Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that rival Mitt Romney is the weakest GOP hopeful in almost one hundred years.
On Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace noted that Gingrich had to get more than 70 percent of the outstanding delegates to win the nomination.
"You said on Friday that even if you lose one or both Alabama and Mississippi, you're going to stay in this all the way to the convention," Wallace explained. "But doesn't it get awfully hard, and doesn't it become impossible to get to 1144 [delegates] if you don't win both states?"
"The Romney camp has been trying to sell since last June that I should get out of the race and that Romney is inevitable," Gingrich replied. "The fact is that Romney is probably the weakest Republican frontrunner since Leonard Wood in 1920, and Wood ultimately lost on the 10th ballot."
"Yes, he the frontrunner," the former House Speaker admitted. "He's not a very strong frontrunner and almost all conservatives are opposed to him, which is the base of the party. And I think we are as likely to see after the last primary in June, we are as likely to see a 60-day conversation about what is going to happen as we are to see Romney dominating."
After winning the New Hampshire primary in 1920, Gen. Leonard Wood was considered the Republican frontrunner but eventually lost the nomination to Warren G. Harding at the convention.
While Gingrich has a Ph.D. in modern European history, New York University Professor of Education and History Jonathan Zimmerman says that he's not a "real historian."
"[H]umility — the mark of a real historian — simply escapes Gingrich," Zimmerman wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed last last year.
(H/T: Talking Points Memo)
