Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Former democrat congressman (he lost in 2010) Alan Grayson is a loudmouth bolshevik, but he’s right on the results of the Florida GOP Primary.

[T]he GOP is leaving Florida worse than it arrived.

“I think there has been lasting damage,” he said. “I think that when Newt Gingrich parades around the country saying Mitt Romney is a liar and Mitt Romney parades around country saying Newt Gingrich is a liar, the conclusion most people draw is they’re both liars.”

I’d say though that it started in South Carolina, when the Gingrich campaign took the low road and started attacking Mitt Romney using the left’s anti-capitalist, class warfare arguments.

The massive counter-attack on Gingrich, featuring prominent Republicans, former Congressional colleagues, and conservative pundits, which stooped to utilizing bogus democrat party ethics charges fabricated in the late 1990s for purely partisan advantage was effective and appalling.

We came into this presidential campaign, essentially with an economy-based free “Elect One President” card which ought to have made this race a relative walk-over and a complete sure thing.

Our only problem has been the conspicuous absence, for many years, of a respected, confident and articulate, national figure conservative candidate. For some unaccountable reason, no one has come along to occupy the role once filled by Barry Goldwater and later by Ronald Reagan. Newt Gingrich, for instance, did not really enter the race with that credential. I tend to think that Sarah Palin may yet grow into the role, though she is not there yet. Her declining to run prematurely speaks well for her judgment, and Palin has since 2008 been doing the kind of thing no conservative since Reagan has done: she has functioned as a reliable and effective voice for the conservative movement, and has had regular impact on the national political debate from outside elective office.

We Republicans and conservatives ought to be filled with optimism and resolve at a point in history when it is clear that we are going to have an opportunity to change the country’s direction for the better, but instead we seem to have no leadership, no principles, no really satisfactory candidates, and no class. We clearly have too damn many slime mold professional campaign operators, too many spiteful and grudge-bearing has-beens, and too little genuine leadership.

The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and the country want the kind of leader who makes, not only our economy, but our politics better, the kind of man who leads and inspires.

If Gingrich and Romney persist in what they’ve been doing, they may yet re-elect Obama.

Emory King sticks up for Newt and proposes a new standard of electoral acceptability for the 2012 Presidential Race.

I have not and will not post anything in support of a candidate for president. They all pass the Daffy Duck test for me and therefore will receive my vote once they secure the nomination. (The Daffy Duck test, by the way, is are they smarter than Daffy Duck and are they not named Obama.) However, pundits assailing Newt are getting on my nerves. Not because he isn’t worthy of criticism, (he is) but because they are trying to tell me he isn’t a conservative. Really. Where exactly were these folks in the eighties and nineties? I was alive then and can’t recall anyone telling me Newt wasn’t a conservative then. If Newt isn’t conservative, why was he used as an example of how the left tries to destroy its opponents in Ann’s book Treason. I quote from page 123 of my copy, ” The left’s enthusiasm for destroying individual lives still sputters to life occasionally, driving their monumental crusades against Newt Gingrich, Ken Starr, and Linda Tripp, for example.” If people don’t want to support Newt for president, I certainly understand why. He isn’t perfect by a long shot. But please don’t sit here and tell me he isn’t on our side of the fence because most of his critics among the chattering class loved the guy in 1994.

Jim Geraghty (via his email morning Jolt) remembers history a bit better than Bob Dole does.

History will record that it was on January 26, 2012 that the Romney campaign high command looked at their tough spot in their battle against Newt Gingrich, and with a steely glint, exchanged knowing, grim looks, and nodded.

The command was given, “Unleash Bob Dole!” (He’s kind of like the Kraken [or the Cryptkeeper].)

Dole declared yesterday:

I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway. . . .

In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty bucket in his hand—that was a symbol of some sort for him—and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it, and I’m not certain he knew either.

