The Fast Fix: Can Newt Gingrich win in 2012? (The Fast Fix)
Newt Gingrich is officially in the presidential race for 2012, but does he stand a chance of winning?
Newt Gingrich is running for president.
The former Speaker of the House has been eying the race for months and is removing any doubt about his plans with an announcement via Facebook and Twitter this week.
But is Gingrich a serious candidate for the nomination?
He has considerable strengths. He’s universally known among Republican primary voters, is a proven fundraiser and is widely regarded as a the brightest policy mind in the party.
Those strengths are offset by equally large weaknesses.
Gingrich’s ego is legendary and occasionally gets him into trouble. Gingrich has also had a tumultuous personal life that could make him unacceptable to social conservatives.
It’s not surprising then that his political career has been marked by high highs and low lows. Gingrich was the architect of the 1994 Republican revolution that gave the GOP control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years.
But, just four years later, Gingrich resigned from the House amid considerable unhappiness from within his own party about his time as Speaker and mistaken predictions about GOP seat gains in the 1998 election.
The test for Gingrich is whether he can stay on message for the next 9 months with the glare of the national spotlight on him and his rivals for the nomination aiming to goad him into a rhetorical misstep.
If he can stay the course, Gingrich could surprise. if not, his once-promising political career will end with more a whimper than a bang.
Either way, he can write about it in his 24th book—-
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