Newt Gingrich's moment
By process of elimination
December 5, 2011
WHAT ever happened to Michelle Bachmann? If I recall correctly, I was just about to get around to reading that widely lauded New Yorker profile of her this summer when Rick Perry announced his candidacy and sucked all her voters away, and I figured my time would be better used reading up on him. Then Rick Perry couldn't remember which departments of the government he wanted to eliminate, and Herman Cain sucked his voters away. Then it turned out Herman Cain had a seemingly unlimited supply of sexual-harassment accusations, extramarital affairs, and so forth stuffed into his closet, and he started hemorrhaging voters and finally pulled out of the race. Now Newt Gingrich is the flavour of the moment, but according to a poll by the National Journal, the overwhelming majority of the magazine's panel of 102 Republican insiders prefer Mitt Romney. Their assessment is drawn from years of experience with Mr Gingrich in the 1990s. "With Newt, we go to bed every night thinking that tomorrow might be the day he implodes," says one. Another says Mr Gingrich "is not stable enough emotionally to be the nominee—let alone, the president." A third coins an epithet that seems destined to dog Mr Gingrich for the rest of the campaign: "Bigfoot dressed as a circus clown would have a better chance of beating President Obama than Newt Gingrich."
Which brings us back to Michelle Bachmann. Was there anything specific she did that disqualified her? Might she bounce back into favour? Or are GOP voters who used to back her left with the sense that she's not the one, even though the reasons why she's not the one are no longer clear? If she's not the one, who's left? Anybody got a number for Bigfoot? I understand he's available for birthday parties too. Seriously, this routine is more and more reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes's line that when all other possibilities have been eliminated, whatever is left must be the solution, no matter how unlikely. I think this time I'm going to skip reading up on Mr Gingrich, and spend the time learning some more about Mitt Romney.
Read the full article at:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/...
