Gingrich digs trenches, prepares for long war to win Republican nomination

TAMPA, Fla. — Newt Gingrich, who is setting the stage for a prolonged battle for the Republican presidential nomination, said Sunday morning that he did not believe his approach would damage the GOP.

In response to a question from The Hill at a news conference, Gingrich said: “The long campaign in 2008 between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama brought them to win the presidency. There is no reason that a long campaign has to be a bad thing.”

Presenting himself as the standard-bearer of anti-establishment insurgents within the party, Gingrich added: “This is a campaign about the future of America and the future of the Republican Party. Do you want an insider who is part of the system… or do you want somebody who is prepared to challenge that system head-on and insist on very dramatic change in Washington? I think that’s worth a serious debate and I think that debate will go all the way to the convention.”

{mosads}Faced with a continued collapse in his Florida poll numbers — he was down by double-digits against Romney in two polls released Sunday morning — Gingrich is scorching the earth and digging new trenches as he retreats from expectations that he can win in the Sunshine State.

Gingrich’s press secretary, R.C. Hammond, told The Hill Sunday morning that the campaign was readying itself for a long battle for delegates.

“If you look at the delegate count right now — what’s been awarded after Tuesday, and what’s going to be awarded going forward — we haven’t even dipped our toe in the water yet,” he said.

But many Republicans will simply not believe Gingrich’s argument that such a strategy can be executed without deepening existing fissures within the party.

His assertion, made repeatedly over the past 24 hours, that he will continue his campaign until the Republican National Convention in August is likely intended to forestall pressure on him to leave the race if he suffers a disappointing result on Tuesday.

His remarks at the news conference also reflected the greater personal enmity that has crept into the campaign here. Gingrich attacked Romney in the most vigorous way to date, insisting “I believe the Republican Party will not nominate a pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase moderate from Massachusetts. They will not nominate somebody who raises millions from Wall Street to run ads that are false.”

The latter remark referred to attacks by the Romney campaign and its surrogates on Gingrich’s past political history. Those assaults have apparently gotten under Gingrich’s skin.

“I have a very long record as a very hard-hitting Reagan conservative. And the idea that that record would be deliberately falsified by a Massachusetts moderate using money from Wall Street… is really about as big an outrage as I’ve had in my career,” a bristling Gingrich said at the news conference.

Of the two major new polls released Sunday, the NBC News/Marist poll gave Romney a 15-point lead while a poll commissioned by a number of Florida news organizations including the Tampa Bay Times showed him leading Gingrich by 11 percentage points.

Gingrich implicitly acknowledged the diminution of his chances in Florida when he complained in strong terms about the effect of negative advertising during an appearance on the ABC program “This Week” Sunday morning.

“It’s only when he can mass money to focus on carpet-bombing with negative ads that he gains any traction at all,” he said of Romney.