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WASHINGTON — Call it Newt Hampshire.
Newt Gingrich’s come-from-behind run for the GOP nomination got a major boost yesterday with an endorsement by New Hampshire’s biggest paper.
The Union Leader picked Gingrich as its favorite for the first-in-the-nation GOP presidential primary on Jan. 10, saying the former speaker of the House “has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times.”
“America is at a crucial crossroads. It is not going to be enough to merely replace Barack Obama next year,” publisher Joseph W. McQuaid wrote in the front-page editorial. “We are in critical need of the innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing.”
That ringing endorsement also represented a blunt rejection of Mitt Romney, who was governor next door in Massachusetts and was considered a shoo-in to win the critical primary.
Still, Romney continues to lead in polls in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the state’s Republican primary.
But Gingrich leads in national surveys of Republicans, despite recent scrutiny for making as much as $1.8 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage lender blamed for helping cause the housing crisis.
He also has weathered criticism for having extramarital affairs, marrying three times and being sanctioned for ethics violations while speaker of the House in the 1990s.
Still, Drew Cline, the paper’s editorial-page editor, said they picked Gingrich’s “bold” leadership over Romney’s “plays it very safe” politics.
“Right now we are in a lot of trouble in this country. We need a candidate that is bold in his leadership and has a vision where he wants to take the country and knows how to get there,” Cline told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Cline panned Romney, saying he “wants to be liked. He wants to try to reach out and be very safe — reach out to everybody, bring everybody on board. And that’s . . . not very realistic.”
“Imagine what that would be like as president,” Cline added.
Gingrich also got a thumbs-up from his old nemesis, former President Bill Clinton.
“He’s articulate and he tries to think of a conservative version of an idea that will solve a legitimate problem,” Clinton said of Gingrich in a Newsmax interview.
Clinton also commended Gingrich for proposing in a debate last week a way to legitimize longtime illegal immigrants: not kicking them out of the country but also not granting citizenship.
“That sort of splits the difference between the immigration reforms proposed by President Bush and President Obama,” Clinton added.