NASHVILLE -- Newt Gingrich on Monday said the United States is trying to achieve the impossible in Afghanistan amid escalating violence over the burning of Qurans on a U.S. military base.
Speaking at a luncheon attended by local Republicans here, Gingrich briefly touched on the war in Afghanistan, where two U.S. military officers were gunned down during violent protests last week. The U.S. military has said the Muslim holy books were burned by mistake at Bagram Airfield. Gingrich has criticized President Barack Obama for apologizing for the incident.
“We are not going to fix Afghanistan. It is not possible,” Gingrich said. “These are people who have spent several thousand years hating foreigners. And what we have done by staying is become the new foreigners.
“This is a real problem. And there are some problems where you have to say, ‘You know, you are going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life ... because you clearly don’t want to learn from me how to be unmiserable.’ And that is what you are going to see happen.”
Gingrich also went on the offensive against former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania during his one-day campaign swing through Tennessee, calling him a “Big Labor Republican” and predicting his surging opponent’s fortunes will change amid a chaotic race he said could remain competitive all the way to the Republican National Convention in August.
Gingrich highlighted how Santorum lost by a wide margin in his 2006 bid to keep his U.S. Senate seat. He said he has a more conservative voting record than Santorum and accused the former U.S. senator of siding with union interests.
“If it is as people expect and you end up with a [Mitt] Romney victory in Michigan tomorrow, I think you will see Santorum getting a very different second look,” Gingrich said. “He has had two weeks of being the alternative.”
Gingrich, who has said he must do well in the Southern states to win the GOP nomination, also predicted he would win the Alabama and Mississippi primaries next month.
The former House speaker is trailing in the delegate count with just one state primary win under his belt -- South Carolina. He is hoping for strong finishes here and in Georgia and Texas following a string of losses to Santorum and Romney.
Tennessee offers the third-largest haul of delegates on Super Tuesday at 58, behind Georgia and Ohio. Gingrich is in fourth place in Tennessee, with support from 10 percent of likely GOP primary voters in this state, according to this month’s Vanderbilt University poll.
Santorum has the lead in the poll with 33 percent of the vote, followed by Romney at 17 percent and then U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas with 13 percent. Ten percent said they would vote for none of those candidates, and 14 percent said they were undecided in the poll, which was conducted from Feb. 16 to Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Paul, Romney and Santorum were all scheduled to campaign across Michigan on Monday. Romney grew up in Michigan but faces a tough challenge there after opposing the federal bailout of the auto industry. He is scrambling to hold off a surging Santorum. Michigan and Arizona are set to hold their primaries Tuesday. Romney’s campaign got a boost last weekend after picking up an endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
Paid Gingrich campaign staffers have been pouring into Tennessee, where they have opened at least three campaign offices, said state Rep. Tony Shipley, a Republican from Kingsport who is the Tennessee state director for Gingrich's campaign.
Asked how important it is for Gingrich to win Tennessee, Shipley said: “Just like everybody was talking: If Romney can’t win Michigan, he has got a problem. If we can’t win the South, I think that would be a problem.”
Gingrich also attended a roundtable discussion concerning the federal health care overhaul here Monday and later joined a rally with hundreds of enthusiastic supporters at the state Capitol. He said he would work to repeal the federal health care overhaul legislation. Nashville has a $30 billion health care industry, the city’s largest and fastest employer, according to the Nashville Health Care Council.
Gingrich is scheduled to return Tuesday to Georgia for several days of campaigning. The former congressman, who graduated from high school in Columbus and from Emory University in Atlanta before teaching history at West Georgia College, has rallies planned for Carrollton, Dalton and Rome on Tuesday and Covington and Gainesville on Wednesday. He is expected to campaign in Cherokee and Cobb counties Thursday.
During a recent two-day swing through Georgia, he hedged whether he could win the state he represented in Congress for 20 years on Super Tuesday. But in Tennessee on Monday, he highlighted his tenacity.
“I have the longest record of any candidate in this race of being able to somehow re-emerge over and over again,” he said. “I think you could easily end up in a race which will go to the convention for the first time in your lifetime -- which for every reporter will be very exciting and I suspect for most of you it will be very exciting. For us, it will be very nerve-racking.”
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