On the stump, Newt Gingrich has often credited social media and new technologies with providing low-cost, grassroots ways of keeping his candidacy alive, and his campaign has long sought to cultivate a digital strategy. The main page of Newt’s Network, a virtual community that allows Gingrich supporters to connect with each other, states it was “Paid for by Newt 2012.”

But, mired in $4.3 million of debt, the Gingrich campaign is disputing whether it has to pay for Newt’s Network and officially signaled Friday in its FEC filing that the campaign may never do so – one of three contractual disputes that provide further insight into the extent of the campaign’s money troubles.

Of the debts the Gingrich campaign is disputing in its March FEC report is a $95,000 bill from Moshe Technologies, a small business owned by 34-year-old Moshe Starkman, who officially joined Newt 2012’s field operations team in December along with a handful of other former Herman Cain staffers. (read more)

The health care consulting firm founded by Newt Gingrich has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will liquidate its assets, just a year after Gingrich cuts ties with it to run for office.

The Center for Health Transformation filed papers with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta indicating the think tank holds $1 million-$10 million in liabilities, with assets valued below $100,000.

Gingrich's lawyer, though, said the news has no effect on his candidacy and reflects Gingrich's importance in the company, not a failure of his management skills. Gingrich divested himself of CHT in May 2011 to run for the presidency.

"The secret sauce to Center for Health Transformation was Newt's brain," lawyer Stefan Passantino said.

"This was a for-profit entity bringing together business, thought, and academic leaders to talk about solutions to healthcare," Passantino said. "He built the entity. But it's clear when he left when the room, the interest of all the other leaders of being in that room waned. There was nothing Newt could have done to survive the vacuum he left."

Gingrich's association with CHT first drew national scrutiny for consulting contracts with Freddie Mac, which opponents used to suggest he was a lobbyist in the lead-up to the housing meltdown.

The bankruptcy news comes at a time when his campaign is trying to maintain relevance in the Republican presidential race. (read more)

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Just a few days out from the Wisconsin primary, Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, officially opened their state headquarters in Green Bay, a hotbed of Republican voters in the state.

But for cynics who think the grand opening is just a shell game of keeping up appearances (recent polls show Gingrich running fourth behind Ron Paul in the state), the campaign would say they’re severely misguided: this office will be open through November, and it’s part of a grand strategy of securing the nomination in Tampa.

While Wisconsin will award delegates mostly in a winner-take-all fashion, there’s opportunity for a non-winner to take delegates if they win a congressional district, and the campaign is hoping to do well in the 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses Callista’s hometown of Whitehall and whose former representative, Steve Gunderson, was her boss when she worked as a staffer on the Hill.

But whatever happens in Tuesday’s primary, state campaign director Robert Lorge says his mission post-primary will be to help Gingrich persuade what he calls  “soft delegates” here in the state to support him: 3 RNC delegates, plus the 3 delegates from each of the eight congressional districts who could become unbound at the convention. (read more)

Newt Gingrich is laying off a third of his campaign staff and cutting back on his schedule in an effort designed to sustain the candidate’s long-shot ambitions of winning the nomination at the Republican National Convention, Fox News confirms.

Michael Krull, who took the helm as campaign manager when Gingrich suffered a mass staff exodus in June, has been replaced by deputy campaign manager Vince Haley, a longtime policy adviser to the former House Speaker.

“Michael Krull took over the campaign in June at a moment of great turmoil and helped get us to a point where we were the national frontrunner," wrote communications director Joe DeSantis in a statement. "But Newt and he agreed that it was best for him to step aside for this new phase.”

The staff shakeup, first reported by Politico, is designed around a “big choice convention” strategy, which the campaign says will be built around two goals: showing how Gingrich is the most capable candidate to take on the president and courting delegates in anticipation of a brokered convention.

The reorganization will also involve ramping up the candidate’s online presence and slowing down his travel to a more affordable pace.

In an effort to highlight his “big ideas and positive solutions,” Gingrich will attempt to steer clear of what he has been guilty of doing on the stump – attacking his GOP rivals with exceptional ferocity. (read more)

Port Fourchon, Louisiana - Newt Gingrich suggested Friday that it's President Obama's fault for leading people to believe that he's Muslim.

Gingrich has repeatedly said the president is a practicing Christian, but asked whether he's bothered by the proportion of the electorate who disagree, the candidate replied, "It should bother the president. Why does the president behave the way that people would think that? You have to ask why would they believe that? It's not cause they're stupid."

