Newt: I Almost Quit

No one is more surprised by Newt Gingrich’s recent surge than Gingrich himself. The candidate admits in an exclusive interview with Peter J. Boyer that he nearly quit the race earlier this year, and says of his struggle over the summer, “It was really hard. I got fairly tired of doing radio shows with people who would say, ‘Well, so since you’re dead…” He also has the audacity to suggest that his plan for the poor “makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.” And in response to criticism that his policy ideas make him something of a big government conservative, Gingrich says, “If you want to smear people who are trying to think, fine.”