Gingrich: I Won't Abandon Big Ideas

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says he will go back to his emphasis on big ideas, despite the snickering some of those ideas received from his competitors and other critics. The former House speaker particularly drew heat for his idea of colonizing the moon.

Gingrich’s shift represents a return to basics after a string of primary defeats, most notably Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi, two states he was counting on to revive his candidacy, Politico reports.

In a campaign appearance in Illinois Thursday, Gingrich trumpeted his space ideas, discussed brain research, and offered tales of history, including the Wright brothers, Abraham Lincoln, and the Transcontinental Railroad.

“What you’ll see is a much clearer definition of a visionary conservative as compared to the more traditional Romney/Santorum conservatism,” he said. “We need a visionary leader with very big and bold ideas. This is a very big, very bold country.”

Gingrich acknowledged mistakes in his campaign. “We should have figured out some way to have transcended the attacks and stayed aggressively positive,” he said.

“We’re going to go back to what we did at the first attack, big ideas on brain science, on space, paying off the national debt with gas royalties. These are big concepts. And my opponents can ridicule them, as they did on space, but I think the country’s not going to ridicule them.”