The ice bucket was because Congress used to have “ice service,” i.e., taxpayer-funded U.S. Capitol employees had the job of bringing ice to offices that requested it. Newt and the class of 1994 ended that service, modest as the cost was, as a symbol of congressional excess and waste.

How am I the only person who knows this? How is it that I know this and Bob Dole doesn’t?

Erick Erickson is incredulous that Bob Dole is the preferred attack dog of the Romney campaign:

Bob Dole, you will remember from George Stephanoupolos’s memoir of his time in Clinton’s White House, totally cut the legs out from under Newt Gingrich and House Republicans during the government shut down. According to the Democrats, they were within twenty-four hours of caving to the House Republicans’ demands, but Bob Dole surprised them all by caving first.

Dole went on to lose to Bill Clinton and still hates Newt Gingrich for it because Gingrich was the face used to attack Dole—a man who would have been the hero in the fight had Dole not caved.

And we’re supposed to hate Newt Gingrich because Bob Dole caved to the Democrats twenty-four hours before they were going to cave to Gingrich?

Someone from Yale conservative circles not more specifically identified was quoted as having remarked:

“When Ann Coulter calls you arrogant and hotheaded, you have a problem.”

Hat tip to John Brewer.

Rich Lowry compares the GOP’s favorite unfaithful husband to his former adversary in the White House.

Newt is the Republican Clinton — shameless, needy, hopelessly egotistical. The two former adversaries and tentative partners have largely the same set of faults and talents. They are self-indulgent, prone to disregard rules inconvenient to them, and consumed by ambition. They are glib, knowledgeable, and imaginative. They are baby boomers who hadn’t fully grown up even when they occupied two of the most powerful offices in the land.

Steven Gillon, author of The Pact, a book about the Gingrich-Clinton interplay in the 1990s, was struck by their “unique personal chemistry, which traced back to their childhoods.” Both were raised by distant or abusive stepfathers and surrounded by strong women. Both were drawn to politics and wanted to serve, in Newt’s case on a vast, civilizational scale. Both were allegedly sleeping around on the campaign trail before they had won anything.

Yet their personalities are different. Growing up in an alcoholic household, Gillon notes, Clinton was a natural conciliator. Gingrich was given to defiance. Clinton was gregarious, a people-pleaser. Gingrich was bookish, a lecturer at heart. Clinton made his way in politics in the unfriendly territory of Arkansas; he had to dodge and weave and seduce. Gingrich climbed through the ranks of the House Republican conference; he stood out as a partisan provocateur.

And so he remains today. He utterly lacks the Clinton soft touch. No one will ever consider him a lovable rogue. Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator says he’s the “Bill Clinton of the Right with half the charm and twice the abrasiveness.” Republican voters lit up by his debate performances believe he’s the most electable candidate, even though the three recent national polls show him with a favorable rating in the 20s. Presidents dip that low after they lose a war or before they get impeached. Newt Gingrich starts out there.

And he ends by joining a growing chorus of pundits predicting doom, because Newt Gingrich is just too obnoxious to be electable.

I will readily admit that I am personally biased strongly in favor of excessively talkative, intellectually condescending guys with overly large waistlines, and it’s obviously true that Newt is never going to win the Mr. Congeniality award. Yes, the American voting public does have a decided preference for smooth and handsome guys with positive charisma.

But… I agree with the statements made frequently during the GOP debates that any of the candidates on that stage could defeat Barack Obama. Obama is going into next Fall’s election with an albatross of the US economy around his neck that nobody could overcome. Voters will be desperate and will find a way to justify voting for anybody offering change from the current administration and the current economic mess.

When things really go to pot, the voters will throw the bastards out and give the other side a chance. You doubt it? Let me remind everyone: they elected Richard Nixon twice. Newt Gingrich may not be Cary Grant, but compared to Nixon he is Mr. Charm.

Hat tip to Lynn Chu.

R.L.G., writing in the Economist, wants to see the real ideological opponents square off and come out swinging. I’m with him.

