Despite Newt Gingrich’s best efforts, it looks like the world is
going to have to save itself. A humiliating third-place finish in
Saturday’s Louisiana primary should have extinguished the last embers of
Gingrich’s wildfire dream of a second-ballot victory at the GOP
Convention. Any Newtonian fantasy about stopping Mitt Romney in Tampa
requires the former House speaker to continue to accumulate convention
delegates. But Gingrich—after winning a combined 9 percent of the vote
in Louisiana and the prior Illinois primary—is now in the goose-egg
phase of his descent into irrelevance.
How hard it must be for Gingrich at 68 to accept that his active
political career is over for good. So Newt and Callista, according to a
schedule released by the campaign Sunday, will be holding Wisconsin
rallies at the end of the week in advance of the April 3 primary. It
undoubtedly will be Potemkin Village Politics—scant crowds, minimal
press coverage, but with the purported trappings of a presidential
campaign. Since, according to Politico, Gingrich has begun paying off vocal campaign creditors, there should be enough money left for a Wisconsin weekend in presidential primary fantasy camp.
