Newt Gingrich officially ended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, calling it a “wild ride” and immediately going on the attack against President Obama. He’s also talking to other groups about how to pay off his campaign debt, which is more than $4 million:
The former candidate must now work on paying off his debt. He was in talks with the Republican National Committee to figure out how to get some money. Romney’s camp is not expected to directly help Gingrich pay it off but may introduce his team to donors who could help him in that effort.
“We have offered to be helpful,” a Romney official said.
Maybe they could get Ann Romney to donate a few of her $1000 shirts for them to put up on ebay.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said Gingrich will quickly be back on the campaign trail, likely as an “attack dog” for the Republican Party as it seeks to unseat Obama.
“The GOP needs him. They need conservative attack dogs who can break up the Obama message machine,” said O’Connell. “He has the ability to take complex items and boil them down to be palatable Kool-Aid for conservatives.”
“He’s one of the best messengers of the right who, on a moment’s notice can rebut someone.”
I bet he won’t quickly be back on the campaign trail. I bet Romney won’t want much to do with him and will want him to just keep quiet from now on.
22 comments
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erk12
May 4, 2012 at 2:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heh, yeah if you’ll listen to Gingrich, you have drunk deeply of the Republican Kool-Aid.
Randomfactor
May 4, 2012 at 2:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Mr. Newt’s Wild Ride.”
Maybe he can help rMoney with his etch-a-sketch art.
bahrfeldt
May 4, 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mitt and Newt= Liar R Us
eric
May 4, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“He has the ability to take complex items and boil them down to be palatable Kool-Aid for conservatives.”
Brought to you by the same folks who brought us the Etch-A-Sketch metaphor for Mitt Romney’s campaign.
This is easily the wierdest election in my lifetime. A Democratic president continues prior GOP policies, yet doesn’t get attacked from the left. A GOP primary filled with some batty individuals. The US is struggling to get out of an economic depression, has high unemployment, is fighting two wars, and dealing with a potential nuclear escalation in the mid-east, and the main attack strategy that emerges from the GOP is…women’s access to contraception.
On top of that, you have the press representatives for the GOP and their candidate showing what can only be described as thinly veiled contempt for GOP voters. These etch-a-sketch and kool aid comments are essentially admissions, on camera, that Mitt and the GOP leadership is doing nothing but manipulating the GOP base. Either these spokespeople are incredibly dense (hard to believe), or they don’t think GOP voters will pay attention to/understand what they’re saying. Its just baffling.
Chiroptera
May 4, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Newt Gingrich officially ended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, calling it a “wild ride”….
Boy, was it ever!
In fact, the entire Republican primary has been a pretty wild ride!
slc1
May 4, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If Gingrich really wanted to help Romney, he would endorse Obama.
Zinc Avenger
May 4, 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I got to watch him get bitten by a penguin on YouTube. This alone makes the entire fiasco worthwhile to me.
bryanfeir
May 4, 2012 at 3:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If I were in Romney’s position (hack, spit), and I could afford that sort of money, I’d tell Gingrich that I would be willing to cover all his campaign debts… under the condition that he make no public speeches until after the election in November.
Granted, part of the reason for that is that I’m pretty sure there is no way that Gingrich would hold on to his end of the deal anyway.
nedchamplain
May 4, 2012 at 4:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Newt cannot take the stage for anyone but Newt.
Trebuchet
May 4, 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Eric:
It would seem you haven’t been reading Ed’s blog much!
Marcus Ranum
May 4, 2012 at 6:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Who?
Ichthyic
May 4, 2012 at 6:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Either these spokespeople are incredibly dense (hard to believe), or they don’t think GOP voters will pay attention to/understand what they’re saying. Its just baffling.
No, it’snot baffling at all if you bother to read any primary lit on sociology or cognitive psych.
Or, even if you bother to read simplified summaries like Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians
You HAVE read that at least, right?