[W]atching Mitt Romney pivot to the centre with the smoothness of a consultant flipping to his next slide, a manoeuvre we can all expect him to execute the minute he wraps up the nomination, will be depressingly predictable. The perception that he will say whatever he feels he must to become president is not founded on sand. Mr Gingrich, by contrast, can almost certainly be counted on to be the same Mr Gingrich we’ve seen in the primaries. Say what you like about the man, but he has ideas, says arresting things, and most of all, would make the clearest possible contrast with Barack Obama in the general election.

While some people groan at his idea for a series of “Lincoln-Douglas” debates, for example, I’d relish the chance to see Mr Gingrich and Mr Obama have long and freewheeling exchanges. ...

t I can very easily imagine Mr Gingrich repeating the “food-stamp” line in a general-election debate with Mr Obama several feet away. This would be a natural extension of his claim that journalists asking him questions about the story of the day was “despicable”. He is fearless, reckless, filterless; in any way, -less all of the things Mr Romney has too much of.

I want to see Mr Obama reply to “food-stamp president”, to the idea that annoying appeals courts should be de-funded, to the Gingrich claim that he is the most radical president in history, and so much more. I dread the scripted turns the election will take if Mr Romney is the nominee. I think America could use a straight fight between two boldly different visions of America. I don’t expect I’ll get my wish, but a journalist can dream, anyway.

Gingrich’s defeat of Romney in South Carolina Saturday was absolutely dominating. Just a week ago, Romney had a solid lead over Gingrich in the polls. On Saturday night, he lost to Gingrich by 12 points—a huge and disastrous swing. Gingrich won 44 of South Carolina’s 46 counties.

How did it happen? For one thing, all the talk about Romney having a hugely superior ground organization turned out not to be true. “They did not do the retail politics that a Santorum and a Gingrich have done over time,” said Kevin Thomas, chairman of the Fairfield County Republican Party. (Thomas was neutral in the race.) “I think Newt’s people, they had more on-the-ground staff, and they worked.” There were a lot of them, too; after Gingrich’s strong showing in the debates, said Susan Meyers, Gingrich’s media coordinator for the Southeast, “We have so many volunteers, our phones are melting right now.”

Gingrich’s campaign was also faster and more nimble than the Romney battleship. “There is a very strong contrast between the two campaign organizations,” said Gingrich adviser (and former George W. Bush administration official) Kevin Kellems. “In military terms, it’s speed versus mass. Newt Gingrich’s operation, and Newt Gingrich as a man, has a great deal of speed—intellectual speed, decisiveness. The Romney campaign is much more about money and size, having hired half of Washington D.C. And sometimes, speed beats mass.”

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Karl Rove thinks Newt Gingrich can thank CNN’s John King.

After Newt Gingrich was declared the winner of the South Carolina primary Saturday night, Karl Rove suggested that the candidate has CNN’s John King to thank for his victory in the Palmetto State.

“Taking on the media is always good in a Republican primary,” Rove said on Fox News. “John King couldn’t have set up the question in a more positive way for Gingrich to just nail it and haul it right out of the park.”

But, certainly, Juan Williams deserves credit for an assist.

Newt Gingrich has come to remind Bryan Preston of Abraham Lincoln’s response to demands that he dismiss Ulysses Grant because he was notorious for having a drinking problem.

Like a Civil War general once accused of letting his personal problems get in the way of doing his duty, we may not be able to spare Newt Gingrich. He isn’t perfect, far from it. But he fights.

That general later became president despite the accusations against him. For what it’s worth.

Politico (cynically) observes Newt Gingrich’s unique ability to fire up a Republican audience.

The former Massachusetts governor’s awkwardness was underscored at every turn by Gingrich’s fluent, flamboyant performance. Already surging in South Carolina polls, the former speaker won his second standing ovation from a debate crowd in a week and put himself in a position to win Saturday’s primary with another impressive showing.

