It looks like this has a possibility of happening. If Gingrich is the candidate what’s the game plan for Obama?
Be Obama instead of Gingrich.
Pretend Newt is Trump and mock him mercilessly. Wait for inevitable Gingrich temperment issues to surface.
I’m Canadian and my memory might be flawed, but didn’t Gingrich fight Clinton on going after Osama in his second term? I’d say drive that point home - especially since you were in power when you caught the guy.
That limits the “Republicans are the only ones to keep us safe” rhetoric.
Chuckle and celebrate early?
It depends. Will the debate be held in Austrian?
Not to have affairs while his wife is dying.
For Obama - Take the high road, try to basically ignore Newt altogether, focus on “We have lot’s of work left to do, so help me by sending more Democrats to the Congress”.
Anything he could say against Newt has already been said, and they still vote for him. He needs to avoid saying anything that can be interpreted as, “That’s the best you can do? You folks (Republicans) are nuts!” 'cause they’re a bit sensitive about being called nuts nowadays.
Repackage Mitt’s flip-flops for Newt, bring up quotes from conservatives for Newt being a patron for the 1% and combine it with his lobbying for Fannae Mae and his ethics problems, remind people of the government shutdowns, have surrogates bring up his marriages. Seriously, if Obama’s team can’t get this one in the bag short of a dead hooker in the Oval Office or a second surprise recession (which may still happen before the election; see the Euro), then he doesn’t deserve to be president.
I am still completely baffled that not only is Newt gaining momentum despite having every disadvantage that Romney theoretically has but is also picking up some of his support! WTF?
As they say about stocks, all that junk about Newt is already “priced in”.
I’m sure he could work some of this into the discussion. (To those who don’t feel like clicking, it’s an ad bashing Gingrich’s insider status and following the path to corruption and money, put together by the Ron Paul 2012 campaign.)
That is easy, Newt is the “not Romney” survivor, as time is running out, the heart is winning over the brain for the Republicans as one commentator said recently.
The point was that the “brain” would say that Romney was the best chance they had to attract moderates, unfortunately the “heart” of the Republicans is full of tea.
We have seen this movie already, tea party candidates removed the moderate Republicans in some primaries only to lose in the general election (Like in Jacksonville and Tampa’s recent mayoral races), Newt (if selected) will more likely than not scare the moderates in the presidential election.
Get people to needle the Newtster, until he cracks. His temper explodes at the drop of an insinuation.
Short temper + odd notions = Obama Victory.
It would be a mistake for Obama to prepare a defense against the intellectual midget that Gingrich is. Instead he needs to gear up for a contest with an overinflated blowhard with a talent for sophistry. If Obama is caught flat-footed in a pseudoacademic shitstorm, he won’t be able to re-litigate it 2 days later in the New York Times opinion page. He has to get this right on the first bounce.
Also, as is par for the course, he needs to find a way to skewer Gingrich while not appearing to bully him, lest he rub up against the tripwire of the right-wing victim complex (“Wahh! The big smarty was mean to our average guy! What a meany smarty! Average is better!”)
Keep referring to him as Dr. Gingrich.
I suspect the Obama strategy would be to:
-try and blame Newt for the perceived increase in hostility in Congress due to his bomb throwing while he was a rep. in the 90’s, and link that to current Congressional gridlock
-accuse him of lobbying once he left the House
-remind people that in the late 90’s, Gingrich was leader of a party that couldn’t stand him and more or less tossed him out. Link this to his earlier campaign staff leaving en masse earlier in the campaign as a general pattern of his being a crummy leader.
But more generally, the public is already pretty familiar with Newt. Unlike Romney, where public opinion is probably still malleable (as most people are still probably only vaguely familiar with him), Newt’s image is probably not going to change due to campaing ads. Happily for Obama, that image, left from the 90’s, is pretty negative, so team Obama really just needs to keep reminding him of why they hated him a decade ago, rather then come up with a new “narrative”.
I’ll also go ahead and predict that Gingrich’s flip-flopping won’t be a big theme in the Obama campaign against him. While Gingrich certainly has turned against several of the issues he spent most of the last decade promoting, I think the public image of him as conservative zealot is too ingrained to change with campaign ads.
And its also an image that a)people already have and don’t like, b) plays well off the image Obama has cultivated as the “adult in the room”, c) is likely to motivate liberal voters to go to the polls more then accusations of flip-flopping, d) is likely to turn moderates of Newt.
So the Obama message will be “crazed zealot who the public already decided it hated a decade ago for good reason”, not “flip-flopper”.
Light a cigar and prop his feet up on the desk, and wait to be re-elected in a landslide.
Make a humourous internet video playing off his middle name of Leeroy, er I mean Leroy.
Yup, that’s the one.
And then let the party do the dirty work of airing out all that laundry from the House ethics investigations.