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"FacebookPinterestGetty Images\n\nMatt Towery, 53, is an Atlanta-based pollster for InsiderAdvantage and former top Gingrich aide who still has a D.C. cell phone number. He's been one of Newt's closest pals for three decades, and, like Gingrich, he loves to talk. Below, Towery says some things\u2014about Newt's second marriage, idiotic campaign consultants, what's really going to happen in Florida, and his own admiration for Obama\u2014that he knows might get him \"shot.\"\n\nGQ: How long have you known Newt Gingrich?\n\n\n\n Towery: [Laughs] My relationship with Newt Gingrich is thirty years long. In the early 1980s I worked for Mack Mattingly, the U.S. Senator from Georgia. I was on his payroll. But I had helped Newt in three debates that he had in 1980. I had won the national bicentennial debate championship. So Newt asked me to help him, because I helped his daughter in a debate workshop. And over the years, I stayed in touch with him. I knew Newt Gingrich through all these times that everyone is talking about.\n\nGQ: How would you describe your friendship?\n\n\n\n Towery: It's two fists in each other's face. I won't put up with his bull. And he won't put up with mine. I'm not very nice to him, by the way. I'm the only person in the world who stands up to him and just beats him up. I'm probably the only person in America who will tell Newt Gingrich \"Your pants are down\" or whatever. I have to tell you, Newt has changed. He's a different person.\n\nGQ: How so?\n\n\n\n Towery: Much kinder. Much more caring. Not the mean-spirited type folks thought.\n\nGQ: So he was indeed mean-spirited?\n\n\n\n Towery: No, no. I'm not saying that. That's just what people thought. He was tough. And, you know, I was one of the few who was tough enough to fight him back. And I think that's why our friendship has endured 30 plus years. He was never mean. He was always thoughtful. But he's turned into someone who's almost soft.\n\nGQ: In his debate performances he doesn't appear to be soft.\n\n\n\n Towery: I know that. Yes. I'm not that stupid. I mean, in debates he debates. He's the king of debating. But, in his personal life, in personal dealing with us, I've seen a huge difference. I would not even talk to him now if he were the guy from 1990.\n\nGQ: Because in 1990...he was what?\n\n\n\n Towery:Tough. But I was tough, too. The two of us fought like animals.\n\nGQ: You speak regularly? Do you still give him advice?\n\nTowery: I give him the polling numbers. And I tell him what I'm thinking. But, you've gotta understand that I'd do that for Romney if he called me. I'm sort of an even broker. My firm's reputation is far more important to me than Newt. And we were the first in South Carolina to show Newt up. But what people don't realize is we were also the first to show him down. So, you know, I'm not . . . Newt does not consider me someone that he has in his pocket.\n\nGQ: Was it surprising to you that he took South Carolina as easily as he did?\n\n\n\n Towery: I thought he'd win by five percent. I could not believe that number.\n\nGQ: Do you think he believed that number?\n\n\n\n Towery: Now, yes. But not then. I went down the aisle with him. I was right behind him. And it was overwhelming. The Gingrich people booked the Hilton when they thought they were gonna lose. Because the room was overcrowded, overwhelmed. It was probably a thousand people trying to get into a 250-person room. And, quite frankly \u2014 I'll say this on the record \u2014I was fearing for his life. People were reaching in left and right and I thought, my goodness, this could be Bobby Kennedy all over again.\n\nGQ: And he's surrounded by bodyguards.\n\nTowery: Sort of.\n\nGQ: How big a guy is he?\n\n\n\n Towery: Newt? Huge. I mean, come on, let's not play around. He's big. Too big. He's always been that big.\n\nGQ: You've written that he \"has only one enemy, himself.\" How is he his own worst enemy?\n\n\n\n Towery: He talks too much. He says too many things. And when he does that, it hurts him. That's his Achilles heel.\n\nGQ: How about his competition?\n\nTowery: Romney is, to me, a very attractive candidate. But he's extremely plastic. And he is run by the too-cool-for-school crowd. And they make people upset. I think that Newt has sort of gotten into that groove even though Newt, normally, would not have understood that was the groove he was getting into. I mean, Newt was in D.C. for a long time. He's no neophyte. But now, all of a sudden, he's the outsider.\n\n\n\nGQ: Did the allegations from his ex-wife surprise you?\n\n\n\n Towery: No. I'm gonna tell you more about that than anybody else will, and I'll just be shot, okay? I knew Marianne from 1981 on. I liked her. She was a friend of mine. But that marriage was severely flawed from 1990 on. And Marianne did not tell the truth.