During a tele-townhall Monday evening, Newt Gingrich had a verbal face-off with a caller who insisted the former House speaker could still win the Iowa caucuses.
Gingrich had said earlier in the day that he was unlikely to win the Iowa caucuses. “I don’t think I’m going to win,” he told reporters Monday afternoon.
This did not sit well with “Jeff,” a caller to the tele-townhall who had been working long hours as a precinct captain for Gingrich.
“Tonight, I see on Fox News that you say you’re not going to win Iowa,” Jeff said. “It’s like, it just let the air out of me.”
Gingrich responded by saying he would come in “very close” with “a shot at being anywhere from second to fourth” place.
“And I think it’s going to make a big difference where we are on that list,” he continued.
An exasperated Jeff disagreed with Gingrich’s analysis. “You’re gonna win tomorrow night,” he said. “And I want to hear you telling people you’re gonna win tomorrow night, because you’ve got good people out there that are campaigning for you.”
Jeff insisted that he would take votes away from Romney, whom he described as “that guy who’s been throwing all those negative ads on you.” (RELATED: Full coverage of Newt Gingrich)
“I’m going to pull votes from him. I’m going to work hard at that caucus to get those votes from those people — for you,” Jeff said. “And please –”
Gingrich then interrupted Jeff, and promised to refer to him in the future when talking about the campaign’s die-hard supporters.
“The only thing I’ll say about this election is that we’ve got strong leaders in every caucus,” Gingrich said, insisting as he had earlier in the day that the large number of undecided caucus-goers could still work in his favor.
Jeff, however, still sounded unsatisfied with Gingrich’s answer.
“I heard you say that on TV and I was like ‘oh my God, I’ve been working so hard to put this together,’ and then you say you’re not going to win. And then I was like ‘no, no, no! That’s the wrong thing to say! I know you’re probably tired, but –’”
At that point Gingrich interrupted again and said that if he does win it will be an “enormous achievement.”
“I would be very deeply in your debt,” Gingrich said, and promised to bring up Jeff during a broadcast of Sean Hannitty’s Fox News program later that evening.
“It’s not that we want you to win,” Jeff said as he left the call. “It’s that we need you to win.”