The Strange Weirdness of the Newt Gingrich Campaign

The Washington Post Promotes His Boomlet

In the back of the pack at the Republican debates has been former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Mr. Gingrich has been largely consigned to whining about the debates, and questions about the legitimacy and seriousness of his candidacy have plagued his debt ridden campaign from the beginning.  Now the Washington Post, apparently having run out of news stories is raising the issue of whether or not Mr. Gingrich is a serious contender.

The story is unintentionally amusing, and in some case downright funny.  In an attempt to make Mr. Gingrich a serious candidate the Post has this reporting.

In an election season that already has taken more than its share of unlikely turns, few moments have seemed more improbable than the crowd scene Friday afternoon at a Chick-fil-A along a busy suburban thoroughfare here. At least 400 people jammed the restaurant, leaving those in the back straining to get even a glimpse of a man whose presidential candidacy had been left for dead not five months ago.

Now The Dismal Political Economist likes Chick-fil-A, they have clean restaurants and are closed on Sundays, reflecting religious principles trumping business greed, an admirable characteristic.  However, he has never seen a Chick-fil-A that can hold 40 people, much less 400, and the restaurant has never been a campaign icon.

Then there is this from the story.

Former Greenville County Council member Gale Crawford, who maintains an e-mail address book of 1,300, said she hears from at least 100 tea party activists and GOP stalwarts a day. “They feel the same way,” she said. “Most of those people like Herman Cain, and Newt is moving up. He’s moving up.”

which suggests people are confusing those candidates with The Jeffersons.

And Newt used to play weird games as a child.

All in all, Gingrich’s trajectory of the past few months brings to mind a childhood game that he devised when he was growing up in Hummelstown, Pa. A buddy would pretend to beat him up, leaving him in a heap on the curb. Then, when a passing motorist would stop to lend assistance, young Newt would spring up and yell, “Surprise!”

Does anyone else think that is neither clever or funny, but just plain strange behavior?  And on finance, here is the would-be head of the largest fiscal operation in the world

He said he hadn’t grasped the full extent of his campaign’s financial precariousness, which still included more than $1 million in debt in its third-quarter filing, because “I was looking at cash on hand and didn’t realize they weren’t paying the bills.”

Raising the question of whether or not this is the person we really want in charge of reducing the deficit.  And there is this comment from a person from an alternate universe

“Newt Gingrich is a brilliant guy who can save the country and can stand toe to toe with the president,” said George Harris, an anti-tax activist and former finance chairman of the Nevada Republican Party who recently hosted a fundraiser for Gingrich that brought in more than $60,000.

As for the source of this long reportage, Newt’s climb in the polls, well it is not going quite as well as one would think

The polls, however, are showing only a modest uptick for Gingrich. Real Clear Politics has him averaging about 9 percent nationally, about double where he was in September but still 15 points or more behind Romney or Cain.

In a New York Times-CBS News pollreleased last week, he reached 10 percent, up three percentage points since mid-September. Cain, meanwhile, made a fivefold leap over that period and led the poll with 25 percent.

The justification of an in-depth story on Mr. Gingrich is that he may be the logical heir to the votes that are current going to Mr. Cain.  Maybe, but Mr. Gingrich will soon find that he has Mr. Perry and Mr. Romney in front of him in that line.  At least Mr. Gingrich is no longer in first place in the “Next to Drop Out of the Race” Sweepstakes.  Mr. Huntsman is alone in first place in that unenviable position.