What about Newt?

So Newt Gingrich was faking this thing all along.
 
With the news out that he lost two key fundraising staffers yesterday —
who knew there was any staff left ? — Gingrich decided to give another
speech. He loves speeches. Shaking hands with voters in small living
rooms in Iowa or New Hampshire? Not so much. Since his core staff left
en masse several weeks ago, Gingrich declared ” this is your campaign,”
whatever that means, and then went back to doing exactly what his staff
was complaining about, minus the cruise of the Greek isles. He is giving
talks, in places like California that don’t matter in a GOP primary
race, and pumping his films. He has made no attempt to infiltrate the
early states since telling us all defiantly that he was indeed a
committed candidate whose former staff misunderstood him and his wife
and that this was now our campaign.
 
Last time he toyed with running for president, many of us figured it was an attempt to raise his profile, and that of his foundation, American Solutions, and to help sell his books and documentaries. This time he still seemed disorganized and undisciplined but he did appear to be running for real, at least at the beginning. Sure, he was facing an uphill battle as the same portly, grumpy, stale long-ago House leader run out of the Congress by his adulterous affair with a young congressional staffer, but he was going to make the 2012 GOP field better. He was going to bring his command of history and his intellectual heft to the debates onstage and off- as the leaderless Republican Party attempted to redefine itself and choose a contender to defeat President Obama.
 
{mosads}But Newt has revealed that he is not only undisciplined, but erratic and willing to contradict himself again and again. In his blowup on “Meet the Press” in May he called Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan “right-wing social engineering” after saying he would have voted for it and before repeating that he supported it. In last week’s GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire he answered “yes” to a question about whether the Ryan plan should be a litmus test in the campaign, before moving on to say that Republicans shouldn’t be forcing radical change on Americans like President Obama did with his healthcare reform law.
 
Newt has also revealed that he is not running for president, just running for relevance. Yet each passing week of his faux presidential campaign is keeping relevance further and further out of reach.
 
 

IS TIM PAWLENTY DEAD MAN WALKING IN THE GOP PRIMARY? Ask A.B. returns Monday, June 27. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@digital-staging.thehill.com. Thank you.