For Gingrich, it's all math

In a meeting room at the Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas over the past week, Newt Gingrich mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.

The crux of the former House speaker's new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state's delegates, how they're awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win.

He will focus heavily on upcoming Southern states, where he expects his Georgia roots and conservative rhetoric to play well. And he will step up his attacks on his leading rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, for being too liberal to take on President Obama in the fall.

After a lackluster showing in the Nevada caucuses Saturday, the big question looming over the Gingrich campaign was whether he would withdraw. The Palazzo sessions provide an emphatic no in response.

Gingrich confirmed the strategy in a meeting with reporters in a nearly empty hotel ballroom Saturday night after the Nevada results showed him losing to Romney by more than 20 percentage points. The results stood in stark contrast to Gingrich's confidence that he could go on to win.

"A vast majority of Republicans across the country are going to want an alternative to a Massachusetts moderate who has, in his career, been pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase and who ran third from the bottom in job creation in the four years he was governor," Gingrich said. "So I suspect this debate will continue for a long time. Our commitment is to find a series of victories, which by the end of the Texas primary, will leave us at parity with Governor Romney. And by that point forward, we'll see if we can't actually win the nomination."

The Texas primary is scheduled for April 3 and reasons to be skeptical about the new Gingrich strategy are legion.

The winning candidate needs 1,144 delegates to claim the nomination. The process by which they're awarded varies widely. In some states, for instance, delegates are won according to primary results at the congressional district level. Gingrich's team has studied the convoluted rules. Using targeted phone lists and targeted mail and focusing on more conservative areas, even in states such as Massachusetts and Vermont that Romney is expected to win, he hopes to pick up enough delegates, one by one, to make it to the convention.

And then Gingrich plans to win states of his own. According to two operatives close to Gingrich who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions, the campaign will focus heavily on Georgia and Tennessee, which vote on Super Tuesday, March 6, as well as Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Louisiana, which vote later in the month.

Gingrich's Georgia roots give him an advantage over Romney in those states, the advisers say, and the evidence comes not only from his big win in South Carolina but also from the results in Florida, where Gingrich bested Romney in the state's more conservative panhandle, they said.

Gingrich also has three surrogates who will begin campaigning heavily this month: former senator and presidential contender Fred Thompson of Tennessee, former congressman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. All three have significant followings among conservative voters, particularly evangelicals, whose votes could be crucial in the South.

One dark spot on that plan is Virginia, which also votes on Super Tuesday but where Gingrich failed to collect the necessary signatures to get on the ballot. In a state with a deeply conservative Republican electorate, where Gingrich was widely expected to be competitive, it was a huge blow.

Gingrich is also focused on early voting - making a stop this week in Ohio, where early voting is set to begin in advance of Super Tuesday.

His strategists are also lobbying Fox News and ABC to add debates to the schedule between now and March. At his news conference Saturday, Gingrich said of Romney: "I look forward very much to opportunities to debate him." It is not lost on the campaign that Gingrich's success this cycle had depended largely on his strong debate performances, but none is scheduled for most of February.