Dyersville, Iowa
“I am not going to go negative, period,” Newt Gingrich told Iowa voters who had gathered to hear him speak Tuesday at the National Farm Toy Museum in the northeast corner of the state. “How many of you have received enough negative information that you’re now tired of it?” he asked. Some scattered applause and an “oh, yeah” or two could be heard in response. “I’m appealing to the people of Iowa,” he explained. “You have a chance in the caucus to send a signal to the whole country that the age of the consultant-driven dishonest negative commercials is over, and the easiest way is to simply refuse to vote for people who run those kind of commercials.”

It was a message Gingrich repeated throughout the day: Negative campaign ads would only help Barack Obama, and Gingrich would take no part in it. Complaining about opponents’ negative TV ads a week out from the Iowa caucuses may seem like a strange strategy–candidates typically fight fire with fire. But Gingrich seems to be trying to do something to blunt the barrage of negative attack ads that sent his poll numbers plummeting. According to the last four PPP polls in Iowa, Gingrich’s net favorable rating has dropped from +31 to +12 to -1 to -17.