TNR chronicles the mounting and widespread consternation over Newt's rise:
Charles Krauthammer: "Gingrich has his own vulnerabilities. The first is often overlooked because it is characterological rather than ideological: his own unreliability. Gingrich has a self-regard so immense that it rivals Obama’s—but, unlike Obama’s, is untamed by self-discipline.
Ross Douthat: "[Gingrich’s] candidacy isn’t a test of religious conservatives’ willingness to be good, forgiving Christians. It’s a test of their ability to see their cause through outsiders’ eyes, and to recognize what anointing a thrice-married adulterer as the champion of "family values" would say to the skeptical, the unconverted and above all to the young."
Joe Scarborough: "When [Gingrich] puts on his political helmet he is a terrible person. … Let me tell you something: the Republican establishment will never make peace with Newt Gingrich. They just won’t! They won’t. This is an important point. Because the Republicans I talk to say he cannot win the nomination at any cost. He will destroy the party. He will re-elect Barack Obama and we’ll be ruined. That’s going to happen. I mean Newt Gingrich would possibly win 100 electoral votes."
Even Jennifer Rubin thought Newt's rabid Likudnik stance on the Palestinians was de trop:
Playing historical one-upmanship may satisfy the candidate’s desire to be the smartest guy in the room, but it is not indicative of mature leadership. It’s certainly not comparable to Ronald Reagan’s predictive aspiration on the demise of the Soviet Union. (Our goal is not to eradicate Palestinian nationalism, as it was to end communism, and anyone who thinks Palestinian nationalism is going away is clearly delusional.) This sort of talk is not helpful in the least to Israel, to U.S.-Israel relations, or to the Republican Party and in fact concedes the entire ground of sensible pro-Israel policy to the other side. Yet the purportedly smart right-leaning punditocracy nods admiringly at Gingrich’s folly.
Talk-radio host Michael Savage puts his money where his mouth is, offering Gingrich $1 million to drop out of the race. All-caps alert:
HIS CONTINUED CANDIDACY SPELLS NOTHING BUT RUIN FOR CONSERVATIVES, REPUBLICANS, AND ALL TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOTS.
Along the same lines, John Cassidy is assembling responses to the question: "What is the nicest thing you can think of to say about Newt Gingrich?" I don't disagree with this line of argument, and Tomasky's idea that Obama might be handed a landslide is intriguing (although it's a huge stretch from a couple of polls in South Carolina and Florida). But there's a hell of a way to go before we can really assume any of this. Gingrich could explode (he doesn't implode); Paul could surprise; Romney could rally over the long haul.
But in many ways, this is all a simple result of the intellectual and ideological collapse of the Republican party. All they have, it seems, are some visceral reactions to social change – Latino immigrants, gay spouses, tolerant Millennials – and an argument that remains unchanged for thirty years, regardless of a hugely changed world.
So we have a Cold War mentality without the Soviet Union – and a crazy endorsement of pre-emptive war and torture as core elements of American exceptionalism! We have a myth of massive new regulations by the Obama administration. We have more tax cuts, as if Reagan's supply side policies have been vindicated in the long term. And we have more tax cuts, while revenue is at 50 year lows. Or we have truly utopian ideas like abolishing the Fed, bringing back child labor, and fracking our way out of climate change. The whole caboose is a sign of a party that has long since unmoored itself from the country it exists in. If one of the GOP's problems is that it has lost the last two generations, nominating a 68 year-old curmudgeon who told OWS to get a job and take a bath is not likely to help. Newt's still a boomer, with all that boomer baggage.
But here's what he'd do. He'd clarify dramatically the options in front of us. In refusing any tax hikes on the wealthy, and pledging to end Medicare as we have known it, and proposing a pre-emptive war on Iran as Israel's proxy, he'd help put the real GOP agenda on the table. To have that destroyed by Obama, and to have him handily re-elected would reform that party in a way nothing else would.
I always said it would get worse before it gets better. The hope now is that it will get much, much worse, and thereafter much, much better. But it's just a hope, not a prediction. Only a fool would predict anything at this point.
The Dish 