\n\nGQ: She didn't tell the truth in that instance?\n\n\n\n She did not tell the truth about the marriage.\n\nGQ: Regarding the open marriage question?\n\n\n\n Regarding everything.\n\nGQ: What were her motives? Bitterness?\n\n\n\n Towery: Yes. And I feel for her. In the sense that Marianne does feel left behind. But Marianne was a . . . I'll say it, on the record . . . when he was speaker, she was a mean-spirited nasty person who took advantage of Newt being speaker.\n\nGQ: Took advantage in what way?\n\n\n\n Towery: Every way possible. Tickets to shows, telling Newt to do this that and the other. She was a nasty person. And she did not own up to her own failings.\n\nGQ: So the marriage was doomed?\n\n\n\n Towery: It's a sham. A sham.\n\nGQ: But they stayed together for how many years?\n\n\n\n Towery: Whatever a sham can take.\n\nGQ: Is this the worst field of Republican candidates you've seen in a while?\n\n\n\n Towery: The worst were four years ago. John McCain, who was worthless. Huckabee, who was a great guy, but could not get traction. Guiliani, who was fatally flawed. A terrible group. I think this group is actually pretty good.\n\nGQ: Really, because in a piece you wrote . . .\n\n\n\n Towery: I know, I know. I wrote it. But if you read that piece, I'm talking about their consultants. The consultants suck. They are neophytes. They're idiots. And they don't know what they're doing. And if they stay this course, Barack Obama will be reelected. They are children.\n\nGQ: And you wrote that they're not \"honest brokers,\" these candidates.\n\n\n\n Towery: Yeah, they're all being told to say stuff that's not true. We need these candidates to be run by the professionals that know what they're saying. Where are the Ed Rollins's, the . . . Atwater is gone, but . . . where are the folks that can run these campaigns? Jimmy Carville, who by the way is one of my favorite people, knows how to run a campaign. These folks don't. They're neophytes. The folks running the Romney campaign are too cool for school, and the folks running the Gingrich campaign, they don't know what they're doing.\n\nGQ: And you've said as much to Newt?\n\n\n\n Towery: I have.\n\n\n\nGQ: Did Gingrich's debate performances in Florida surprise you?\n\n Towery: Yeah, I was totally surprised. I think he was too tired. I had a chance to look over his schedule in Florida last night, and I've never seen a candidate so over-scheduled. I can't tell you how many events, but there was never any down time. Just one thing to the next, next, next, next. If you're doing that and then debating, you just have no hope. I think he went into the first debate sort of feeling that he was on top, and not prepared for Romney being sharper. The second debate, he had two problems: he was tired, and Wolf Blitzer ran that thing beautifully. So Gingrich wasn't able to pull his usual media castigation. The debate was run very tightly. And that didn't meet his sort of more rambling style.\n\nGQ: What's the vibe like around the Gingrich campaign right now?\n\n\n\n Towery: I wouldn't know. I'm over at Disney World. [Laughs] I've been around these things too long to want to be around all that crap. I'll be over there tonight. Today, my fianc&amp;amp;#xC3;&amp;amp;#xA9;e and I are going to go and ride a couple rides over in Epcot.\n\nGQ: Knowing Newt as well as you do, do you think he's privately optimistic?\n\n\n\n Towery: He's always privately optimistic, but I think he's also probably realistic. I don't think he thinks he's going to win Florida, although he thinks probably there's some potential for an upset. I think that they're ready to map a strategy beyond Florida, and that he really is looking\u2014this is just my guess \u2014at what has taken place here, over the last four to five days, and trying to figure out how he can capture that in a bottle and take it to some of these other similar states. Georgia, Tennessee, Alaska, maybe even Ohio. I don't think they have a lot of hope on these caucuses, because they're just too quick and too well-organized by the candidacies.\n\nGQ: What's happened over the past four to five days?