Newt Gingrich would be such a weak challenger to President Barack Obama, according to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., that his nomination would be “the best thing to happen to Democrats since Barry Goldwater.”
Democratic strategist Jim Jordan says he and others in the party “passionately” want to face Gingrich. And from the right, conservative pundit Ann Coul ter is warning Republicans that Gingrich’s past extramarital affairs and other baggage make him a far less formidable GOP nominee than Mitt Romney.
But even as Gingrich’s sudden rise has filled many Obama supporters with cheer and some Republicans with dread, some Democratic strategists worry that the combative former House speaker would present some challenges for the Obama campaign that would not exist if Romney were the GOP candidate.
Where Romney, the former business executive and Massachusetts governor, poses a threat in his ability to win independents and conservative Democrats attracted to his image as an economic Mr. Fix-It, Gingrich could pursue a strategy that combines energizing the conservative base and chipping away at Democratic support among Latinos — an electoral formula that helped George W. Bush win in 2004.
Some Democrats believe that Gingrich, a hero of the conservative movement, would excite the party base more than a former liberal-state governor with a history of centrist views.
And voters yearning for authenticity may be more open to the voluble and rumpled Gingrich, who frequently discusses his past mistakes and his recent conversion to Catholicism, than to a former equity investment-fund executive with perfect salt-and-pepper hair.
“(Gingrich) does not carry Wall Street baggage,” said one Democratic strategist working on the Obama re-election effort, requesting anonymity to freely discuss his thinking. “He’s really smart. He’s definitely authentic.”
Perhaps most significant, Gingrich has an extensive Latino outreach organization, which he has been building for years. Unlike anything in the Romney playbook, that network could give Gingrich a head start slicing into Obama’s base in key states in the Mountain West, where Latinos are a fast-growing swing voting bloc.
