There are definitely visions dancing in Newt Gingrich’s head, but they’re not sugar plums.
Once such vision is a 2012 campaign where GOP nominee Gingrich “would have probably done better” than Mitt against President Obama.
He probably thinks he was a good husband to his first two wives…
Embattled Farmers 
Actually, it was hard to do worse than Romney did: after all, Mitt did lose every swing state except for NC.
I don’t think of NC as a swing state, really, I think it was a fluke that it went for O in 2008. His team certainly wasn’t counting on it in 2012. I don’t think Newtie could have won states that Mitt lost. He would have turned people off in a different way from Mitt (certainly women), but he would have turned people off as decisively, I think.
I don’t doubt Gingrich would still have lost to Obama. But considering that pretty much no one on the Republican side was excited to vote for Romney and only voted for him to get rid of Obama, so every one of those voters would have voted for Gingrich. Newt would lose some independents, but could get higher turnout on a Republican side, and those fundamentalists who could not bear to pick between a Mormon and “a Muslim”.
I really don’t think the Mormon thing was an issue at all, I think Mitt did well among Evangelicals. Newtie just had tons of baggage, both personal and political. Mitt was a really terrible candidate for the GOP, and Newt would have been too. Six of one, half dozen of the other.