Apart from championing small government, Gingrich is known more as a strategist than as an issues guy. He’s likely to present a standard GOP agenda, backing fiscally and socially conservative policies, though he has been known to take stances atypical of his party on issues like immigration, where he supports a guest worker program.
Unlike many of his potential contenders, Gingrich, who’s been out of politics since he left Congress in 1999, doesn’t have much of a cohesive base. He’s likely to pitch himself to evangelicals and the tea party, a rational move for any candidate in a Republican primary, says Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