Here tis again for anyone who hasn’t:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
No excuses for saying this behavior is “baffling”; it really isn’t.
vmanis1
May 4, 2012 at 7:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Does this mean that it’s Romney who gets to be Lunar President during his second term?
leftwingfox
May 4, 2012 at 10:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Shep Smith won a complementary Internet for his response to Mitt Romney’s statement.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/shep-smith-politics-weird-and-creepy
joachim
May 5, 2012 at 7:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The National Debt has increased to 16 Trillion dollars under Obama.
At over a trillion a year, it will be 20 Trillion by the end of his second term.
Whatever you think of the Presidential race, the country is broke.
The only solution will be to inflate the dollar to control the debt.
Just say “WEIMAR REPUBLIC”.
Chris from Europe
May 5, 2012 at 9:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@joachim
You’re a clueless nut. The Weimar Republic didn’t collapse because of debt. That’s the big lie in German history.
The Nazis came to power because after three years of “reasonable” conservatives subjecting the country to austerity measures.
Trebuchet
May 5, 2012 at 10:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@joachim: And you can’t control the debt by cutting taxes for millionaires. Debt exploded under Reagan and Bush II. Clinton had a balanced budget.
Michael Heath
May 5, 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
joachim writes:
Citation requested.
Chiroptera
May 5, 2012 at 12:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
joachim, #15: The National Debt has increased to 16 Trillion dollars under Obama.
Right. And how much of that debt is Obama personally reponsible for? Not much of it. Reagan and the second Bush each contributed far more to that debt than Obama has.
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At over a trillion a year, it will be 20 Trillion by the end of his second term.
Even if this is true, it is better to increase the debt if the money is being spent on the human resource policies and infrastructure that will lead to a more prosperous economy. And this would be a lot better than not spending the money at all to bring down the debt if it means as a result that American workers are under trained, economically stressed, and our infrastructure not only fails to advance but continues to erode.
If that statistic is true, and if it is bad, it is because it is due to Obama caving in to economic policies that your side is demanding.
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Whatever you think of the Presidential race, the country is broke.
If so, it is due to the fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement by your side. If you want things to improve, best that you and your side shut up and let the grownups try to fix things.
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The only solution will be to inflate the dollar to control the debt.
And what is your solution? To further allow American workers to be the least educated and trained in the industrialized world? To deny American workers economic and social protections that the rest of the industrialized world takes for granted? To allow critical infrastructure to further erode while the rest of the world continues to advance?
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Just say “WEIMAR REPUBLIC”.
Do you realize that it is your side that is contributing far more to the power of American fascism?
Chiroptera
May 5, 2012 at 12:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rereading joachim’s duckspeak, it is possible that he isn’t a conservative as I assumed in my response but rather a liberterandian. Not that changes anything I wrote since the liberterandians have long allowed themselves to be “useful idiots” to the conservative movement.
Michael Heath
May 5, 2012 at 2:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera:
Partly true, we should always tie presidents to their attendant congresses. I also think we need to be careful about generalizing about debt creation as if it’s always bad policy. Nearly all successful businesses generate debt to create increased future profit. Government should also incur debt for two reasons: 1) defend against deflation and some levels of unemployment, and 2) because future economic growth opportunities are compelling enough to invest now beyond what we can collect from revenue, e.g. – education, research, and infrastructure are three areas which generate very high rates of return which justify such debt creation. From this perspective much of what Reagan and his attendant congresses worked-out which generated increased debt directly confronted both of these points. We wouldn’t had the beneficial growth of the 90s without the tough decisions and bullish investments made in the 1980s.
When we consider the structural components of the deficits under W. Bush which led to increased debt, there was zero justification for that debt – it was all bad policy. Specifically cutting the tax rates didn’t lead to increased growth rates or job growth which we knew in advance wouldn’t work, and borrowing for wars which suppressed growth rather than stimulating it being the two primary components.
The Lorax
May 7, 2012 at 10:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Conservative Kool-Aid” needs to have 15 minutes of fame.