Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich essentially is ignoring all the primaries/caucuses between his stinging defeat in Florida on Jan. 31 and Super Tuesday on March 6,
Politico reports. That includes Nevada, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Arizona, and Washington.
The former House speaker hopes a win in his home state of Georgia will spark victories in other southern states and then spread momentum to the rest of the country. Georgia’s 76 delegates are the most that any state awards on Super Tuesday.
But a Southern strategy won’t do the trick, Republican political operatives say. The only Southern states holding votes on Super Tuesday are Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. And Gingrich isn’t even on the ballot in Virginia.
Three significant primaries/caucuses take place before Super Tuesday: Michigan, Arizona, and Washington. Gingrich isn’t competing hard in any of them.
“If you win Georgia and Tennessee, that’s not enough, and I’m not so sure that Newt is going to win Tennessee,” Chip Saltsman, former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, told Politico. “You’ve got to win multiple states in multiple regions to say you’ve got momentum to be the nominee.”
Christian Ferry, a senior adviser to John McCain in 2008, agrees. “After the ups and downs of this cycle, I hesitate to make any predictions, but I don’t see how Gingrich’s strategy works,” he told Politico. “He is reliant on debates for attention, and Romney is wisely not playing into that strategy.”
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