Video: Gingrich gets heckled by Occupiers in Iowa

Because nothing says anti-fascism like hijacking and shouting down a political event, right? When Newt Gingrich tried speaking to students at the University of Iowa yesterday, a group of Occupiers disrupted the event — to the disgust and amusement of most of the audience. At one point, someone shouts, “How many people would like to hear Mr. Gingrich speak today?”, a question answered by loud applause:

“I’m going to try to talk over them,” Gingrich finally said, after several minutes. From there, the audience began to quiet down. The candidate made a coy allusion to Occupy Wall Street’s “We Are the 99%” slogan, saying, “I appreciate the fact that 95 percent of you — maybe even 99 percent of you — try and have an intelligent discussion.”

“Not a fat chance!” [s]omeone yelled in response.

“Rather than the 1 percent who try to impose their will by making noise,” Gingrich continued.

After that, the former House Speaker began an uninterrupted lecture, given without notes, that addressed the deleterious effect of Alzheimer’s and other brain-degenerative diseases on the economy and on the American public. In Gingrich’s view, our ability to study and understand the brain is rapidly developing; he suggested that creating incentives for new brain research would be a cornerstone of his domestic policy.

“This is a very big idea in an area that not many political leaders are willing to tackle,” he said. “It will lead to a dramatic explosion of new science that will lead directly to a better quality outcome for health, which would lower the cost of health care, which would help solve our long-term budget problems and would create a huge new zone for growing American jobs.”

I’m not sure that the Occupiers want to take on Newt Gingrich, who has already demonstrated his ability to demolish them in debate. Of course, that wasn’t what the Occupiers were offering. In fact, I am almost positive that Gingrich would love to take them on in a debate, and probably would have done so at the University of Iowa if the Occupiers had promised to behave themselves and let him speak.  I’d pay cash money to see that event.

While Gingrich campaigns in Iowa and appears to be losing some momentum, Politico asks whether Team Gingrich has taken the state seriously enough, and uses the UI appearance as one of its points:

Gingrich is getting pounded on Iowa TV by both a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC and Ron Paul’scampaign and is doing little to fight back against ads which take direct aim at him. Less than three weeks before the caucuses, the former speaker is airing a single commercial with little money behind it.

And while Gingrich’s top rivals here flood the airwaves, three of his lesser challengers — all vying for the same swath of undecided conservative votes — began barnstorming the state in an intensive retail push before the January 3rd vote.

Gingrich’s response suggests a lack of urgency: on Wednesday he held a wonky seminar on brain science in this liberal college town. He had plans to return to Washington for a book-signing after Thursday’s debate in Sioux City, without scheduling any public events in the conservative-heavy northwest corner of the state. …

Gingrich promised to do more retail events – he teased a post-Christmas bus tour – and said he’d do more ads.

But he also offered a mix of nonchalance and high-road confidence in explaining that he didn’t have enough money to match his rivals’ ad campaign and, in any event, wasn’t inclined to engage in traditional back-and-forth on the airwaves.

This looks less to me like a candidate not taking the task seriously, and more like one making a virtue out of necessity.  Although fundraising has certainly picked up for Gingrich, his campaign debt has hampered his ability to mount a media campaign on the same scale as his better-funded opponents, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry (and Ron Paul, too).  The return to Washington is curious; perhaps the book-signing event is part of a fundraiser, or scheduled around one?  At a time when Perry has decided to drive a thousand miles and make dozens of personal appearances to increase an interesting rise in his polling numbers, Gingrich’s return to DC doesn’t exactly look engaged, unless it’s to raise money for the home stretch in Iowa.

Gingrich does have a new ad out today, another positive spot coming to us from Jim Geraghty, called “We Deserve Solutions”:

These are challenging and important times for America. We want and deserve solutions. Others seem to be more focused on attacks rather than moving the country forward. That’s up to them. I believe bold ideas and new solutions will unleash America’s creative spirit. When I was Speaker, our budget was balanced and 11 million jobs were created. We can do it again and rebuild the America we love. I’m Newt Gingrich and I approve this message.

Well, it’s mostly positive; it does take a swipe at “others” running negative ads in Iowa as a differentiation, but the ad mainly focuses on Gingrich’s real accomplishments as Speaker. It’s very possible that this will get drowned in the saturation ad campaigns from Romney and Perry, though, unless Gingrich gets on the ground in earnest to augment the argument in person.

Update: Chris Lacey forwards me this calculation of candidate time in Iowa, and it looks like Gingrich has taken Iowa pretty seriously indeed.  Through yesterday, Gingrich spent 44 days in 28 separate visits to the state.  That far outstrips Perry at 18/10, although Perry didn’t get into the race until three months after Newt.  Mitt Romney has only visited 8 times for 10 days, which I would presume are almost all debate-related appearances.  Tops on the list are Rick Santorum, who has spent 83 days in 30 separate visits to Iowa, and Michele Bachmann, with 60 days in 28 visits.

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