PORT FOURCHON, La. – On the eve of the Louisiana primary, as polls show him struggling to earn even a single delegate, Newt Gingrich gave a spirited defense to repeated questions as to why he is still running for president.
The former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia compared himself to President Warren G. Harding and – in an unfortunate analogy for Braves fans – the St. Louis Cardinals in explaining his ability to come back from a large deficit to win the Republican nomination. His only chance of doing so will be to combine with the campaigns of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul to deny front-runner Mitt Romney the clinching 1,144 delegates before the August GOP convention in Tampa, then prevail in an open convention, a scenario that has not occurred in either party in decades.
“The purpose of the process is to have the process,” Gingrich said at a rare news conference. “The morning that Governor Romney crosses 1,144, he'll be the nominee. Until he crosses 1,144, the nomination is still open.”
Gingrich performs best in the South, but polls show him lagging even here in the bayou, in danger of not meeting the 25 percent threshold to garner some of the state’s proportionally allocated delegates Saturday. A Public Policy Polling survey out Friday shows Santorum with 42 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 28 percent, Gingrich with 18 percent and Paul with 8 percent. An American Research Group poll had Santorum with 43 percent, Romney at 27 percent, Gingrich at 20 percent and Paul at 6 percent.
Gingrich said he will soldier on regardless of the outcome here. As evidence that his lagging candidacy could rise again, Gingrich cited stumbles by the campaigns of both his chief rivals in recent days, as a Romney adviser compared the candidate to an Etch A Sketch and Santorum intimated that if Romney was nominated then the country might as well re-elect President Barack Obama. Both remarks brought swift controversy.
Gingrich added that he draws energy from his fans.
“The people who talk to me at rallies, the people who walk up to me afterwards, the number of people who walk up to me and say, ‘Please stay in the race,’ is pretty remarkable,” Gingrich said. “I feel a real responsibility to those 176,000 people who have gone to newt.org and donated. I feel a real responsibility to -- the only pressure I get from anywhere is either Romney supporters or occasional random people in the news media.”
Gingrich has hurdles just to make the convention ballot, including the requirement that he pick up a plurality of delegates from five states. He has won only South Carolina and Georgia thus far.
“Well, my hope is we will find five states and I also think, frankly, that the Republican National Committee would be quite willing to have me put in nomination under any circumstance,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich visited this remote Gulf Coast area to highlight his drilling-focused energy policy near a port that takes in much of Louisiana’s offshore oil.
On Saturday Gingrich is traveling to Pennsylvania to speak to conservative activists, with no event planned to watch the Louisiana primary results, as good an indication as any of his low expectations.
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