WASHINGTON — The jostling among possible wild card entrants into the 2008 presidential race is heating up, with a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, saying yesterday that there is a “great possibility” that he will mount a White House bid.

The comments raise the chances of a Gingrich run following months of presidential musings by the man whose “Contract with America” led Republicans to a sweeping victory in the 1994 congressional elections.

Mr. Gingrich has not changed his timeline for a decision — he regularly decries the early start to the 2008 race and says he will not consider a bid until after he holds an online workshop on government solutions in late September.

“I think right now that it is a great possibility,” Mr. Gingrich said yesterday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” when asked about a presidential run. “I don’t want to get into all this stuff,” he added. “I want to focus on what we have to do to make America successful.”
His ruminations come as the candidacy of another undeclared Republican contender, Fred Thompson, is looking increasingly certain. The former Tennessee senator and current “Law & Order” star is openly mulling a White House bid, buoyed by support among conservative activists and poll numbers that suggest he would immediately emerge as a top-tier candidate. A top NBC entertainment executive added to the speculation yesterday when he said, according to the Associated Press, that Mr. Thompson was “highly unlikely” to return to the “Law & Order” cast in the fall.

Yet while Mr. Gingrich’s name is instantly recognizable to many American voters who recall his battles with President Clinton in the 1990s, talk of his candidacy has not engendered the same kind of excitement that has spurred Mr. Thompson.

Advisers to the former speaker say no planning is under way for a Gingrich run.

“There’s no shortage of folks who are excited about the possibility of him being a candidate,” the chairman of Mr. Gingrich’s company and political action committee, J. Randolph Evans, told The New York Sun. But, he added, “There’s been no effort to try to put together a team. … There’s just been no movement at all in that regard.”

Mr. Gingrich’s press secretary, Rick Tyler, said the former speaker’s aides were not planning on a White House bid and that Mr. Gingrich has “instructed his staff not to think about it.”

Still, Mr. Gingrich has made sure to keep his name on the list of presidential contenders, and he has frequently promoted what he calls “Solutions Day,” a series of seminars across the country aimed at advancing his proposals on health care, the environment, and other issues. He has said that if the current field of Republican hopefuls is addressing core problems with the American government, there will not be “a need” for him to enter the race. But the nationwide event Mr. Gingrich is planning, slated for September 27 and 29, clearly could serve as a catapult for his candidacy.

By that time, voters and the press could be looking for a new face in a campaign that will be nine months old, or one or more of the current leading Republicans could have stumbled, creating an opening for a candidate who would not have to expend much time or money introducing himself to the electorate.

Mr. Gingrich has been making news in a variety of ways lately. He was on “Good Morning America” promoting a historical novel, “Pearl Harbor,” he has written with William Forstchen. He appeared with another possible presidential candidate, Mayor Bloomberg, earlier this month, and he has engaged in extended, one-on-one debates with a former New York governor, Mario Cuomo, and with Senator Kerry.

At every turn, Mr. Gingrich has criticized the current process for selecting party nominees. The campaign, he says, is far too long, and the candidates do not engage in enough substantive debate. “It’s exactly wrong as a way of choosing a national leader,” Mr. Gingrich said yesterday.

Political analysts say the former speaker, if nothing else, wants to stay relevant. “Gingrich is trying to sustain interest in his potential candidacy,” the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Larry Sabato, said.

Mr. Sabato and others say it is Mr. Gingrich’s scholarly background — he is a former history professor — that may ultimately keep him from running, even as it draws him accolades as an “idea-generator.”

“I think he wants to, as Newt would put it, frame the debate,” a Republican strategist who worked for Mr. Gingrich in the 1990s, Rich Galen, said.