Palin backs Gingrich, leaves door open for herself

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin threw her weight behind Newt Gingrich as Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday -- but coyly left open the door for her own White House run if need be.

The controversial former 2008 vice-presidential nominee said she voted for Gingrich in Alaska's poll to choose a Republican candidate, one of 10 states to cast ballots on so-called "Super Tuesday."

"I will tell you who I voted for tonight... the cheerful one, it's Newt Gingrich," she told Fox News, referring to the one-word description the former House Speaker gave of himself at a debate last week.

"I have appreciated what he has stood for, stood boldly for," she said. "He has been the underdog in many of these primary races and these caucuses and I've respected what he has stood for."

She was speaking as long-time frontrunner Mitt Romney edged out rival Rick Santorum as he tightened his grip on the 2012 Republican presidential nomination with a string of six Super Tuesday wins, including in Alaska, where CNN projected Romney winning with 33 percent of the vote.

But Gingrich won resoundingly in his home state of Georgia, giving him an outside chance of rebooting his bid if he can gain some momentum in a clutch of upcoming battles in the conservative Deep South.

Palin conceded that the race between Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and libertarian Ron Paul lacks excitement, but predicted it would heat up once Republicans choose a nominee -- and launched a swipe at Romney in that regard.

"There will be that zip-a-dee-doo-dah after the nominee is chosen. I guarantee there will be that enthusiasm," she said.

"But to be brutally honest -- and I say this with all due respect to governor Romney, who is obviously the frontrunner .. he's not garnering a lot of that enthusiasm right now."

Palin, a darling of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement but lampooned and vilified by the left, flirted for months last year with running for the Republican ticket, eventually deciding against it in October.

But with the Republican race showing no sign of being wrapped up anytime soon -- unusually for a party which traditionally chooses its candidate rapidly -- Palin admitted that there could still be a role for her.

Although it would be an unlikely scenario, Palin said she might consider throwing her hat into the ring if pressed.

She was asked specifically what she would do if the Republican party faced an open convention this August -- meaning none of the current candidates would have sewn up the nomination by then -- and someone asked her to stand.

"Anything is possible. I don't close any doors that perhaps would be open out there, so no, I wouldn't close that door. My plan is to be at that convention," she told CNN in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

The Republican party's 2008 presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, picked Palin as his running mate before losing to Democrat Barack Obama.

She was ridiculed abroad, notably for foreign policy gaffes, but became a Tea Party leading light and media pundit, lashing out at big government and the "lamestream" media as she and her family basked in the celebrity spotlight.

In Anchorage on Tuesday night there seemed little enthusiasm for any of the frontrunners -- a trend noticed throughout the race, which has seen a succession of rivals leapfrogging into the lead over Romney, before fading.

Voter Andy Kriner said that he had switched allegiance in recent months: "I started with Herman Cain, then I went to Newt Gingrich, and now Romney is probably the guy who will get the nomination.

"He seems like a good guy. I'm not passionate about him, but I'm more passionate about him than I am (about) Obama."

Asked if any of the Republican candidates could win against the incumbent president, he said: "If I had to bet on it, I'd say it would be hard for anybody to beat Obama."

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Gingrich slams Santorum as a 'big labor Republican'

NASHVILLE (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday slammed rival Rick Santorum as a "big labor Republican," accusing him of siding with unions over Memphis-based FedEx when the Senate grappled with a labor dispute in the 1990s.

Gingrich, the former Georgia congressman and House Speaker, is hoping to revive his struggling campaign in the South, and he tailored his message Monday to Republican voters in Tennessee. Although polls show a close race between Santorum and Mitt Romney, Gingrich challenged the former Pennsylvania senator and his conservative credentials.

"I think there are profound reasons that Rick lost the Senate race by the largest margin in Pennsylvania history in 2006 and I think it's very hard for him to carry that all the way to the general," Gingrich said. "Then he comes South and you take the case right here. He voted for the unions over FedEx. I suspect most folks in the state don't know that. But in fact he was a big labor Republican in Pennsylvania and I suspect when you get to Memphis and you say to people, 'Gee, this is a guy who wanted to guarantee that FedEx give into the unions.' Santorum won't be as popular the following morning."

Gingrich was referring to a provision in a 1996 spending bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that sought to help FedEx truck drivers in their efforts to organize. A group of Democrats held up the FAA bill to protest what they said was an attempt to help FedEx prevent its truck drivers from forming a union.

In 2006, Democrat Bob Casey soundly defeated Santorum in his re-election bid.

Gingrich said if Romney wins the Michigan primary on Tuesday, "you'll see things start to clarify. If, as people expect, you end up with a Romney victory in Michigan tomorrow, I think you'll see Santorum getting a very different second look."

Bypassing Michigan and Arizona, the other primary on Tuesday, Gingrich said voters in Tennessee and his home state of Georgia could rejuvenate his presidential bid, which has stalled since he claimed a surprise victory in last month's South Carolina primary. The former House speaker said a handful of states voting on the mega-contest day of March 6 could propel him to wins in Mississippi and Alabama next month and delegate-rich primaries later in the spring in Texas and California.

"Then all of the sudden, the same media which said I was dead in the fall, I was ahead in December, I was dead in early January, I was ahead in mid-January, all of the sudden they're going to say ... Gingrich will be back again," he said during a luncheon with local Republicans.

Tennessee and Georgia hold nearly one-third of the 419 delegates at stake in the 10 states voting on Super Tuesday, contests Gingrich views as crucial to his struggling presidential bid. His campaign sees a potential backdoor opening if either Romney or Santorum stumbles, setting the stage for another showdown in a prolonged series of primary contests.

At a rally on the grounds of the State Capitol, Gingrich, a former history professor, said President Andrew Jackson would have been "enraged" by President Barack Obama, citing the president's recent decision to apologize for the actions of U.S. troops who burned Qurans while destroying documents on a military base in Afghanistan.

"Jackson understood that you want your opponents to respect you," Gingrich said, overlooking a statue of the 19th century president riding horseback. "They don't have to like you but they have to understand that you're formidable and you're dangerous."

Gingrich was reaching for a strong showing in Tennessee even as a statewide poll underscored his challenges here. A Vanderbilt University poll showed Gingrich at 10 percent in the state, trailing rivals Santorum with 33 percent and Romney with 17 percent. The poll of 767 likely Republican primary voters was conducted Feb. 16-22 and had a margin of error of 3 percent.

"The race remains very fluid in this state and will likely continue to move in response to the primaries in Michigan and Arizona," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt political scientist and co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll. "Still, this poll suggests the climb is steep for the speaker, but far from impossible in this unpredictable year."

Earlier, Gingrich attended a health care forum at the law firm of former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker Jr., R-Tenn., urging Republicans to think of this time as "the beginning of the replacement debate rather than just the anti-Obamacare debate." Gingrich has said he would repeal Obama's health care law if Republicans win congressional majorities.

Gingrich has offered a number of alternatives to the new health law, offering a tax credit to help people buy health insurance or the ability to deduct part of the costs from their taxes.

The former speaker returns to Georgia on Tuesday for a three-day bus tour around his home state, hoping to halt a monthlong slide.

"My basic hope is to pick up some delegates virtually everywhere, pick up a lot of delegates in the South and Southwest and then with Texas and California, be totally in the race," Gingrich said.

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