Gingrich 'at end of line,' says financial backer

Struggling White House hopeful Newt Gingrich is "at the end of his line" since it is mathematically impossible for him to win the Republican nomination, his chief financial backer said Thursday.

Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who has given more than $15 million to the Newt Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future, said he liked him but it was clear the former House speaker cannot win at his party's convention in August.

"It appears as though he's at the end of his line, because, I mean, mathematically he can't get anywhere near the numbers, and it's unlikely to be a brokered convention," he said in comments posted on JewishJournal.com.

Explaining why he has poured so much money into Gingrich's campaign -- which said this week it was slashing staff and focusing on the Florida convention -- he said: "I'm in favor of Newt Gingrich because I like people who make decisions.

"He's a decision-maker. You dont have to worry about using the word Islamo-fascist, or Islamo-terrorist, when that's what they are. Not all Islamists are terrorists, but all the terrorists are Islamist," he added.

Gingrich has won just two of 34 nominating contests and trails a distant third in delegates, behind frontrunner Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

He has refused to bow out of the race despite calls by members of the party's establishment to rally behind Romney as the best candidate to take on President Barack Obama in November.

Adelson said he had suggested to both Gingrich and Romney that they get together, with the former House speaker as Romney's vice-presidential running mate.

But Romney had been non-committal, while Gingrich had explained that they would not be able to succeed as a two-person ticket, because other state governors would want to be the running mate as a condition of giving their support.

"Newt says, 'Listen, I will do that except that every governor whose help you need to go through in the election is hoping he'll be the vice president pick.

"'So if I go into the contest with a vice president already picked, they're not going to help me,'" he cited Gingrich as saying.

Adelson is head of Las Vegas Sands Corp., a company valued at more than $21 billion, according to Forbes magazine, and has been said to be single-handedly responsible for keeping Gingrich's campaign alive in recent months.