Still in, Newt Gingrich is the wild card in GOP race

Newt Gingrich engineered the Republican revolution in 1994, but few in his party mourned when he departed the House four years later, leaving behind colleagues embittered by an outsized ego and clashes with the Clinton White House that cost the GOP seats.

Now the former speaker is back as a presidential candidate, and despite successive poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Gingrich is showing no sign of bowing out as he campaigns in friendlier Southern territory. Lifted by strong debate performances, he appears committed to wage the same sort of scorched-earth campaign he did back in '94 to end decades of Democratic control of the House of Representatives.

That makes Gingrich, at once brilliant and volatile, a wild card in the race. The risk for his party is that his penchant for a take-no-prisoners approach will damage the eventual GOP nominee – especially if it is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner.

“Staying positive through Iowa, through $3.5 million of negative attacks, proved you either have to unilaterally disarm and leave the race, or you have to at least bring up your competitor’s record,” he said during Monday’s GOP presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Much of Gingrich's staying power is thanks largely to a timely check from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, which a pro-Gingrich "super PAC" (political-action committee) quickly converted into ads and a film assailing Mr. Romney.

The ads were payback for a $3 million ad campaign by a pro-Romney super PAC that savaged Gingrich, helping to drop him from the Iowa lead. Gingrich had pledged a "relentlessly positive" campaign, but as he left for New Hampshire, he dubbed Romney a "timid Massachusetts moderate" and his campaign took a darker turn.

As Gingrich flipped from calm to caustic in New Hampshire debates, fears grew among Republicans that the demons that undermined his speakership could give Democrats endless grist for their own assault on the GOP nominee.

In a Jan. 8 debate, he called Romney's claim that he is not a career politician "pious baloney" – a sound bite quickly adapted for a campaign ad.

"If Republicans can turn 'pious baloney' into ads, so can Democrats," says Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "It will be a very well-known phrase by fall, all paid for by Democratic contributors. Gingrich is quotable, if nothing else."

But the attack that most concerns conservative activists is the assault backed by Gingrich on Romney's record at private equity firm Bain Capital – Exhibit A for his claim to know better than Pres­ident Obama how to create jobs.

The film, "When Mitt Romney Comes to Town," is sponsored by Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich super PAC, which is legally barred from coordinating with the Gingrich campaign. The film depicts Romney and Bain Capital as corporate predators, "more ruthless than Wall Street," killing jobs and wrecking lives. The film is part of a $3.4 million ad campaign in South Carolina paid for by the super PAC.

Conservative critics hit back at Gingrich for cribbing from the Occupy Wall Street movement's playbook and challenging not just Romney but also the free-market system. In South Carolina, Sen. Jim DeMint (R), an icon in tea party circles, called on Gingrich to get back to a "positive focus."

Former Rep. Bob Walker (R) of Penn­sylvania, a longtime Gingrich ally, called Romney's record at Bain a fair target.

"Romney has made his years as a businessman who is going to come in and run government like a business the whole basis of his campaign," he adds. "That opens the door to coming in to look at how he ran the business."

Responding to his critics in a Jan. 11 interview on CNN, Gingrich condemned all super PACS as having "no responsibilities ... no connection to any pattern of reasonable politics." But every effort to persuade Romney, whom he dubbed "a money machine," to stay positive failed, he said. "You can't unilaterally disarm unless you get out of the race."

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