Newt Gingrich weighed down by negative ads

For a time, he flashed like lightning across Iowa, grabbing the lead in the Republican presidential race and electrifying voters with his ideas and scrappiness.

But on Monday, Newt Gingrich was just another bottom-tier candidate struggling to survive the ruthless culling of Tuesday’s caucuses.

They say there are three tickets out of Iowa, though that is probably generous. Even so, Gingrich will be lucky to claim even one of them.

The former House speaker has been buried under a toxic waste dump of negative advertising, financed in good part by his chief rival, Mitt Romney, and backers of the former Massachusetts governor. The attacks have clearly taken a toll, as Gingrich acknowledged Monday —”I don’t think I’m going to win,” he said of Tuesday’s caucuses — and illustrated by Greg and Linda Januska.

The couple from Cedar Rapids showed up to hear Gingrich in tiny Walford, but, no, they won’t vote for him, even though they admire his intellect and figure he knows his way around Washington.

“One thing that bothers me is he became a lobbyist when he left Congress,” said Greg, 59, a letter carrier. “I have reservations about the money he took from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said Linda, 56, an accountant.

Each backs former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and, not incidentally, both hit on major themes of the anti-Gingrich onslaught.

When the candidate’s big bus pulled up, there were cheers from the 200 people seated on folding metal chairs at the Schrader Excavating & Grading Co. But the bus was swallowed up inside the cavernous maintenance shop, and Gingrich too seemed shrunken.

He inveighed against the assault he suffered, urging Iowans to support him Tuesday and “send a signal we are sick of negative politics, we are sick of cynical consultants.”

He called for a balanced budget, less regulation and lower taxes. He studded his remarks with historical references, spiced them with stabs at President Obama and inflated them with characteristic grandiosity. “All of the forces of the old order ... attack me repeatedly,” he said, because he threatens to shatter their world.

Shane Schrader, who threw open his business for the event, said Gingrich was “the most honest of the bunch running” and “could give Obama a real run for his money.”

“I’m guessing there’s a few states he could pull through,” Schrader said, but he didn’t sound too convinced. “I sure hope so.”

mark.barabak@latimes.com