Newt Gingrich Falls under Fire from TV Ads

With two weeks until the beginning of the Republican primaries for the 2012 presidential election, the candidate cannot withstand the avalanche of negative advertisements aired by his rivals and has lost his place in the polls.

He made no blunders nor had any memory lapses. However, Newt Gingrich knows the sad fate of the former favorites for the Republican nomination, powered ephemerally in the polls before falling back into insignificance. With two weeks until the Iowa caucuses, which will officially launch the primaries for the presidential election of 2012, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives has in fact slipped in the polls. A study by Public Policy Polling Institute shows his moving from first to third place in Iowa within the space of a week. The national figures are hardly more encouraging: According to a Gallup poll released on Monday, he had the support of 26 percent of Republican voters, compared to 37 percent on Dec. 8. Romney remains stable at 24 percent.

A drop is explained first by the avalanche of negative political advertisements that fill mailboxes and loop over and over on the television channels and radio stations in Iowa ever since Gingrich moved to the top of the polls.

According to one study, the advertisements criticizing the new favorite were broadcast on local television 1,200 times in one week. In other words, it is almost impossible to escape by switching the channel.

The largest contributor to this hype is the political action committee (PAC) that supports Mitt Romney. According to the New York Times, it reportedly spent $2.6 million on anti-Gingrich television commercials. Ron Paul, for his part, would spend $1.1 million in advertising in this northern U.S. state in order to attack the former Speaker.

In these messages, his rivals describe a man of unreliable convictions and shifting policies, as well as a Washington lobbyist who is used to trading in influence. They accuse him in particular of having lobbied for Freddie Mac, and thus receiving $1.6 million from the mortgage finance giant, which was bailed out with billions by the [federal government] at the height of the 2008 crisis. Romney also accuses him of being too lenient on immigration issues, while Ron Paul exposes the flaws of the leftist candidate, illustrated by his positions in favor of the environment and Social Security.

While the existence of such advertising is not new in the United States, its ubiquity is largely a consequence of the decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 to remove all limits on the funding of election ads by businesses, associations and individuals.

To make matters worse, his lucrative business with Freddie Mac also earned New Gingrich an attack on Saturday in the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal — an influential voice in the conservative camp. That same day, the most influential newspaper in the state of Iowa, the Des Moines Register, lent its support to Mitt Romney, emphasizing his “sobriety, wisdom and judgment,” while stating that New Gingrich would alienate rather than unite.

It remains to be seen if the latest Gingrich election promise to stop judges who would refuse to implement his policies will succeed in reviving his campaign.