Posted by
Bill Crawford on Sunday, June 12, 2011 7:03:29 PM
And he is still dead meat, but doesn't know it.
I've gone on at some length here why he didn't have a chance. With one caveat: he might have had a run, if he simply followed my advice. He killed that chance his first weekend as an active candidate, when the words, "right wing social engineering" spilled from his lips.
But all that was not at the center of his problems last week. All his senior campaign staff resigned at once early last week, issuing a cutesy, generic 'our visions did not agree' Hallmark card for the press. My sources tell me that the problem was really his Wife, who Newt had accorded an amazing amount of veto power to in his decision process. When she decided that the response to his dump in the polls, even after apologizing to Congressman Ryan, was a two week cruise to Greece, the staff all howled loud protest- to no avail. They waited until he came back to drop that brick on him.
And the plot thickens: he acquired these people from the upper echelons of Governor Perry's staff in Texas, graciously passed to Newt when Mr. Rick declined to run for President himself. They have all reunited in the Alamo State and are now pushing Perry to reconsider.
I've laid out a little of what it will take to win the Republican nomination, as part of why Newt didn't have a chance. If Newt was the only player in this open field to take that and run with it, his polling and fundraising would improve, but his hopelessly open mouth would eventually serve to see somebody step in to pre-empt his chances. If someone like Perry didn't do it, Sarah Palin would.
I worked this morning, so I have yet to review the weekend talkies to see if Newt found somewhere to start a new course. That is not the intriguing part of this, he is still dead in the water. The interesting part is watching to see if any of the other candidates learn from it, particularly the Romney people. That camp seems to think this is 1992. I don't understand how you can manage to be the "front runner" on so many note pads and still be so dense.