By twice castigating one of the right’s perennial boogeymen — the press — Gingrich made a gut-level connection with conservatives who think they get a raw deal from the news media.

His blistering response to CNN’s John King about the accusations lodged by Marianne Gingrich might even offer a short-term lift.

“Watch it help Newt,” predicted former South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson, speaking of the interview Gingrich’s former wife gave to ABC, likening Marianne Gingrich’s claims to the unproven 2010 accusations that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley conducted an extramarital affair. “It looked like they were picking on her.”...

But the former speaker’s rejuvenation isn’t only a matter of being viewed by conservatives as the latest victim of the press.

Just as he did when he first returned from the political grave last year, Gingrich is finding his voice by appealing to the mad-as-hell wing of the GOP that has been searching for a candidate to match and articulate its anger.

“He does capture where the party is rhetorically,” said Republican strategist Jon Lerner, who is unaligned in the race. “But I don’t know if Saturday’s vote is tantamount to long-term success.”

“Newt’s Rocky Balboa — he doesn’t mind fighting,” added former Rep. Bob Livingston, a Gingrich adviser, after the debate.

Romney is probably never going to be likened to a brawler and, in the long run, that may serve him well. If he gets the nomination, he may be the one most able to make the general election a referendum on President Obama.

James Taranto, astutely explains that, when Newt Gingrich unlimbers the anti-capitalist “You liquidated companies and killed jobs!” arguments against Mitt Romney, Gingrich is not just being cynical and opportunistic. He is as well (possibly even a bit intentionally) inoculating Romney and developing his immunity to the same kinds of attacks when they are delivered again later by Barack Obama during the actual campaign.

It’s shameful for Romney’s rivals—especially Gingrich, who should know better—to be engaging in this sort of class-warfare idiocy. As Charles Murray asked in an ironically nocturnal tweet: “How can a conservative attack Romney for Bain and sleep at night?”

Yet all that said, assuming that Romney is the eventual nominee, Gingrich is doing him a huge favor. ...

If Gingrich didn’t attack Romney over Bain now, Barack Obama would do so in the fall. In fact, Obama will do so in the fall anyway, assuming Romney is the nominee. Others on the left, such as some guy at the Puffington Host, are already doing it:

Romney’s statement [about firing people], and in fact his entire career at Bain Capital, shows that this whole Republican job creator mantra is, to steal a line from Newt Gingrich, pious baloney. The word pious fits because Republicans really do worship the top 1 percent and the Wall Street tycoons like Romney who manipulate money but don’t actually build anything or create net new jobs. In fact, not only do they not create them, they actually destroy them.

By attacking now, Gingrich ensures that it won’t be the first voters hear about the matter, which will take some of the sting out of the Obama attacks. He’s also acting as a proxy for the president—call him Barack Hussein Gingrich—giving Romney the chance to practice and improve his defense, something he unquestionably needs to do.

Contrariwise, if Romney is incapable of learning to defend himself effectively, Republicans are better off learning that now, while there’s still time to nominate someone else.

We’ve all seen this happen before.

Barack Obama’s intimate associations with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers were major issues during the nomination fight and caused his candidacy to reel a bit, but Obama survived, and later in the real campaign his former radical associations had magically become transformed into old news, not significantly relevant anymore.

Gingrich responded by observing that Ronald Reagan has gone down in history for doing exactly the same thing.

Rafal Heydel-Makoo forwarded on Facebook this morning a very apt video of Margaret Thatcher, another great leader of the past, indulging in the kind of candor which is so frowned upon by conventional, mediocre politicians. “They’re a weak lot in Europe… Weak. Feeble.” says Thatcher with unconcealed contempt.

“Truth is great, and will prevail”

Hat tip to Tiomoid of Angle.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he would offer controversial former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton the position of secretary of state if he wins the presidency.

Gingrich earned cheers for the choice at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition, at which nearly all the GOP presidential aspirants appeared separately. Bolton served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the U.N. for more than a year but never won Senate confirmation.

