It's all about Newt

By Richard K. Barry

Just a minor comment because I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about Newt Gingrich, but whatever happened to party solidarity? Gingrich is laying off staff, running a campaign deficit, and cutting back his travel schedule. He's done, done, done.

So, what does he do? He announces that his goal is to amass delegates only as a tactic to stop Romney from getting the number he needs to secure the nomination. Newt then thinks, or says he thinks, he can go to the convention and present himself as the great saviour of the GOP as he wins the nomination from the floor. Dream on, little man. Not gonna happen.

As TPM puts it:

His campaign says it knows it's not going to win by collecting the most delegates, so it's instead focusing on a last-ditch effort to position Gingrich as the man who gets the nod should the primary blow up and end in a brokered convention.

"If you look at the math, we're not going to get to 1,144 before June 26, the last two primaries, so what we're going to have to do is convince delegates in the 60-day period between the last primaries and the convention that Newt is the candidate to defeat Obama and to change Washington," Joe Disantis, a Gingrich campaign spokesman, told CNN Wednesday morning.

Team Gingrich says that by picking up delegates here and there, it can deny Romney the delegates he needs to win the nomination outright. Then, in the Gingrich campaign's mind, comes the real campaign to win over the delegates headed to the brokered convention.

I know this will sound really strange, but, as a former political hack, I really hate it when candidates show no loyalty to their party. I don't support the Republicans. It's not about that. It's about actually believing that there can be honour in politics, that candidates can see a higher good beyond their own selfish interests. Gingrich seems intent on throwing hand grenades because he hasn't been taken seriously enough by those he has tried to court, so he is going to blow things up.

I know you're probably laughing as you read this but it's not impossible to imagine that a lot of politicians over the years have taken one for the team because they believed in something that transcended their own ego needs. I've seen it happen. I swear I have.

Not that I expected much of Newt Gingrich, but it sickens me nonetheless.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)