Sheldon Adelson: Gingrich 'At End of His Line'

Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has been financing Newt Gingrich’s presidential ambitions, this week acknowledged that the former House speaker is “at the end of his line” and faces high odds of winning a brokered convention.

“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,” declared Adelson in a videotaped interview with The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and posted on jewishjournal.com.

Wearing a button that read “Obama . . . Oy Vey,” the publication reported that Adelson’s comments came during an informal discussion with a small group participating in a three-day leadership and networking retreat on Monday that attracted more than 1,400 Jewish professionals in Las Vegas.

“I’m in favor of Newt Gingrich because I like people who make decisions,” Adelson said in the video. “He’s a decision maker.”

Adelson, by far Gingrich’s largest donor having given more than $11 million to the Winning Our Future super PAC along with his family, was also not optimistic that Gingrich would be a vice presidential contender either.

“I would have said yes because in the past I’ve talked about him and Mitt about committing to each other to be vice president,” Adelson said in the video, adding that he did not receive an answer from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Gingrich wanted to avoid committing to Romney because it would have dampened his chances among Republican governors, whose support he still needed.

“If I go into the contest with a vice president already picked, they’re not going to help me,” Gingrich responded, according to Adelson.

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Adelson also told the publication what he did not like about Romney and his now chief rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — comparing Romney to President Barack Obama.

“He’s not the bold decision maker like Newt Gingrich is. Every time I talk to him, he says, ‘Well, let me think about it.’ Everything I’ve said to Mitt: ‘Let me look into it.’ He’s like Obama. When Obama was in the Illinois Senate not one in 186 times he voted present because he didn’t want to establish a record for himself,” according to Adelson, who described Santorum as “too social” in his opinion.

“I’m a decision maker. You got to come up and make decisions. You got to have the courage of your own convictions and you have to be able to take some risk,” he explained of Santorum. “This man has no history whatsoever of creating something. That having been said, I know Rick. I like him. We’re friendly, but I’ve got to tell you something: I don’t want him to run my country.”