At a breakfast with about a dozen reporters this morning, the former Speaker, who earlier this week said it would take $30 million in pledges to get him to enter the race for the Republican presidential nomination, tamped down some of the speculation that had followed. Gingrich said: “The odds are very high that I won’t run.” But where he once talked about making that decision this month, he’s now saying he thinks he has until November.
What was more interesting were his thoughts about how the race is likely to play out. To have a prayer of prevailing in a general election, he said, whoever wins the Republican nomination is going to have to make a “clean break” (he repeated that phrase a number of times) with the status quo–in other words, with the way the Bush Administration has run the government. And he thinks that is a good message for the primary as well. “You think the Republican base is proud of New Orleans?” he said. “You don’t have to be nasty about George Bush. You can say he’s a decent man. … [And] if that leads to some unhappiness [in the White House], you tolerate it.”
He also said he believes “the odds are even money” that the GOP race for the nomination will not be over on February 5. In fact, he said, there may well be at least four candidates still in the race: Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain. He added: “The question is whether [Mike] Huckabee continues to develop. … No Republican can win unless they break out of the current straightjacket. Huckabee’s come the closest.” He said Huckabee has done a good job in building on the buzz he got for his surprise second-place finish in the Iowa straw poll, and was particularly impressed by Huckabee’s move in challenging the late-entering Thompson to a debate.
As for the Democratic contest, Gingrich says he thinks it is all but over, and Hillary Clinton will win. The fact that Hillary and Bill managed TV appearances on Ellen and Oprah the same day is only the latest evidence of “the degree to which that is a machine,” Newt said. “As a professional, I am very impressed.”