Critics described him as hotheaded, and he famously loathed the U.N., which won him conservative fans. Bolton discussed a 2012 presidential run himself but decided against it.

John Bolton (a Yale classmate) did an excellent job as UN Ambassador. He absolutely infuriated the left, and he has since continued to provide a valuable series of commentaries and criticisms of American international policy, particularly focusing on the failures of US administrations to stand up to villainous and barbarous regimes bent on mischief, like that of North Korea. Bolton is an ideal conservative choice for Secretary of State.

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP’s national polling. He’s at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain and 18% for Mitt Romney. The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans: Rick Perry is at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

Compared to a month ago Gingrich is up 13 points, while Cain has dropped by 5 points and Romney has gone down by 4.

A new national survey of Republicans indicates that it’s basically all tied up between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, with Gingrich on the rise and businessman Herman Cain falling due to the sexual harassment allegations he’s been facing the past two weeks.

According to a CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday, 24% of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say Romney is their most likely choice for their party’s presidential nominee with Gingrich at 22%. Romney’s two-point advantage is well within the survey’s sampling error.

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It must have been NYM’s recent endorsement.

When Bill Jacobson tweeted the video clip, Joan of Argghh responded in his comment section: That clip was so satisfying that I need a cigarette!

Herman Cain seems to have more or less survived his sexual harassment accusations, and Rick Perry failed to disgrace himself (thus doing much better) in last night’s debate at South Carolina’s Wofford College, but the evidence is clear that neither of these two likeable guys has the substantive knowledge or the communication abilities needed to be elected.

Personally, I wrote off New Gingrich back in 2007 as a possible GOP nominee in 2008 for coming out in support of Warmism. As recently as last May, Newt Gingrich was attacking the Paul Ryan budget proposal.

Michael Brendan Doughtery, just a couple of days ago, drew up a little list of Newt Gingrich’s sins, and asked How is Gingrich an improvement on Mitt Romney?

But if one accepts the viewpoint that the process is meaningful, the long series of Republican debates have seriously raised Gingrich’s status and claim to represent the viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Other candidates who inspired hope have delivered disappointing performances. Mitt Romney has been polished and smooth. But only Newt Gingrich has demonstrated a superior ability to discuss issues and policies with a penetrating and original intelligence and with wit and humor. Gingrich is frequently a pleasure to listen to.

A number of serious commentators on the right, Byron York, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and now Power Line’s Steven Hayward are making arguments in favor of Gingrich.

Hayward makes the point which has occurred to me as well, that Gingrich is significantly redeeming himself precisely by the old-fashioned and unconventional way that he has chosen to seek the nomination and the presidency.

Newt is doing something interesting and maybe profound: he is trying to run for president according to an older model that stresses substance over sound bytes and gimmicky, targeted campaign strategy. ... It is a bid to see whether presidential politics can still be conducted along the line of the old republic that would be more familiar to the Founders, to the style of public argument more akin to what Hamilton had in mind in talking about “refining and enlarging the public view” through “reflection and choice” in Federalist #1.

It seems increasingly evident that we are going to have to oppose Barack Obama with a lesser figure than Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. We simply do not have a peerless champion of Conservatism that we can nominate. But, God knows, even a mediocre, unprincipled Republican, some would argue even a syphilitic camel would represent an enormous improvement over Barack Obama.

If push came to shove, we would have to support Mitt Romney over Obama. It seems impossible to avoid concluding that the best hope of a more seriously conservative nominee is going to be Newt Gingrich. (There. It hurts, but I said it.)

CNN:

Sarah Palin, ending months of speculation, said Wednesday she will not run for president, either as a Republican or third-party candidate.

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Back last June, a particularly astute commentator observed:

It is too soon to decide whether the Republican Party ought to choose Sarah Palin as its nominee next year. She has not made it clear, so far, whether she actually intends to seek its nomination.

