More trouble for Gingrich as Iowa campaign quickens

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's campaign struggled to fend off more bad news on Tuesday after he was quoted supporting main rival Mitt Romney's healthcare reform in Massachusetts.

Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, has seen his poll numbers drop in the early-voting state of Iowa under a blitz of negative ads accusing him of being an unreliable Washington insider.

He tried to regain some of his lost momentum in a pugnacious interview with CNN in which he used some of his strongest language yet to attack his main opponents.

Recognizing that Texas congressman Ron Paul's rise in Iowa endangers his chances of a top finish in the state, Gingrich said: "I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every piece of America."

Adding to Gingrich's troubles, new court documents appeared that seem to contradict his account of how he divorced his first wife in 1980.

"The test of a campaign is not whether it gets knocked down. It's whether it gets back up," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told Reuters.

He said "the status quo in Washington will stop at nothing to distract voters" from Gingrich's message on how to fix the economy.

In an embarrassing revelation for Gingrich, The Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday that his consulting company published a newsletter in 2006 that called Romney's health plan "the most interesting effort to solve the uninsured problem in America today."

"We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans," the newsletter said.

Romney's healthcare reform is disliked by many Republicans who say it was a blueprint for Democratic President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare overhaul. Gingrich himself has criticized it on the campaign trail.

ATTACKING ROMNEY

In the interview with CNN, Gingrich lashed out at Romney questioning the Massachusetts Republican's leadership and character.

Gingrich criticized Romney's hands-off approach to the negative ads appearing on the airwaves, courtesy of a political action committee allied with the former Massachusetts governor.

"It's disingenuous," Gingrich said, mocking Romney. "Oh gee, I don't control all of my former staff and all of my millionaire friends. It's baloney."

Gingrich continued to challenge Romney to a two-man debate in Iowa before the Iowa Republican caucuses on January 3, the first contest in the battle to decide who will face Obama in November 2012.

Campaigns went back on the road in Iowa on Tuesday to start the final lap after a Christmas break.

Gingrich's critics said many of his problems are of his own making due to a lack of discipline, pointing most recently to his inability to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot for the Republican primary in Virginia where he lives.

"What has to worry voters most is that Newt and his campaign are failing even the most basic tests," said Kevin Madden, a former spokesman for Romney and an informal adviser to the campaign.

"How can you argue that you're equipped to take on Obama's billion-dollar attack machine when you can't even get on the ballot in your home state of Virginia," Madden said.

Many conservative Christians in Iowa are wary of Gingrich because of his marital infidelities and two divorces.

CNN on Monday quoted court documents from Georgia that showed Gingrich's first wife, Jackie, apparently opposed divorcing him in 1980. But an article on Gingrich's website says she was the one who initiated the divorce.

Last week Reuters reported that a direct-mail solicitation for one of Paul's political and investment newsletters two decades ago warned of a "coming race war in our big cities" and of a "federal-homosexual cover-up" to play down the impact of AIDS.

Ask whether he would vote for Paul if he were the Republican nominee, Gingrich told CNN, "No."

(Additional reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; editing by Christopher Wilson)