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bjbjLULU MARGARET WARNER: Gingrich told our Gwen Ifill today in South Carolina that Perry's
endorsement will help him keep up the momentum. Gwen talked with him aboard his campaign bus.
GWEN IFILL: Mr. Speaker, welcome. So, today, you got Rick Perry's endorsement. Is that
the consolidation of the conservative vote that you have been talking about? NEWT GINGRICH:
Yeah, it's another step. I think, frankly, when Michele Bachmann stepped out, when Herman
Cain stepped out, at each stage -- and even a little bit with Tim Pawlenty -- at each
stage, you began to see conservatives who would not go to Romney because he was just
too liberal for their background. And so I think that Gov. Perry actually endorsing me
today was very helpful and I think will make a very big difference both around the country
and an enormous difference in Texas. GWEN IFILL: Does that mean Rick Santorum should
now do the same thing? NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I mean Rick Santorum has to do what he wants
to. People, after all, said back in June and July that I was dead. And I didn't stop. So,
Rick has every right to keep running. He just, after all, was declared the winner in Iowa.
But I think for Rick's voters, I m going to make a very direct appeal, because if you
look at the polling numbers, I'm the only candidate who could potentially stop Mitt
Romney. And so voters who don't want a Massachusetts moderate or, by the standard of most Republicans,
a liberal, I'm the only practical vote in order to stop him. GWEN IFILL: Does it make
a difference that Rick Santorum has won in Iowa? NEWT GINGRICH: No, I think it actually
takes a little momentum away from Romney, because he now can't claim to have set history,
which he was doing in for a couple days. And it just reminds people this is a wide-open
race. GWEN IFILL: You said that you were left for dead last summer in Iowa. What changed?
What explains the rebound? NEWT GINGRICH: First of all, I was never as weak as the Washington
pundits kept saying. And, second, talking about big ideas, big solutions, developing
a 21st century contract with America, all those things came together in a way that was
very, very effective. GWEN IFILL: Just a few minutes ago, Mitt Romney's campaign put out
a statement from Peter King, who called you erratic, self-serving and guilty of narcissism.
Everybody on the air in South Carolina seems to be targeting you. How do you respond to
that? NEWT GINGRICH: They're for Mitt Romney. I mean, you know, Mitt Romney's guys are going
to say what Mitt Romney's guys want to say. The fact is, as speaker of the House, I helped
create the first majority in 40 years, the first reelected majority since 1928. We won
three straight elections under my leadership. We balanced the budget for four years, the
only times that's happened in your lifetime. We reformed welfare, and two out of three
people went to work or went to school. We cut taxes in the largest capital gains tax
cut in history, and the result was we got unemployment down to 4.2 percent. I don't
see any of my critics who have balanced the budget since I left. I don't see any of my
critics who have reformed an entitlement since I left. So, in terms of -- am I hard-driving,
do I get things done, do I sometimes hurt people's feelings by forcing them to get things
done? You betcha. GWEN IFILL: You think this is about hurt feelings? NEWT GINGRICH: In
some cases, sure it is. GWEN IFILL: How about your ex-wife? Is that about hurt feelings?
There have been so many questions today about Marianne Gingrich raising these questions
about you. Is that hurt feelings? NEWT GINGRICH: My only position, I'm not going to say anything
negative about Marianne. My daughters have both written a letter to ABC News saying it
was totally inappropriate. They are prepared to talk on the record. And anybody who wants
any detailed conversation can talk to Kathy and Jackie. I'm not going to discuss it. GWEN
IFILL: I understand that you were just asked about it at a rally in a kind of circular
way. Someone asked about what they should do about their feelings about your baggage,
your background, your mistakes, as you put it. NEWT GINGRICH: Sure. I gave him the same
answer I give everyone, which is I have made mistakes in my life. I have had to seek forgiveness
and reconciliation with God. I am a 68-year-old grandfather. I have a great marriage with
Callista. I am very close to my daughters and my son-in-laws. We are very close to our
grandchildren. People have to look and decide. GWEN IFILL: Until today, so much of the discussion
in this race has been about taxes and about income. You said yesterday you were going
to release your income taxes. When are going to see those? NEWT GINGRICH: We re going to
release it later on today. GWEN IFILL: Later on today. Do you think that this is something
which resonates with voters? NEWT GINGRICH: I think that it is very difficult for Romney
to ask people to vote for him without revealing his taxes, just because there are so many
questions being raised. But, you know, it did turn out I paid probably twice a big a
percentage of taxes as he is did based on the initial look at the two of them. GWEN
IFILL: There have been a lot of questions about your calling the president the food
stamp president. There are 839,000, I think, people in South Carolina who are on food stamps.
What does that message say to them? NEWT GINGRICH: It says to them I would like to help them
get a job, so they can get a paycheck. I want to be able to get their income high enough
that they don't need food stamps. The president has not been able to get the economy working.
And the president has actually put more Americans on food stamps through his policies than any
president in American history. That s just a fact. So, I d like to run as the candidate
of opportunity, much like Reagan in 1980, with a program to create jobs, to stimulate
the economy, to have economic growth. The president's doing just the opposite. Look
what he just did with the Keystone pipeline, where he killed 20,000 to 50,000 jobs. I think
they have no sense in the Obama White House about how to create jobs. GWEN IFILL: When
you talk about food stamps and working and jobs, how about the working poor, people who
actually have jobs and just aren't earning enough? Is that also President Obama's problem?
