Newt Gingrich pledged to be the bigger person in Iowa. And, if the polls are to be believed, that sealed his fate in the state.
What’s an Iowan Newtiac to do? Hope for the best, lick your wounds and pray that Gingrich drops the nice guy act as he makes a beeline for his purported South Carolina firewall.
“It would help if he were to answer some of the accusations because they’re exaggerated and they’re stretched,” said Charlie Gruschow, an Iowa tea party activist who switched to helping Gingrich after working for Herman Cain. “It would be helpful if there was a rebuttal.”
Gruschow says he’s “still quite optimistic that we’ll place well in Iowa,” but like others TPM talked to in the state Monday, Gruschow’s expectations of Gingrich’s performance have dialed back considerably.
That’s not a surprise. No one expects Gingrich to be the man in Iowa he was thought to be a week or so ago, before millions of dollars in negative ads aimed at the former House Speaker did their job and brought his gravity-defying surge back down to earth. (It’s worth noting here that Gingrich always had the kind of personal and political baggage to make winning Iowa unlikely anyway. It’s not like he didn’t give his opponents a lot to work with.)
Partially out of financial limitations, Gingrich’s main response to the deluge of television and mail has been to turn the other cheek. Back when he rolled out the plan to stay “relentlessly positive” when he opened his first Iowa campaign office earlier this month, Gingrich supporters there who spoke with TPM praised their man for staying above the fray.
But as the ads have taken their toll, Gingrich backers have begun to question the strategy.
“Negative ads really do work,” said Linn County, IA GOP chair Jim Conklin, a Gingrich supporter. “I’m proud that he hasn’t been negative, but you have enough political savvy to know that when they’re slinging mud, it works.”
