Slowly, parts of the Republican elite seem to be coming around to Newt Gingrich.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday night on CNN that Newt Gingrich may be more electable than Mitt Romney in the general election. While Newt has surged in the polls, Mitt Romney has always been presumed the better candidate in a match-up with President Obama.
“My gut tells me right now as I look at it that Gingrich might actually be the stronger candidate,” Giuliani said on CNN, “because I think he can make a broader connection than Mitt Romney to those Reagan Democrats.”
Giuliani commented that Newt had more of a common touch and wasn’t subject to attacks of elitism that would plague Romney in the general. Romney’s not connecting with voters, he explained.
To Giuliani, Newt’s rise is similar to the sudden surge that gave John McCain the nomination by the end of February 2008. “Then John rose from the ashes, took the nomination from (Mike) Huckabee, from me, Romney. And did it in a four-week period. We kind of have a tendency to do this as Republicans,” said Giuliani.
He counseled that if Newt is to do what McCain did, he’ll need to bolster his organization so that he can turn his momentum into wins after Florida’s January 31 primary.
This makes Giuliani the second top tier Republican to lend credence to Newt’s recent surge in the polls. On CNN Monday, former vice president Dick Cheney cautioned that Newt should not be taken lightly:
He [Gingrich] was persistent and he was tenacious and he kept it up and kept it up and kept it up and finally by ’94 he’s the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives with the Republican majority. I wouldn’t underestimate him.
Cheney doubled down again on his assessment Tuesday on ABC: “Newt was the first Republican Speaker of the House in 40 years. So there’s a lot of substance there that I think is very positive.”