Were she to try to run, I think she has exhibited both potential major strengths and weaknesses that give one hope for her possible success, but leave one also uncertain of her ability to succeed. If Sarah Palin fails to convince most of us that she can perform consistently at a higher level of eloquence, I’d say that she ought not to be the nominee.

Palin has already carved out for herself a useful, practically effective, and very prominent role as a political commentator. It is possible that remaining free to be herself and operating in that capacity would be more congenial to her and more compatible with her talents and inclinations than campaigning for the presidency.

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Deciding not to run at this time, I think, speaks very, very positively for Sarah Palin’s good judgment. I think this decision, in fact, proves that she is highly intelligent and is operating politically at a level worthy of respect and admiration.

It is obvious enough why she isn’t running.

She clearly has concluded that running in the second position of a losing ticket does not really give one an automatic ticket to the GOP’s nomination and a firm claim on the presidency.

She undoubtedly recognizes that her resume was impaired by her decision to resign the Alaska governorship and write a book and cash in, in order to avoid her family winding up in bankruptcy as a result of the enormous legal expenses piling up as the result of a endless series of left-wing “ethics” attacks.

Sarah Palin is wise enough to realize that she sometimes appeared inarticulate and unprepared during her previous national campaign, and she has concluded that, before running again nationally, she needs to prove herself. She is only 47 years old, and she has plenty of time to run for the presidency.

Since leaving elected office, Sarah Palin has carved out for herself an extremely useful and highy influential role as national spokesperson for conservatism. She was already, in that role, able to have a real impact on the national debate, and she was, in fact, more effective most of the time than any member of Congress or any governor.

There are a lot of people who have doubts about whether she possesses sufficient knowledge and ability to express herself to serve as president. Serving for years as a national leader of the conservative cause, fighting the good fight in the national political wars, is actually the best way to establish anyone as a credible leader and inevitable candidate. Palin isn’t running for president this year, instead she is proposing to occupy the same national role formerly held in years gone by Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.

Looking on, I find myself wondering why on earth that particular role has been vacant for so long. The reflection is inevitable that, if Newt Gingrich had done, some years ago, what Sarah Palin is doing now, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry would not be the front runners.

You often hear people talk about how bright Newt Gingrich is, and how dumb Sarah Palin is. I think all this proves that exactly the reverse is true. Palin has made the right decision, and there is a pretty good likelihood that she will keep on doing the right thing, and will one day go on to greater things.

Newt Gingrich has been backpedaling and apologizing furiously for his attacks on Paul Ryan’s budget reform proposal on the Meet the Press last Sunday.

What Gingrich’s true and actual positions on the Ryan proposals, Medicare, and Obamacare might actually be these days remains unclear. It seems that Gingrich is basically where one would expect him to be, and on Sunday was only bloviating, and philosophizing, and attempting to differentiate his own more nuanced, sophisticated, and organic approach to budgetary reform from less prudent and more inflamatory approaches.

Gingrich apologized to Paul Ryan and has been making a genuine effort to sound more like a Republican (and to stay a viable candidate).

The latest amusing effort to keep the Gingrich candidacy afloat was this salvo by his press secretary Rick Tyler, attempting to blame the Sunday debacle on a media conspiracy.

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

I was down on Gingrich, too, so I guess my invitations to the Georgetown cocktail parties must be in the mail.

Quinn Hillyer filed the best response at the American Spectator.

Methinks if there is any billowing smoke, it is the funny stuff the Gingriches must be smoking if they think he has emerged looking like anything except a shabby, self-important hack with enough egg on his face to feed omelets to the whole nation of Lichtenstein.

Hat tip to Jim Geraghty’s (emailed) Morning Jolt.
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UPDATE, 5/20:

Jon illustrated the entire “Gingrich Emerging” rant here.

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UPDATE, later 5/20:

John Lithgow reads the glorious press release for Stephen Colbert.