Touring Waterloo, Iowa today, Newt Gingrich attributed part of the media frenzy surrounding his “challenging week” to his campaign’s historic nature.
“It’s going to take a while for the news media to realize that you’re covering something that happens once or twice in a century, a genuine grass-roots campaign of very big ideas,” Gingrich said, according to the Associated Press. “I expect it to take a while for it to sink in.”
At the heart of reporters’ difficulty wrapping their head around his candidacy, Gingrich said, was the threat he represents to the old system of canned talking points and establishment thinking.
“My reaction is if you’re the candidate of very dramatic change, it you’re the candidate of really new ideas, you have to assume there’s a certain amount of clutter and confusion and it takes a while to sort it all out, because you are doing something different,” Gingrich told the press.
Reporters did discover one aspect of Gingrich’s campaign today that’s likely a first: his cell phone, which went off at a rally, uses ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” as its ringtone.
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
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