“Gingrich is more Nixonian than he is Reaganite,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman and the first chairman of the Conservative Opportunity Society, who is on good terms with Mr. Gingrich but supports Mr. Romney. “Not in the Watergate sense, in the strategic sense. He is not an ideologue.”…

His dinner with Nixon in the fall of 1982 was an attempt to do just that. Even in exile, the former president remained a savvy political observer and kept in touch with Republicans in Washington. That night, the two men spent three hours together, along with Mr. Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne. (They met again in Washington in 1984 when Mr. Gingrich arranged for Nixon to talk about policy with House Republican freshmen.)

Mr. Gingrich later recounted the New York dinner in his book “Lessons Learned the Hard Way.” “I told him I thought the Republicans at long last ought to become the majority in the House,” Mr. Gingrich wrote. “He shook his head and said that the House Republican Party had little impact and received little attention from the press because it was so boring.”