Newt Gingrich: I'm Considering Running For President In 2012

Serial adulterer and defender of marriage Newt Gingrich says he's seriously considering running for president in 2012.

Gingrich, 67, told The Associated Press that he would focus on helping Republican candidates through the midterm elections in November, then decide in February or March whether to seek the GOP nomination. "I've never been this serious," Gingrich said. "It's fair to say that by February the groundwork will have been laid to consider seriously whether or not to run," he said. Gingrich, in Des Moines for a fundraiser and workshop for local Republican candidates, predicted President Barack Obama would be a one-term president. Obama's poll numbers have dropped below 50 percent, and Gingrich predicted they would continue to fall, making him vulnerable in 2012. Unlike President Bill Clinton, who rebounded from first-term problems by pushing for welfare reform and budget balancing changes that pleased moderate voters, Gingrich argued that Obama shows no inclination to move toward the center. "He's not like Bill Clinton," Gingrich said. "Bill Clinton was an Arkansas, Southern Baptist, sort of understood middle American. While he had some Yale overtones being liberal, the truth is Bill Clinton was quite happy to move to the right."

After leading the attack on Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, Gingrich retired from Congress in 1998, later admitting he'd been having his own affair with a congressional aide who later became his most current wife.