Plotting a comeback, Newt Gingrich is looking beyond the Republican primaries in Michigan and Arizona today and counting on Southern voters to rejuvenate his struggling presidential campaign.
Gingrich is pinning his hopes on winning Georgia and showing strength in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and other Super Tuesday states voting March 6. The former House speaker was starting a three-day bus tour in Georgia, which he represented in Congress for 20 years, to fend off rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
By skipping Michigan and Arizona, Gingrich was betting that one of his rivals will emerge from Tuesday's primaries a weaker candidate, giving Gingrich a chance to become the main alternative to the front-runner and claw his way back into the topsy-turvy race.
"The same media which said I was dead in the fall, I was ahead in December, I was dead in early January, I was ahead in mid-January, all of the sudden they're going to say ... Gingrich will be back again," the candidate said Monday in Nashville.
Gingrich has acknowledged that winning Georgia is crucial to his campaign but has stopped short of saying a loss there would force him out of race.
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