By William Douglas, McClatchy Newspapers –
SNELLVILLE, Ga. — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich dismissed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Sunday as a “not very convincing front-runner” and challenged former Sen. Rick Santorum’s conservative credentials ahead of Tuesday’s Republican presidential primaries in 10 states.
As Romney took a quick campaign tour through Gingrich’s Georgia backyard and in Tennessee, Gingrich appeared on four Sunday TV news shows to proclaim that he’s still a viable candidate and try to dispel the notion that the quest for the Republican nomination has boiled down to a race between Romney and Santorum.
“This is going to go on for a good while,” Gingrich said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Gov. Romney, who’s outspent all the rest of us by multitudes, is a front-runner, without question, but I think he’s not a very convincing front-runner, and he’s a long way from having closed out this race.”
Gingrich predicted that Santorum’s campaign will suffer once it moves beyond Ohio, another Super Tuesday state. Santorum and Romney are nearly even in Ohio, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll.
“Santorum has been historically a labor union senator from Pennsylvania,” Gingrich said. “And when you get him out of the industrial states, I think it gets tougher for Rick to put together a majority, so we’ll see how it goes after next Tuesday.”
Santorum, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said he and Gingrich are competing for the same pool of conservative voters but stopped short of calling on Gingrich to drop out.
“We have the anti-Romney vote, if you will. Both Gingrich and I are slugging away,” Santorum said. “As you know, it’s always harder when you get two conservative candidates to go head-to-head. And if you look at all the races, it’s Gov. Romney and me” usually finishing first or second.
After staying out of Georgia and Tennessee all last week, Romney arrived Sunday in Snellville, an Atlanta suburb, where he and wife, Ann, helped serve pancakes to supporters in a high school common room.
He avoided attacking his Republican rivals directly and criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy and the Middle East. He said that if Obama is re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon.
However, while trumpeting his business credentials, Romney took a veiled dig at Gingrich and Santorum.
“It’s critical that we nominate someone who understands the economy, who has credibility when it comes to the economy, not someone who can just spout the words that they’ve read,” he said in Snellville.
Gingrich was buoyed Sunday by a Georgia Newspaper Partnership poll that showed him with a commanding lead over his Republican rivals in the Peach State. Thirty-eight percent of likely Republican supported Gingrich, 24 percent backed Romney, 22 percent supported Santorum, and 3 percent were for Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Twelve percent of Republican voters said they were undecided.
However, the poll also revealed lingering doubts about Gingrich’s overall electability among voters in a state he represented in the House for 20 years.
Thirty-nine percent of the state’s likely Republican voters said they thought that Romney stands the best chance of defeating Obama in November, while only 30 percent chose Gingrich and 12 percent selected Santorum.
