Deathly Ill, Newt Gingrich Campaign Finally Succumbs – Autopsy Concludes Self Inflicted Wounds Were Fatal

Final Blow Was Accurate Reporting on Mr. Gingrich’s Career by the Washington Post

This Forum has consistently criticized the Washington Post for its lack of journalism, so it is only right that we commend the Post when it does conduct what used to be called investigative reporting.  The Post has researched the career of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich using archival materials at the University of West George, material stored there by a Gingrich supporter and biographer.

Here is some of what the Post found, starting with as good a summary of the article as there can be

When Gingrich was in the House, his chief of staff noted at a 1983 staff meeting that his boss frequently derided Reagan, along with then-White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader.

Gingrich “assumed that he’s the whole Republican Party,” said the Gingrich aide, Frank Gregorsky, according to a transcript of the meeting. “He knows more than the president, the president’s people, Michel, Baker. He calls them stupid all the time, and I think that’s going to get him into big trouble someday.”

Okay Mr. Gregorsky, you win for best prognosis of 1983.  And as far as the icon of the Republican Party is concerned, here is what Mr. Gingrich said about Mr. Reagan

Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administrationin Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. . . . The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”

Yep, that did it. 

Services for the Gingrich campaign have not yet been scheduled, but are expected to take place soon, with formal burial expected some time after the Super Tuesday primaries.  Although brain dead, the campaign is being kept technically alive on life support transfusions of money from a billionaire who believes a zombie* Gingrich campaign will help stave off the challenge of Rick Santorum to the nomination of Mitt Romney.

*Technical Note:  Zombies are not real, they are just entertaining fiction.