Newt's daughter on 2012: This time he's serious!

Gingrich is genuinely mulling a 2012 run, his daughter says, though such claims have gone unfulfilled in the past

Published December 27, 2010 4:44PM (EST)

FILE - In this Feb. 20, 2010, file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich waves to his supporters after addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)  in Washington. Gingrich may be running for the Republican presidential nomination. Or maybe he is just running all the way to the bank.  (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)  (AP)
FILE - In this Feb. 20, 2010, file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich waves to his supporters after addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. Gingrich may be running for the Republican presidential nomination. Or maybe he is just running all the way to the bank. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) (AP)

Jackie Gingrich Cushman tells Human Events in a new interview that  her father is really serious about possibly running for president in 2012.

“He’s very serious. He’s much more serious than he ever has been," she says. "And I can tell that because we actually sat down -- just the two of us -- for two hours recently. And I don’t think that’s happened since I had children."

One implictation of Cushman's comments is that, in the previous two election cycles when Gingrich repeatedly claimed he was considering a presidential bid, he was merely playing the press and the public.

But her remarks also echo the line that has been coming from Newt Gingrich himself and his supporters in recent weeks. (As Salon has documented, Gingrich has been playing footsies with the press about a possible 2012 presidential run for over 20 months.) The stepped up talk from the Gingrich camp means one of two things: that Gingrich may really toss his hat in the ring this time; or that he has to fool the press more vigorously than in the past in order to get free media coverage and sell books

Here's video of the interview with Cushman:


By Justin Elliott

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin

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