All told, the former House speaker held five public events in the three days leading up to the Nevada caucuses. Only one was outside Las Vegas, an appearance in Reno on Wednesday.
He spent much of the rest of the time around his hotel just off the glittering Las Vegas Strip. Gingrich said rather than courting voters, he was busy plotting the remainder of his campaign. He also held a fund-raiser Friday night.
Yesterday, as Romney campaigned in Colorado before flying back to Nevada for his second victory speech of the week, and as Ron Paul campaigned in Minnesota while Rick Santorum also stumped in Colorado, Gingrich’s only public event was a post-caucus appearance in a sterile ballroom at the Venetian Hotel with an audience of nothing more than reporters.
There was no cheering crowd assembled to buck him up as Romney was declared the winner.
The dearth of public events, and Gingrich’s total lack of television advertising in a state where he spent all week ostensibly lobbying for caucus votes, made it appear - his own protestations aside - as if he were more interested in garnering attention than votes.
He made news on Friday with a retooled stump speech suggesting Romney is a clone policywise of President Obama, dubbing the former Massachusetts governor “Obama-lite.” But he had nothing to say until late in the day on the big national news of the day, a decline in the nation’s unemployment rate that sent the stock market to its highest level in over three years.
Romney, by contrast, spoke about it during his first event of the day in Reno.
Gingrich confirmed that he spent the past several days huddling with advisers, plotting his post-Nevada strategy. A schedule released yesterday showed him remaining in Nevada through today, before setting off for Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., during the remainder of the coming week.
Despite his inactivity last week, Gingrich remains the biggest name among the remaining Republican candidates. And he squashed rumors he was considering quitting the race.
“I am a candidate for president of the United States. I will be a candidate for president of the United States. We will go to Tampa,” he declared.