NEWT GINGRICH: My goal is to get those folk to have better jobs. Part of the reason I'm
proposing a dramatic change in unemployment compensation, tying it to a training program,
is that if somebody can't find a job, during the period we're giving them money, they should
be spending their time learning, so they can get a better job. GWEN IFILL: Tonight, you
have a big debate, Saturday, big election here in South Carolina. What has to happen
in the next 24 to 48 hours for you to come out of South Carolina still smiling? NEWT
GINGRICH: We just have to keep the momentum up. I mean, the clearer it gets that Romney
was a pro-gun control, pro-tax increase, pro-abortion governor of Massachusetts, that the gap between
his commercials and his actual record is amazing, that he was 47th in job creation, fourth from
the bottom, if we can keep that distinction between my record and his record, between
a conservative and somebody who is pretty liberal by Republican standards, I think we
w ll have a great Saturday. So, through the debate tonight and through tomorrow and Saturday
-- we will campaign all day Saturday ll just keep saying the same things. GWEN IFILL: And
if Mitt Romney wins on Saturday, you stand by your statement that if he wins in South
Carolina, the Republicans will nominate a moderate who will lose to Barack Obama in
the fall? NEWT GINGRICH: I think it gets a little harder to stop him, although, as Karl
Rove pointed out two days ago, he s not doing well enough to be very convincing. And if
you add the conservative vote together between Santorum and me, we would beat Romney by 60-40.
So my job -- if Rick stays in the race, my job is to get his voters to decide they want
to help beat Romney, which means they vote for me. GWEN IFILL: Mr. Speaker, thank you
so much. NEWT GINGRICH: Thank you. Good to see you. GWEN IFILL: It s good to see you,
too. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Gwen is with us now. Gwen, you are a traveling woman. You are now
in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Tell us how the people around Gingrich feel
about his boost in the polls. Do they think this is real? What are they saying? GWEN IFILL:
I think you can say, Judy -- you and I have covered a lot of these things -- that this
was the single craziest day in the 2012 campaign so far, with candidates in and out, and Newt
Gingrich, who he admits he was left for roadkill in Iowa not long ago, all of a sudden riding
this wave. And they're giddy. They're giddy about it. But they're also cautious about
it. You heard him saying he is planning to go after Rick Santorum's voters. He is going
to tell everybody that Mitt Romney is a liberal. But as we were leaving his bus today, they
were also conferring among themselves about what they were going to do about these latest
allegations involving his ex-wife. In fact, during that entire interview, Callista Gingrich
was standing just behind the camera listening very closely to every conversation, especially
to the part about Marianne Gingrich. So they know that they could be in a slippery slope
here. Just as fast as you rise in these kinds of campaigns, sometimes, you can slip. JUDY
WOODRUFF: So, they're in other words, there may be some concern on their part that they
may have to answer they may have to say more about the former Mrs. Gingrich's comment.
GWEN IFILL: Oh, there s definitely concern. I think one of the things we're watching for
in this debate tonight is whether any of the other candidates directly bring it up, whether
they want to raise questions about his moral capability. We saw Rick Perry in his withdrawal
today attempt to inoculate Newt Gingrich on this point, and repeat some of the things
that Gingrich himself has said about being forgiven by God for his past behavior. So
it will be interesting to see whether any of them have the gumption to throw it directly
in his face or whether this becomes a debate tonight about other things. JUDY WOODRUFF:
Gwen, you mentioned that somebody in the crowd there with Gingrich had raised his baggage.
I think that was the term you used in the interview. What are people saying to him as
they listen to him? What are they responding to? GWEN IFILL: I find it interesting in a
very friendly crowd of a couple hundred people in Beaufort today at an otherwise very well-received
event that someone had the nerve -- it was only the first or second question he got from
the crowd -- to ask him -- he said, I like a lot about you, but I'm a little worried
about your past. And as I worked the crowd and talked to people and asked them what they
thought about Newt Gingrich, a lot were curious for the first time. They were people who were
paying attention, who didn't know what they thought about Mitt Romney, who at least told
me they still hadn't decided what they were going to do on Saturday. And they were saying
to me, yeah, but we want to know that this guy doesn't -- shares our values is the term
people most likely use. That could be his Achilles' heel in a state as conservative
as South Carolina and where so many of the voters who come out to Saturday's primary
will be motivated not only by economic conservatism, but also by social conservatism, and want
to make sure this guy is who he says he is. JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Gwen, you asked Speaker
Gingrich, former Speaker Gingrich, about this, this notion that to nominate Mitt Romney is
picking a moderate who would have a very hard time going up against President Obama. Is
that an argument that South Carolina voters seem to be accepting, buying into? GWEN IFILL:
Well, I will tell you this, Judy. It's an argument that every single candidate in this
race is making. If you turn on the television here in South Carolina, in fact, I don't think
you don't see furniture ads or news or weather anymore in the mornings. What you see are
campaign ads. And a lot of these campaign ads are targeting Romney. When they do, it's
saying he's like Obama, that they worry about that, but that a lot more of these ads are
targeting Newt Gingrich. You hear people like Ron Paul going after Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum
going after Newt Gingrich as a Washington insider. Rick Perry, who dropped out just
today, just a week ago was talking about all the insiders in the race. And today he endorsed
one of the insiders. So, you know, the good news for Newt Gingrich is he s rising in the
polls and he's within barking distance of Mitt Romney. The bad news is that means that
everybody is training their scrutiny on him, and I don't think he has seen the end of that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, all the more reason to watch tonight's debate, Gwen. They're down
to four. And I know you ll be right there and you will be reporting for us tomorrow
night. Gwen, thanks very much. GWEN IFILL: And then there were four. (LAUGHTER) GWEN
IFILL: Thanks, Judy. urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags State urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
City urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags country-region urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
place MARGARET WARNER: Gingrich told our Gwen Ifill today in South Carolina that Perry's
endorsement will help him keep up the momentum Normal Microsoft Office Word MARGARET WARNER:
Gingrich told our Gwen Ifill today in South Carolina that Perry's endorsement will help
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