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Jewish World Review
Jan 31, 2012/ 7 Shevat, 5772
The end of the road for Newt Gingrich?
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It was approaching 11 p.m. at the Hyatt hotel bar here on Sunday, and reporters covering Newt Gingrich’s campaign were enjoying a few drinks when a familiar figure approached.
Gingrich put a hand on the shoulders of two women at the table and imparted a big scoop. “There’s a new poll coming out,” he announced. “I’m within five points of Romney. . . . I’ve got all the momentum.” It’s hard to know what the most pitiful part was: That a presidential candidate was whiling away the night at a hotel bar (it was his second visit to the journalists’ table that evening)? That he felt the need to do his own spinning? That the survey he was spinning was a “robo-poll” done by machines? Or that the pollster who did it used to work for Gingrich? In fact, real polls were showing the opposite — a new Quinnipiac poll had Mitt Romney with a 14-point lead over Gingrich in Florida. If such a drubbing occurs in the state’s primary on Tuesday, that would, for all intents and purposes, end Gingrich’s campaign. But Gingrich is going down in his own style, leaving fabrications, insults and scorched earth all the way from Miami to Pensacola. During the course of the day Monday, he erroneously announced a “brand new poll” showing the race tied, falsely implied that Nancy Reagan had endorsed him as the sole heir to her husband’s movement, and canceled a news conference because, his spokesman said, he was “mad at the press.” He made religion-baiting references to his Mormon opponent at two stops, accusing Romney of discriminating against Catholics and Jews. “I think we need to have a government that respects our religions,” Gingrich declared at a rally in Tampa. “I’m really tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet. I want them to respect our religions.” So the United States now has official religions? That dog whistle had barely finished echoing through the airport hangar when Gingrich sounded another, referencing a liberal Jewish-born billionaire: “Send a signal to George Soros, to Goldman Sachs, to the New York and Washington establishment,” he thundered. “Money power can’t buy people power.” But Gingrich is losing people power. As crowds thin and poll numbers drop, the press corps following him has begun to dissolve. As he took off Monday on his campaign plane — a 737 supposedly used by the Miami Heat and operated by Moby Dick Airways — he was without a media contingent. After reporters refused to shell out more than $2,000 apiece over the weekend to fly on the Gingrich plane for a single event, the campaign punished them by canceling press charters. To try to keep up with Gingrich, a few reporters chartered their own turbo-prop, while 20 others missed half of the candidate’s events while chasing him across Florida by bus. Rick Santorum’s campaign, trying to exploit the rift, sent an e-mail to reporters aboard the Gingrich bus: “If we could start a charter service tomorrow, would you or others be interested?” it asked. “I know the travel has been rough on y’all.” Actually, keeping up with Gingrich’s utterances is the roughest part. On Monday, he told his supporters: “We just got word of a brand new poll from about an hour ago that says we have a tie!” The crowd erupted in a chant of “Newt! Newt! Newt!” When reporters asked for details, Gingrich’s spokesman distributed a “Dixie Strategies” poll — conducted early last week and published on Friday. No wonder Gingrich’s campaign has had enough of the meddling media. His team had called a news conference for Monday afternoon in Tampa, and many of the heavies in the business — Fox’s Carl Cameron, ABC’s Terry Moran, CBS’s John Dickerson — were on hand, but minutes before the event, the campaign canceled it. When defiant reporters tried to cluster around the candidate, things got rough. A man put his hands on the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward to stop him from getting closer. “I’m law enforcement. Do you want to go to jail?” the man said. But no tempers were hotter than Gingrich’s. President Obama is “increasingly dictatorial” and has a “war against religion.” Romney is a “liberal” and “out of touch with honesty” and he “refused to allow [Catholics] the right of conscience” and “cut off Kosher meals for Jewish Medicaid recipients.” Gingrich, his midsection bumping against the lectern as he delivered his broadsides without notes, promised there would be more earth to burn. He said there shouldn’t be “any doubt” that he will remain in the race after Florida. “The establishment in both parties is terrified,” he boasted. Well, at least the Republicans are.
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Previously:
• 01/25/12 Gingrich is Obama's best surrogate
• 01/24/12 Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney's attack dog
• 01/16/12 Mitt Romney's Al Gore problem
• 01/12/12 Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina
• 01/11/12 Journalists' campaign trail secrets revealed
• 01/10/12 Mitt Romney's money problem
• 01/09/12 Newtonian exceptionalism
• 01/05/12 Mitt Romney out of control
• 01/04/12 Indecision 2012: In Iowa and the GOP
• 01/03/12 Rick Santorum's curious closing argument
• 12/28/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/23/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/20/11 Strange brews and views?
• 12/19/11 Cellphone ban would be a distraction
• 12/15/11 Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and the Malfunction Minuet
• 12/14/11 The presidential auction of 2012
• 12/12/11 Newt's tactics comes back to haunt him
• 12/06/11 Can an anthem save Occupy non-movement?
• 12/05/11 The winner of the GOP campaign: Washington
• 11/30/11 Barney the bully: Congressman Frank's other legacy
• 11/23/11 Jon Kyl's search-and-destroy mission
• 11/21/11 Pay to play, brought to you by Washington
• 11/17/11 Big enough to save the supercommittee?
• 11/16/11 Why Newt Gingrich won't last
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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