On the stump, Gingrich has been badgering the White House for taking "anti-Christian" positions while at the same time "apologizing" to Muslim extremists. Until now, however, he has stopped short of saying that the president is producing reason for people to believe he's Muslim.

"Why is it he's more sensitive to radical Islamists who are killing young Americans than he is to the Catholic church, to Baptists, to fundamentalists?" he asked Wednesday in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "I mean, the fact is, this is a very strange presidency." (read more)

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum shared a mind meld Wednesday when they pulled out toy Etch A Sketches minutes apart from each other at campaign stops located on opposite sides of Louisiana.

The toy props were used to mock Mitt Romney for comments made by his top spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. Responding to a question on whether his candidate was being pressured to move so far to the right that it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election, Fehrnstrom said, "I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's like Etch A Sketch. You can shake it up and we start all over again."

The Romney campaign said "reset" was referring to the landscape of the race and not the candidate's position.

But Democrats quickly made use of the Etch A Sketch analogy to portray Romney as an unprincipled flip-flopper. In an email, subject line "An Etch a Sketch? Really?" DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse wrote, "Now his own top adviser had confirmed that Mitt Romney has absolutely no core and will in fact say anything to get elected." (read more)

Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is stepping out of the political ring. Governor Barbour tells Fox News he does not regret not entering the Presidential race, and he is not interested in being a Vice Presidential running mate.

"The candidate has to be all in or not in at all. It's not fair to people who support you. They quit their jobs, move their families-- not to mention the volunteers and donors-- when people do that for you, you'd better be all in." If you're not, Governor Barbour says, "don't get in, at all."

As for his GOP presidential pick, Barbour says he doesn't have one, and will not be endorsing anyone. "I didn't endorse anybody last time in 2008 and all these guys are friends of mine, and I don't think that one of them so stands out that I should endorse somebody. "

On the subject of a brokered convention, Barbour said it's "most unlikely" that Republicans will go to Tampa with an open convention. "It's not impossible and there's more of a chance then there usually is obviously; but I don't think that's likely." Barbour says it's up to republican voters. "Either they'll coalesce around somebody, and somebody will get 1144 delegates. Or, they'll continue to be split and we'll have to go to the convention and go through that process."

Sources close to the Gingrich campaign say preliminary "what-if" conversations are underway that could lead to a Gingrich-Perry ticket being announced prior to the  Republican National Convention at the end of August.

Gingrich insiders hope forming a predetermined ticket with Perry will unite the evangelical, Tea Party and very conservative voters that make up the core of the GOP.

As discussions got underway, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a statement saying, "Gov. Perry thinks Newt Gingrich is the strongest conservative to debate and defeat President Obama and truly overhaul Washington. The speculation is humbling but premature."

Floating Perry as a runningmate two days before Alabama and Mississippi could energize conservatives or turn them off.

A senior aide to Rick Santorum called it a desperate hail mary to create buzz ahead of contests in Alabama and Mississippi Tuesday. (read more)

DOTHAN, Ala. -- There was an overflow crowd greeting Newt Gingrich when he arrived at the Wiregrass Museum of Art in lower Alabama on Saturday.

Looking over the hundreds of people packed into the gallery area and spilling down the steps in the main lobby, Gingrich enthused, "What a crowd. I'm really impressed. There must be no one left at Wal-Mart this afternoon."

"This is amazing. I've never seen this size crowd before," he said.

Usually dressed in a jacket and tie, the candidate was sporting an olive BASS shirt, in honor of Bassmaster Ray Scott, who endorsed him in person Saturday afternoon.

There is general consensus among the press corps that Gingrich hasn't been spotted wearing casual attire on the campaign trail since early fall.

GULFPORT, Miss. – Reacting to the latest jobs report, Newt Gingrich suggested Friday that the Labor Department fudged its calculation of February unemployment. 

“If we had the same level of participation in the labor force we had the day Obama was sworn in, it would be 10.8 percent,” Gingrich said, disputing the calculation released Friday that unemployment hovered at 8.3 percent for a second straight month.

The candidate was basing his statement on analysis by James Pethokoukis of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, who said that if the size of the labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when President Obama took office, then the unemployment number would be 10.8 percent. 

Gingrich slammed President Obama’s handling of the economy, saying “his achievement has not been creating jobs, his achievement has been driving people out of the workforce. That's not progress, that's going backwards and it makes him the best food stamp president in American history.”

It was a particularly feisty speech for Gingrich, who showed up over an hour late for his appearance at Gulfport High School. He apologized to the audience of over 200 people for his tardiness, explaining he was late because he made an impromptu decision to record a video after learning there was a drilling rig along the way to Gulfport. (read more)