Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
The best thing that happened to Newt Gingrich yesterday was getting shot with confetti by a same-sex marriage supporter in Minneapolis. At least, at that point, he was finally being attacked from the left. The rest of Newt’s day was downhill from there.Gingrich’s biggest effort at damage control came with a mid-day blogger conference call in which he doubled-down on calling House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget “radical,” compared himself to Ronald Reagan, falsely claimed he never supported cap and trade, and then offered to cut a television spot for any House candidate attacked by Democrats using his remarks on the Ryan plan. Newt is apparently completely unaware that no House candidate will want him anywhere near their district. The DCCC is already using Newt’s statements in emails to constituents in Republican districts. Newt then ended his day with a call to Ryan apologizing for calling his plan radical.He may not know it yet, but Newt’s presidential campaign could be finished. The main question at this point is how much damage he will do to his brand in the long-term. As The Corner‘s, Katrina Trinko reports, Tea Party leaders across the country are furious with him for attacking Ryan. Many of them still remember Newt’s decision to back Dede Scozzafava in the 2009 NY-23 special election. And conservative leaders recall Newt’s perfidy to their congressional leaders during the 1990s, as described by Sen. Tom Coburn’s book “Breach of Trust.”Despite all this, Newt’s short-lived candidacy may be the best thing that has happened to the Republican party in a long time. As Yuval Levin points out, “an exceptionally broad array of conservatives—from the DC establishment to the talk radio world to the grass roots and the Tea Party” rallied together to defend the Ryan plan. This is a huge leap forward for fiscal responsibility for the GOP. Newt has solidified the reduction of entitlement spending as the new litmus test of GOP primary politics. Other 2012 campaigns ignore this lesson at their peril.
Fiscal responsibility as a litmus test? My heart is all aflutter. It's certainly better than abortion or gay marriage.
2 comments:
I'm sad about Mr. Newt. Back in the day, I thought he walked on water, affair notwithstanding. Then he got religion, and it's been steadily downhill ever since. The sad thing is, I don't see anybody out there I could support, at this point. Perhaps Mitch Daniels, or Chris Christie, if he'd run. I'd have to see. Obama's liable to be reelected, simply because there's nobody else worthy to pick. 300M people and we can't find ONE to properly represent the other side? Pathetic.
It's a long way to November 2012. The front runner now will almost certainly not be the front runner come convention time.
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