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every poll I have seen has Obama nearly destroying hi in every one on one poll I have read,
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Republican Newt Gingrich tops Mitt Romney, President Obama in new polls
Lead comes as GOP rivals, incluidng Ron Paul, step up attacks
BY
Jonathan Lemire
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, December 1 2011, 12:28 PM
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich gains in new poll.
Newt Gingrich has opened up a massive 21% gap on
Mitt Romney in a poll released Thursday - the largest lead any Republican presidential candidate has boasted over fellow GOP hopefuls this year.
Gingrich, whose campaign has risen from the dead to the top of most Republican leaderboards, led Romney 38%-17% in a Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely voters.
The former House speaker has also opened up a slim lead in a hypothetical matchup with the man whose job he wants.
Gingrich leads President Obama 45%-43%, according to another Rasmussen national poll.
That’s within the survey’s three percentage-point margin of error, but it showed a serious surge for Gingrich. A week ago, the former Georgia congressman trailed Obama by six points.
The survey marks the first time Gingrich has overtaken Obama in any national poll. However, Gingrich leads the President only in the Rasmussen tally and still trails Obama by nearly six points in the Real Clear Politics composite of seven major polls.
The Gingrich ascension has pushed him past the fading
Herman Cain as the candidate most likely to topple early GOP front-runner Mitt Romney. None of the other Republican candidates escaped the single digits in the new Rasmussen poll.
Gingrich’s rise also caught the attention of rival
Ron Paul, who blasted him in a new attack ad.
The two-and-a-half-minute video, released Thursday, is titled “Newt Gingrich: Serial Hypocrisy” and accuses the former speaker of not being a faithful conservative.
The ad - billed by Paul’s team as “the video Newt doesn’t want you to see” - rips Gingrich for allegedly collecting more than $1 million in fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the controversial quasi-government agencies.
It also splices in footage from an ad Gingrich once did with former House speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in which the duo made a bipartisan push for more action on global warming.
Gingrich has since called the video with Pelosi - who is wildly unpopular with Republicans - “probably the single dumbest thing I’ve done in recent years.”
Gingrich has also denied charges that he acted inappropriately after his days in Congress by pushing federal legislators for policy changes that would help his paying clients.
He told Fox News on Wednesday that he was acting as “a citizen” and not as a lobbyist.
jlemire@nydailynews.com