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14 Nov 2011 16:08

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Politics: Here’s the thing about the Gingrich surge

  • yeah…Newt Gingrich is, to the surprise and annoyance of pundits everywhere, storing ahead of his GOP rivals in national polls. Newtmentum!
  • but…Polls also show the “ideas man” faring rather poorly against President Obama in a general election, trailing the POTUS by 812 points. source
  • » Now is probably a good time to bust out this gem from last summer.

14 Nov 2011 12:44

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Politics: Newt Gingrich barges into the lead

  • Flavor of the Week: It looks like Gingrich is the new Black Walnut. If history is any indicator, Newt’s lead will dissipate in a few weeks and Mitt Romney will once again bask in the warm light of inevitability, but hey, you never know. One thing to keep in mind: Primaries are conducted on a state-by-state basis, so national polls, while telling, aren’t the whole story. source

14 Oct 2011 11:49

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Politics: Why are some of the GOP candidates threatening to boycott Nevada?

  • what A number of GOP candidates — including Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich — have threatened to boycott the Nevada primary. Jon Huntsman went a step further, promising to boycott Tuesday’s Nevada-based debate.
  • why Nevada is attempting to gain influence on the primaries by pushing their primary up to mid-January, meaning New Hampshire would have to hold theirs in December to ensure that theirs is still the first one. In effect, it gives weaker candidates less time. source

12 Oct 2011 10:20

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Politics: Barney Frank rips Newt Gingrich for his Dodd-Frank assessment

  • I wish I knew that he was willing to listen to my advice, I would have given him some: I would have told him not to impeach Clinton, I would have told his successors not to go to war with Iraq, and I would have told [Tom] DeLay not to go on the dance show.
  • Rep. Barney Frank • Getting in an ice burn on Newt Gingrich, who ripped him and fellow Dodd-Frank architect Christopher Dodd, suggesting they should go to jail for daring to pass a financial reform. “If you want to put people in jail, you ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd,” Gingrich claimed during Tuesday night’s debate. As you might guess, Frank took umbrage with that assessment: “This notion we caused the problem that started while they were in charge even by Gingrich’s standards is very odd.” source

02 Aug 2011 22:46

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Politics: More evidence that Newt Gingrich has lots of fake Twitter followers

  • At first, we actually thought it might have been a bug. We have seen some pretty low consumer ratios in our testing, but Newt’s was the lowest we had ever seen.
  • PeekYou CEO and founder Michael Hussey • Discussing (and possibly confirming) the rumor that Newt Gingrich has a lot of fake followers on Twitter. Here’s the thing, though — PeekYou noticed this on their own, weeks before it became a story on Gawker. The number — 8 percent real people — was so low that PeekYou actually thought it was a glitch. And here’s the interesting thing — according to PeekYou, if you take Newt’s fake followers out, Sarah Palin has more followers than he does. That’s kinda crazy, and PeekYou is doing some more research on the phenomenon for Mashable to figure out if the alibi we’ve heard about Newt’s follower count (that his follower count perked up once he was added to Twitter’s “suggested users” list) is plausible. source

02 Aug 2011 11:11

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Politics: So, how did Newt Gingrich get all of his followers, anyway?

  • This crazy story’s been floating around the ether over the past day or so suggesting that Newt Gingrich’s campaign staff used a service to pay for most of his million-plus Twitter followers — a number which is ahead of every other presidential candidate besides Obama. But did he? A conflicting story’s been floating around suggesting that Newt has all those followers because he was one of the first Republican politicians on Twitter’s suggested user list, which to us sounds more realistic. No matter the case, the evidence is clear that Newt Gingrich is a social-media trailblazer who was one of the first politicians to use Google+. We’ll keep an eye on this one. source

06 Jul 2011 09:43

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Politics: Mitt Romney, fundraising machine; Newt Gingrich debt-saddled

  • $18.25 million the amount in donations that Mitt Romney received in the second quarter; the leading GOP candidate is pretty far ahead of the other guys
  • $1.2 million the amount in invoices that Newt Gingrich has; he’s paid them down by ten percent, but still has significant debt issues source
  • » Everyone else is kind of in the middle: With Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul hovering around the $4 million mark, and Herman Cain around $2.5 million, all pale in comparison to the Mittster, who is unemployed. Newt, who raised $2 million, was saddled with massive debt as a result of much of his senior campaign staff leaving; he has just $225,000 in the bank, which is extremely low. Newt, this presidential thing isn’t gonna work out.
 

22 Jun 2011 21:48

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U.S.: Gingrich: My campaign staff just couldn’t handle my unconventional ways

  • Philosophically, I am very different from normal politicians, and normal consultants found that very hard to deal with.
  • Newt Gingrich • Explaining, with David Brent-esque logic, why his campaign staff keeps quitting on him. We agree that Gingrich is different from normal politicians, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. source

21 Jun 2011 23:27

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Politics: Newt Gingrich needs to stop having Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  • funny A while back, Newt Gingrich took heat for having a huge line of credit at Tiffany and Co. — roughly in the $250,000 to $500,000 range. It was one of many things that week, so if you missed that wrinkle, it’s understandable. It’s been a disastrous campaign for Newt.
  • funnier Now, in the wake of two key fundraisers leaving the former House speaker’s campaign, The Washington Post found another credit line for Tiffany’s in his name — this one for roughly $500,000 to $1 million. If you need to sit down to crack up, we understand. source

21 Jun 2011 15:27

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Politics: Morale going from bad to worse at Gingrich campaign

  • 2 top fundraising staffers quit Newt’s flailing presidential campaign source
  • » The good ship Newt continues to sink: It was just twelve days ago that the Gingrich campaign suffered a high-level exodus of staffers. Now comes the news that two more have jumped ship — fundraising director Jody Thomas, and fundraising consultant Mary Heltman. If there’s one thing a presidential campaign needs, it’s having its money in order — departing staffers, however, accused Gingrich of having less interest in political spending than on chartering luxury jets. We’re at the point of considering this campaign little more than an exercise in raising Newt’s profile — he just doesn’t seem serious about it.