.
Despite surging into second in New Hampshire, Gingrich still trails Romney there by an average of more than 18 percentage points.
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