WASHINGTON -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said there's probably no circumstance that would lead him to pull out of the Republican presidential sweepstakes before the party's August nominating convention.
"I'll be with you in Tampa," Gingrich told CBS's "This Morning" show, when asked about his plans.
The former congressman from Georgia has won primaries in only two states, South Carolina and Georgia. But when asked Friday what conditions could lead him to withdraw from the race, he said, "Probably none."
Gingrich tells the network "I have 176,000 donors at Newt.org. They want me to stay in the race."
Gingrich denied that if Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino mogul who has donated $11 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, asked him to leave the race then he would. "No. I'm happy to have somebody who cares passionately about the survival of Israel independently support me, just as i'm sure Mitt Romney is happy to have 16 billionaires supporting him and I assume the president has hundreds of people supporting his super PAC. That's unfortunately the way the game is currently played," he said, repeating that his smaller donors want him to stay in.
He's running well behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the delegate chase. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has won no primaries.
Gingrich again voiced skepticism about the War in Afghanistan. "It's almost as though we're doing what we know how to do even if it won't win the war, but we're doing what we know has to be done because we don't know how to tackle Pakistan. And, I think you cannot solve Afghanistan without Pakistan being part of it."
Gingrich later spoke on Fox News, taking the opportunity to hit back at President Obama for a speech he gave Thursday in which he indirectly accused the GOP presidential candidates of being "founding members of the flat earth society" over their criticism of alternative energy programs.
"It's the president who is refusing to recognize the modern world," Gingrich said. "In the modern world, the amount of oil we have in North Dakota, because of new drilling technology, has jumped from 150 million barrels to 24 billion barrels in the last decade. We have more oil in North Dakota than we ever dreamed possible and some people think with another generation of new technology, we'll have 500 billion barrels in North Dakota."
"It’s the president who is sort of -- he used the term 'flat earth society' -- I’d say he belongs to the Sierra Club flat earth society," Gingrich continued. "He can't believe anything new that would improve energy because it takes away his desire for government to control our lives."
Gingrich went on to say that he wasn't ideologically opposed to researching alternative energy sources such as algae, but that he didn't believe they were actually economically feasible at this point in time.
Video below via Mediaite: