Gingrich Makes $2.50 Gas His New Campaign Brand
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Richard Ellis/Getty Images(SAN FRANCISCO) — In Iowa, Gingrich branded himself as the positive campaigner. In Florida, he became the Mitt Romney bulldozer. For Super Tuesday, Gingrich is trying a new route: a $2.50 gasoline promise.
The Gingrich campaign rolled out a new logo and signs on Saturday: a gas pump with the price set at $2.50, with the Newt 2012 logo on the pump. He also promoted a new hash tag on Twitter: #250gas.
Gingrich has been pushing the $2.50 a gallon gas since President Obama’s speech on energy, saying he chose $2.50 “as a stabilizing price for capital investment reasons.”
“It could easily go down to $2 and here’s a fact, it was $1.13 when I was speaker, it was $1.89 when Obama was sworn in,” Gingrich said Monday in Tulsa. On Friday, Gingrich asked for attendees at his Washington D.C. rally to “give a gallon of gas” to his campaign by donating $2.50 online.
While Rick Santorum’s Daytona 500-sponsored car will likely be burning gasoline appealing to voters on Sunday, and Mitt Romney is scheduled to make an appearance, Gingrich skipped the fanfare in Michigan this weekend and stuck to an almost 40-minute speech on energy, taking apart Obama’s energy speech.
“After I came out with a program to get to $2.50 a gallon gasoline, Obama decided he had to make a speech on energy,” Gingrich said. “I really hope every American will read his speech in Miami. It is a very revealing speech. It is factually false, intellectually incoherent, deeply conflicted on policy and in some places just strange.
Gingrich said Obama believes in small cars and an anti-American energy policy and Americans will have a choice between Gingrich gas prices and Obama’s “fantasies.”
Gingrich went into a narrative about Obama getting letters from citizens about gas prices every day. Two of the letters Obama read said to the president, “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep my job if gas prices keep going up so high.”
“But as I read that, it suddenly occurred to me, he didn’t have to be quoting someone else,” Gingrich said. “Let me read this sentence as though Obama had said this about himself, quote, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep my job if gas prices keep going up.’”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio