>> newt gingrich for the hour, piers morgan interview starts now. good evening. eyes are on south carolina. the republican primary days away. candidates are swarming all over the state. here is something you may not know about one of them, newt gingrich. the man has an absolute passion for animals and zoos. he invited us to south carolina's science center. dog eat dog on the campaign trail. all the wild things in here seem pretty peaceful to me. with exception possibly of newt gingrich. why here? >> it's fun. it's interesting. it gets you back to nature. it reminds you of the world we live in and the fact that life is bigger than us. >> last time i saw you, you instinctively cited being in the african bush, seeing wild animals at play. it wasn't entirely surprising that you chose this location, but i walked around earlier, it seemed to be an appropriate venue in the sense that right behind you is a large praying mantis, the most predatory animal on earth. >> think of that as the super pac. >> you could. you could. whose super pac? >> any. >> yours or mitt romney's. >> any super pac. i think the nature of those organizations is that they have no responsibilities, they have no connection to any kind of pattern of reasonable politics. and it's a model i hope we can get beyond, but we won't this year. >> last time i spoke to you, we talked about super pacs and you were scathing about the super pacs mitt romney was using, amount of money he was spending, implying these were his ex-staffers and friends and so on. you were trying very hard, and laudably, to rise above this and be nice guy newt. clearly that didn't work very well. the halo, may i suggest, has slightly slipped, and your own super pac, $3.5 million worth is about to be unleashed in south carolina. presumably you would concede now you changed position on this. >> i concede every effort i made to stay positive and every effort i made to talk romney out of doing this failed, that you can't, you know, you can't unilaterally disarm unless you want to get out of the rest. since this is the objective reality, we have no choice, so we have to match in some way, we have to have effective advertising that matches their advertising or literally no matter how good your ideas are, how big your crowds are, weight of television and radio and direct movement -- in iowa, 45% of all the ads were attacks. >> you were blown to pieces. >> right. >> what your friends and supporters found surprising was that you allowed yourself to get in that position in the first place. i want to read you some of the things you have said before. they're quite interesting about how your position on this has changed. you once said one of the great problems we have in the republican party is we don't encourage you to be nasty, we encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal, faithful, all of those boy scout words that would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics. so where does saint newt come from? >> it is not a question of being saint newt, it is a question of where you're prepared to fight. i think when we are up against obama this fall, we're going to have no choice. they're raising a billion dollars. they clearly intend to run a continuous unending negative campaign. and you have to match that or you won't be in the same business. >> with hind sight, would you have played it differently in iowa? >> i would have reacted to attack ads, especially those that were untrue, and i might well have gone to contrast with governor romney's record in massachusetts much earlier. but you know, this is the beginning of a long process. frankly, i wanted to run the experiment. i wanted to see if you stayed totally positive, if you were relentlessly positive, what would happen. well, it turned out you could come out with 14 or 15%, you could be fourth, but remember, i started pretty strong first in early december. so it's pretty clear that the relentless negative ads do have an effect. >> two very famous businessmen have tweeted about you today. rupert murdock, can't blame newt g too much. he was carpet bombed with negatives by romney. brilliant, visionary, but just too much baggage and erratic. what's your response to that. >> i like the brilliant, visionary part and i like the fact that he recognizes that the context in which we were responding is, in fact, in the context of carpet bombing by romney. that sets for a different tone. people give you permission to behave differently. it is sunk in, even in the news media there's a broad acceptance that i took all the hits for three solid weeks and patiently tried to figure out if there's a way to stay totally positive. so i think there's a much higher tolerance now for me to bring up romney's pro-abortion record or tax increase record, or the degree to which romney governed in massachusetts with liberal judges. so i think you can now draw a contrast with a sense that that's fair, given the context of all of the negative ads. >> in answer to the too much baggage and the erratic allegations, i mean, a bit of truth in both, wouldn't you say? >> that's part of what i have to overcome. i think we have been pretty successfully overcoming it. prior to the negative ads when it was a question of good ideas, good solutions, positive thinking, we were literally pulling away, and gallup and others were reporting an increasingly wide gap, which is why romney picked panic and went to all out negative attack. the truth is today, as "the wall street journal" pointed out, i have the best jobs plan, and his according -- a big gap ichb ideas. >> the critics were right. newt really will say and do anything to win. he is very pro-romney. >> give me a break. so romney lines up famous people for romney who will say anything and use jack welchs language. they will say anything to get romney elected. what's new? the fact is what i have said has consistently been conservative, and the only critique people are upset about is raising questions about a business record which romney has touted as the base of his presidential campaign. >> here's the potential flaw in going after bain. nobody knows the answer whether he created more jobs doing what he did at bain, taking over troubled companies and in most cases making them more successful and selling them on, but at a cost, a human toll cost. a few went bankrupt. argument goes from their side, they probably would have anyway. did he create more jobs or did he wreck more jobs? do you know the answer? >> well, the point is if a guy is running for president, he has two major credentials. his record as governor which he doesn't want to talk about because he was more liberal as governor than a republican primary will ever endorse, and his record in business which he doesn't want to talk about. now, at what point are you allowed to say running on commercials alone isn't enough? >> if he manages to establish that his record at bain was such that he created more jobs than he effectively lost, you could argue that's exactly what is needed in america right now in the sense that you have to cut. >> but he makes that assertion anyway. but it doesn't prove it. he just asserts it. >> have you proven the opposite? >> i just raised the question. certainly raised the question. it is not about capitalism and free enterprise, it is about values, character and judgment. and even he said i think it was in 2007 that he looks back at things he would do differently now. the question is in terms of values, character and judgment, were those the right decisions in those circumstances, and i said up front i think he is going to sooner or later go press conference and walk people through three or four of the most troubling cases. and anybody that thinks he is going to be able to get by obama and axelrod this fall without explaining this is kidding themselves. >> rick perry told me last night in a way you guys are doing him a favor because you're having the debate in the open now. >> yeah. >> the democrats have to get into it. >> last thing you want is to nominate somebody that collapses in september because they can't answer the questions. people want to attack for my past, that's fine. i will answer and be ready to be the nominee or i won't. romney ought to have to meet the same test. >> he has been very scathing through the super pacs and also pretty personal against you. got pretty nasty, pretty quickly. only now are you responding. what do you actually think of it personally as a man. >> i don't. >> you have no view? >> i have no view. >> do you like him? >> he is a competitor. he is somebody who i think was unnecessarily negative and who knows that some of the things he ran were not true, but that's his decision. that's how he wants to play the game. >> you called him a liar last week. >> no, i responded to somebody that asked me that. >> same thing. >> well, if you watch sunday's debate, there's a marvelous paragraph where romney begins by saying i have never seen any of the ads. and then he outlines one of the ads exactly correctly. >> don't have to go to the sun to know it is hot, do you? >> i am saying, watch the paragraph, then you decide. >> do you stand by the fact he is a liar about you? >> i stand by the fact that he is not truthful, i stand by the fact he doesn't want to be candid about his record as governor, and stand by the fact he doesn't want to be candid about the ads. all i ask you to do, watch, don't ask me, watch him. >> you said that character is very important for whoever wins this nomination, yet you won't tell me what you think of mitt romney. what do you think of his character. >> i don't have obligation to answer that. >> but if character is an important category for this nominee, isn't it perfectly acceptable to ask his competitors what they think of his character? if that is a criteria for choice. >> it should be quite clear that i believe that he ought to be candid about being a moderate. he ought to be candid about the fact he was consistently pro-choice, not pro-life as governor. his tax paid abortions. he has planned parenthood written into romney care by name. he appointed pro-abortion judges. his government helped build an abortion clinic after he supposedly converted. you could go through a whole series of things, say there's a big gap between the romney commercial and the romney record. >> is he better for a leader, potential president of the united states, to admit they have been wrong and change their mind about issues or to stick stubbornly by their same platform on these things decade after decade? >> if somebody -- first of all, if you had a fairly long career, you should have changed your mind on something. i mean, there should have been something -- >> it would be strange if you hadn't, right? >> someplace where you said gee, i learned something new and now i have a different position. >> anything about romney's motivation for changing position? >> first of all, you go to romneytaxes.com, see every tax he raised while governor. he will pretend he didn't raise them. as i said to you, after he claims he became pro-life, he went through pro-abortion steps as governor. these are facts. so i think you can look and decide for yourself. he will tell you that he's a conservative. he will appoint liberal judges consistently. >> could you imagine ever working for him? >> no. what does that -- he couldn't ever imagine working for me either? i mean that's just -- >> people become president and appoint people to key positions they don't necessarily like but who they really respect as political operators. you would be a big catch for a big job. >> you ask, i don't even think of him as president or thought about working for him. >> i asked to you consider the unthinkable. >> if you said the president of the united states asked you to do something, would you consider it, i am with jon huntsman. if the president of the united states of either party asks you to help on something that matters to the nation, you have an obligation as a citizen to see whether or not you can do it because you owe it to the country, not to the personality. >> take a short break. come back, talk about south carolina. many are saying for you, newt gingrich, this is the biggest moment of your political life. maybe you don't agree, maybe you do. 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getting attacked by newt gingrich is somewhat akin to being attacked by a pore cue pine. he attacks everywhere, no strategy, no consistent theme and looks so mean when he does it, it is not the most effective attack. >> ari fleischer, press secretary from george w. bush. keeping with the animal theme, newt gingrich is back, a porcupine. everywhere you look, someone is getting pricked. >> i don't think that's my reputation. that's fine if that's what ari fleischer wants to say. >> same ari fleischer also came out today in a column and said that actually given the amount of fire power you have going into south carolina with the super pac and ads it can buy you, buys a lot of ad time, you could be the one that could threaten mitt romney quite seriously. a dent to him there could precipitate a whole new battle ground. >> i think south carolina on the 21st is unbelievably important. okay? romney, although he has anywhere close to getting majority, 3 to 1 republicans in iowa voted against him, 2 to 1 in new hampshire were against him. nonetheless, he can claim he won both, even if one was won by eight votes. if he wins here, he has enormous momentum towards the nomination. >> unstoppable? >> in this day and age, i don't know that anything is unstoppable, but he would have enormous momentum. >> if he won by more than 10%. >> if he wins by one point, he >> if you don't win, given you set that parameter, do you drop out? >> i don't know. i don't want to prejudge anything. >> is it that crucial? >> first of all, i think i'm going to win. the events in the first day here have been remarkable. >> politicians play hypotheticals. >> i am not answering hypotheticals. you can ask 23 ways. i am not answering. my goal is to win on the 21st. if we win on the 21st, we go to florida. it is a brand new game. at that point romney has to confront that when you get outside of, remember, new hampshire is his third best state after utah and massachusetts. so if he only gets 37% in his third best state and he can't win here, then i think you're in a very different nomination process. so this is going to be armageddon armageddon. they will come in here with everything they've got, every surrogate, every ad, every negative attack. at the same time, we're going to be basically drawing sharp contrast between a georgia, reagan conservative and massachusetts moderate whose pro-gun control, pro-choice, pro-tax increase, pro-liberal judge, and voters of south carolina are going to have to decide. >> when it comes to armageddon, good way of putting it, he has a better machinery. >> yes. >> do you regret the fact your machinery has such cat clis mick start? disappeared in the summer. you said yourself, you did interviews, basically you're dead, what about the others. but you made an incredible come back. what you still don't have is the proper machinery. >> and because of money. romney ran for five years. he is a money machine. he has raised millions on wall street. >> is that his fault or good politics? >> i am not saying it is his fault, to try to match him at what he does best, which is raise money, would be a dead loser. what i tried to match him at is what i do best, new ideas, better solutions, better ability to communicate with people. we had a pretty interesting campaign so far. >> is this the biggest week of your life politically? >> yeah, i think it is the most decisive week. this is the week when everything culminates. we either convince south carolinians to vote for a conservative and unify them around me or, you know, you see romney probably becoming the nominee. >> very quickly, what do you think of the other competitors? rick santorum, he had the santorum surge, took a bit of a hit in new hampshire, not necessarily surprisingly, is it over for him, continue to see him get track tion. >> governor perry is here, i don't know if huntsman will -- >> are you surprised governor perry is around? >> he is a smart guy, governor the texas, he has the resources, if he wants to stay, he can. the concern is how do we communicate to south carolinians they better pick one conservative, in which case would almost certainly be me, if they want to beat romney. any vote that goes to anybody else is going to be a vote that helps romney win. >> at what point does the party have to rally as you say. has it reached that point? >> the party never has to rally. >> doesn't have to collectively say we're going to have these two duke it out? >> no. >> does it help you have endless candidates carrying on? >> that's not the party's function. the party doesn't have any authority to do that. obama and hillary went all the way to early june. nobody thought they could step in and say gee, let's not do this. the american political process is the most wide open process on the planet, and it attracts very, very strong personalities, and they get to see what they can do. it is really a marvelous process for sorting out who's capable of enduring the presidency. >> take a break. when we come back, i want to get personal with you. take you back to when you were 14 years old, and your stepfather bob took you to the old battle fields in france. and you had some extraordinary sites you saw that i think shaped in many ways the way that you became as an adult. back with my special guest, newt gingrich. i want to talk about a time in your life, you're 14 years old, stepfather bob, a military man, tough man, took you to the battlefields of france, and as you walk through the war graves and got a sense of the scale of what had happened, you also had this very disturbing moment when you went down into some recess, some cellar. >> well, it is a glassed in basement like area that had the bones of 100,000 people that had been blown apart in the fields and left to rot. the battlefields lasted for nine months. literally, back in that era, they went out after the war and they gathere