\n\n\n\n Towery: He got more aggressive, his ads went up, and I think they've learned the value of having the money in place to buy the ads. I think there has also been sort of a coalescing of some conservative figures who have .... in their mind, there's not just a Democratic elite, there's a conservative elite. And it's made up of a lot of folks who generally stay in Washington all the time. But who nevertheless are very influential in their writings. You look at an Ann Coulter, for example. I mean, fine writer. But I haven't seen her name on a ballot ever. You look at Charles Krauthammer: extremely brilliant guy, but I don't think he's been out of a Washington, D.C. studio in years. George Will: same thing. Almost all of these people...in their minds, suspiciously at once, began to beat Newt to a bloody pulp. It's sort of a good thing, because these are just writers. It caused the Gingrich campaign to reach out to people like Fred Thompson, and to Sarah Palin, and to Herman Cain. And say, Look, these are not your friends, these are the same people who put you down. So he's got the beginnings of an Us-vs.-Them campaign. Which is what he's gonna need if he's gonna keep Romney from getting enough delegates to win this thing on the first ballot... Look, we're headed towards a brokered convention. And people don't realize that. This thing will not be decided. Romney is too strong and Gingrich is too popular.\n\nGQ: Where do you have Gingrich polling at this moment?\n\n\n\n Towery: We last polled Sunday night and we had him down six points. You could say, Wow, that's a hell of a lot different from being down twenty. Anybody could be wrong: Florida is very hard to peg. But I pegged it for Politico in 2008, when I had Obama winning by one. The reason I think it might be a little closer for Newt is that ours was the only poll to poll just on the 29th, which was after the endorsement by Cain and Sarah Palin did her thing. In South Carolina, it was the Palin thing that really bucked Newt up. I hate to put so much stock in one person, but she does have an effect. Particularly on men. Our poll showed that Newt had pulled away from Romney on men. But he was getting slaughtered among women. That slaughter I attribute partly to some of the rather grandiose statements he made: saying we're going to colonize the moon doesn't appeal to female voters. They want to think their president will be a strong stable person\u2014not that he's not, but he's being portrayed as unstable. At least in these television commercials.\n\nGQ: So do you think the race has tightened at all since Sunday night?\n\n\n\n Towery: It could have tightened or it could have expanded back out. But I don't think this is going to be a 15 point blow-out. The exit polls may show that, but I don't put much faith in exit polls. The intensity of people who are for him is pretty high.\n\nGQ: What's going to happen in the general?\n\n\n\n Towery: Barack Obama is by far stronger than any Republican thinks. They do not understand how strong this guy is. He's a great debater. The economy will start to improve. And people do not understand why he is \"unelectable.\" And I believe that, in the end, Barack Obama will be . . . a stronger force than any Republican thinks. And I polled this thing for Politico . . . I know that they don't use me now, but I was right in every poll I did. I had North Carolina going for Barack Obama. Florida going for Barack Obama. Georgia at 48 percent. I was an honest broker. I think this thing will be right back where it was back four years ago.\n\nGQ: So you think Obama will win again?\n\n\n\n Towery: I'm not saying that. I think it will be very tight. But I think that people who think Barack Obama is finished are nuts. I . . . let me tell you, there are some nights when I would vote for Barack Obama. I mean, I'm not right wing nut. I make my decisions based on what I see. And this guy is going to be much stronger. They are underestimating him and they are writing him off to history, and that's a mistake.\n\nGQ: Who would you vote for today?\n\n\n\n Towery: I wouldn't vote. I never do. But who would I say would win today? Barack Obama.\n\nGQ: Does Gingrich have as good a chance as Romney to beat Obama?\n\n\n\n Towery: I think he actually has a better chance, because he has passion. Either one has a good chance. But the problem is: Obama is so smart and so good. I mean, these guys underestimate his organization, his ability, the advantage someone has as president. Let's put it this way: I used to be a politician and I wouldn't run against him.\n\nGQ: Yeah, he has a lot of intangibles.\n\n\n\n Towery: Yes. They all write him off, and I don't. I've been around for a long, long time and I do not put people down because of their party. I actually respect President Obama. And I'm probably one of the few people who is Republican who does. The man took on an incredibly disastrous situation. He's very strong. He's a smart guy. He's no dummy. Look, I respect him immensely. He's the President of the United States.\n\nCharles Bethea is a contributing writer to Atlanta Magazine."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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