House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Saturday that Bob Dole is not glib enough to defeat President Clinton in a debate but predicted he would win the November election anyway on his record as "a doer."

Touting Dole as the obvious Republican presidential nominee, Gingrich also said the time had come for the other Republican candidates, including Pat Buchanan, to get out of the race and join forces against Clinton."It'd be nice if the whole team got together and said all right, our next big challenge is to make sure the conservative candidate wins the general election against the liberal," he said.

"I predict Bill Clinton will win the debates and it won't matter," the Georgia Republican said during a whirlwind tour of local party conventions in his home district.

"We have a candidate who's honest, he's hard working, he delivers, he gets the job done. If you want a doer who avoids the disaster, you pick Dole and things will be slightly more dull. If you want someone who can explain the disaster brilliantly, you pick Clinton."

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Gingrich's bid to lower expectations for a Dole vs. Clinton face-off follows the Senate majority leader's poorly received rebuttal to Clinton's rousing State of the Union speech in January.

But while conceding that Clinton's superior debating skills would overwhelm Dole, he described presidential debates as "an entertainment medium" that would have little to do with the substance of the election campaign.

"When all the fancy speeches are done, people are smart enought to cut through the baloney. And I think when they do that, Bob Dole will win the debate on facts and lose the debate on glibness," he said.

Gingrich appeared so confident of Dole's ability to unseat Clinton by an overwhelming margin in November that he referred to the Kansas senator as "President Dole."

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