Newt Gingrich launches 2012 challenge to Obama

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) (C) speaks to reporters after a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, March 18, 2011.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Newt Gingrich sharply criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the U.S. economy on Wednesday as he launched an uphill battle for the presidency in 2012.

Gingrich, who was speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s, borrowed a signature phrase from Obama -- "Win the future" -- to lay out why Republicans should pick him as their presidential nominee.

"This is not about one person in the Oval Office. This is about millions of Americans believing we can win the future with the right policies leading to the right outcomes," he told Fox News' Sean Hannity.

Gingrich, who has long flirted with a run for the Republican presidential nomination, joined a slowly forming field of challengers to the Democratic president. He preached a conservative message of low taxes, a balanced budget, less government and more domestic production of oil.

"We have to make the argument that President Obama has the wrong policies and they lead to the wrong outcomes. It's pretty straightforward -- 9 percent unemployment is the wrong outcome," he said, adding Obama's "worldview is very far to the left."

Gingrich, 67, is a conservative famed for budget battles with President Bill Clinton after he led the "Republican revolution" in 1994 elections that brought his party to power in Congress.

Gingrich announced his candidacy via a YouTube video posted on his Twitter account, inviting potential supporters "to join us in getting America back on the right track" and tearing into Democrats.

"We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together and insist on imposing those solutions on those forces that don't want to change," he said.

"There are some people who don't mind if America becomes a wreck as long as they dominate the wreckage. But you and I know better," he said.

Credit for the 1990s economic boom is generally given to Clinton, a Democrat, but Gingrich claimed some of the credit for himself. He was House speaker from 1995 to 1999.

'WE CAN DO IT AGAIN'

"As speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, to balance the budget, to control spending, to cut taxes, to create economic growth. Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4. And for four years, we balanced the budget and paid off $405 billion in debt. We've done it before. We can do it again," he said.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Wednesday said Gingrich trailed Obama by 18 percentage points, 53 percent to 35 percent [ID:nN11223842].

Gingrich is known within Republican circles as a politician who brings a lot of ideas to the table but who party officials believe will need to show a great deal of discipline as a candidate and not be tempted to comment on all issues of the day.

Gingrich, who has appeared as a Fox News commentator and written books since resigning from the House in 1999, is taking steps to ease concerns among the religious right about his personal life. Gingrich is married to his third wife, Callista, with whom he had an affair in the mid-1990s while he was married to his second wife.

He told a Christian television network this year he had sought God's forgiveness over the affair.

"What he is going to have to do is reintroduce himself to voters. People know who he is, but he has to reframe himself to voters to remind them of all the positive accomplishments he made as speaker," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)