RightChange: Newt’s GOP 2012 Confidence

Newt Gingrich appears to be confident he can beat Obama and the other GOP 2012 hopefuls.  Is this a newfound confidence from his stellar performance in the debates, or from his latest endorsement from the New Hampshire newspaper Union Leader? 

Whatever it is, Gingrich is gaining traction:

“In New Hampshire, the coveted endorsement Sunday by the state's conservative newspaper offers a significant boost to Gingrich – and a blow to Mitt Romney. This is the second time the Union Leader has pointedly passed on Romney. In 2008, Sen. John McCain got the Union Leader nod, and eventually won the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney still has a substantial lead over Gingrich in New Hampshire polls. But so did George W. Bush and Barack Obama – and both lost the New Hampshire primary.

Romney's nightmare scenario, as the London Telegraph US editor Toby Harnden notes,

is that a Gingrich win in Iowa leads to a first or second place finish in New Hampshire. Romney is counting on New Hampshire, but if Gingrich can show he's a serious contender then the battle goes to South Carolina, where a "true" social conservative, such as Gingrich, has an edge. Then comes the pivotal Florida primary.”

Gingrich is confident he is the better alternative to Romney; he said this to a Charleston, South Carolina radio station:

"Anybody who is honest about it knows that no person except Christ has ever been perfect. So, I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate. I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney and a lot more electable than anybody else," presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich told WSC-AM, a radio station in Charleston, South Carolina.

"We think there has to be a solid conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. And I think I'm the one candidate who can bring together national security conservatives and economic conservatives and social conservatives in order to make sure we have a conservative nominee," Gingrich said.

"I wouldn't lie to the American people, I wouldn’t switch my positions for political reasons. It’s perfectly reasonable to change your position if facts change, if you see new things you didn’t see. Everybody's done that; Ronald Reagan did it. It's wrong to go around and adopt radically different positions based on your need of any one election because then people have to ask themselves, ‘What will you tell me next time?'"

That is something President Obama has been known to do, which is why Newt is also confident about winning the debates against Obama.

Newt is obviously confident in his ability to win, are you?  Do you think he is more conservative than Mitt Romney?  It is interesting to see the candidates claim to be more conservative than the others while at the same time trying to appeal to the Independent base.  The GOP 2012 hopefuls will have to deliver an effective strategy for appealing to their Conservative base while snagging the swing states from Obama.  Obama is already delivering a similar strategy; he has surpassed his predecessors in swing state visits – attending 54 events in 11 battleground states over 42 days.

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