Politics

Gingrich: I’m not perfect, but I’m better than Romney

admin Contributor
Font Size:

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich acknowledged Monday that he isn’t the perfect candidate but contends he’s “a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney and a lot more electable than anybody else.”

Gingrich, a former House speaker whose presidential campaign is on the rise just weeks before the first nominating contests take place, offered sharp criticism of Romney. For months, the Georgia Republican has refused to criticize his rivals and instead has kept his focus on President Barack Obama.

That all seems to be over. Branding the former Massachusetts governor as a political opportunist, Gingrich said it is one thing to change positions if new facts become available and quite another to shift positions for political gain.

“It’s wrong to go around and adopt radically different positions based on your need of any one election, then people will have to ask themselves, ‘What will you tell me next time?'” Gingrich told WSC-FM radio Monday morning ahead of a three-day campaign swing through South Carolina.

Romney has changed his positions on gay rights and abortion since his first political campaign in 1994. Since that unsuccessful effort, he has publicly shifted rightward.

It isn’t enough to convince some, including Gingrich.

“We think there has to be a solid conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Gingrich said during a morning interview.

By evening, he seemed to temper that.

“I don’t know of a single person who is running who would not be a very effective member of my administrative team,” Gingrich said at the College of Charleston.

At times Gingrich has blamed the media for stoking the divisions among the contenders in an attempt “to get Republicans fighting with each other,” as he put it during an NBC debate. “You want to puff this up into some giant thing,” Gingrich said then.

Gingrich has seen his political standing rise as he has posted solid debate performances and laid the groundwork for a traditional campaign. In South Carolina, for instance, he has five offices and his supporters are making thousands of phone calls every day.

Gingrich packed a town hall-style event Monday night at the College of Charleston. Supporters who couldn’t get in lined up around the block in the hopes that organizers would let more people inside and out of the pouring rain.

While Gingrich’s two divorces and admissions of infidelity are unlikely to endear him to Christian conservatives who have a great sway here, he is pitching himself as the candidate who can best challenge Obama, who is deeply unpopular among Republicans.

He questioned Obama’s allegiances, saying that the administration had sided with other nations in challenging tough illegal immigration laws in South Carolina and other states.

“No American president has the right to side with foreigners against the people and laws of the United States,” he told the College of Charleston audience.

But Gingrich knows his own shortcomings.

“No person except Christ has ever been perfect,” Gingrich told WSC-FM. “So I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate. I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney and a lot more electable than anybody else.”

He added: “I’m the one candidate who can bring together national security conservatives and economic conservatives and social conservatives in order to make sure we have a conservative nominee.”

Gingrich also faces criticism for how he spent his time after stepping down as the top Republican in the House. He built a network of advocacy organizations, think tanks and consulting firms. He insists he has never lobbied and touted his private sector experience: “I think we do very good work.”

And Gingrich, too, is facing questions about his position on immigration. His rivals have suggested it would offer amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“I’m for controlling the border. I am against amnesty. I’m very disappointed that at least one of my friends has been, for the last four days, going around saying things that she knows are not true,” Gingrich said, taking on Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who has seized on the issue.

Gingrich has proposed that local communities have the power to determine whether their neighbors can remain in the United States despite their immigration status.

“We ought to have a citizen certification board in every community and citizens should make the decision whether that person should get a path to legality but not citizenship — no right to vote, doesn’t become a citizen,” he said.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel