I'd say king's gambit is fine choice for 1200ish level. Positions tend to get wild and you might learn a thing or two about tactics.
Then again I think people care way too much about openings. Beginners particulary and can't say I was exception to that when I was starting out. I don't think people around my level need to know much about openings really. Opening principles are easy to learn and you might get even better positions by just using common sense than trying to memorize main line from king's gambit accepted.
All that are very true.
However, most people prefer the lazy way of memorizing instead of going the "hard way". Whenever they fail to make progess, they always have a great excuse: The opening was rubbish/ not suiting their aggressive attacking style (which does not exist of course, but everyman has his fetishes, so they sound believable) so they jump to the next opening for the foreseeable future (which is about five weeks on average).
I do have my opening fetishes, but I have sought to find openings that fit my playing style. I have stuck by the Bird and the Dutch for years, and recently picked up the French as my 1. e4 defense, seeing that it bears some similarities to certain Dutch aspects. I have lost quite a few minis recently (trying to learn how to play certain French line), but I am getting there.
I didn't read above posts so maybe this has been said before. Shaw, the author of the 2013 KG book, claims that the KG is unreliable in correspondence games because everyone can just find the proper defences. However, in OTB he says it's viable all the way to 2700.