Newt Gingrich on Wednesday dropped out of the 2012 run for the Republican party presidential nomination.
Although Gingrich turned plenty of heads in the Republican debates, the former U.S. House of Representatives speaker won only two of the primaries. Gingrich vowed to help Gov. Mitt Romney beat President Obama in the November elections.
“This is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan,” he said. “This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in history.”
Gingrich will continue working to promote conservative values. He called the campaign a “truly wild ride” and said he and his wife, Callista, are going to focus on a series of key issues and try to educate and move policies in Washington, D.C., including American exceptionalism, religious liberty, and domestic energy independence.
Romney quickly moved to congratulate Gingrich for bringing “creativity and intellectual vitality to American political life” as well as for showing “both eloquence and fearlessness in advancing conservative ideas.”
Gingrich was a conservative Christian favorite. He built the Faith Leaders Dream Team, rallying the likes of Don Wildmon, Tim LaHaye, George Barna, J.C. Watts, Mat Staver, Jim Garlow and Chuck Norris in a quest to take on the “radical secularism of the Obama administration.”
After the 1994 mid-term elections, Gingrich became the first Republican Speaker of the House in 40 years. He initially launched his first campaign for Congress in 1974. He lost that year, and again in 1976, to Democratic acincumbent Nelson Rockefeller. In 1978, Gingrich won a seat in the House. He would be re-elected to Congress 10 times.
