Newt Gingrich is rising in the polls for GOP presidential nominee and he’s understandably thrilled, but not for the reason you might think.
(CBS News) — Gingrich was widely written off several months ago after an exodus of advisers from his campaign, but he has soldiered ahead on a shoestring budget compared with his rivals. A new CNN/ORC International poll shows him in a statistical tie with Romney, with 22 percent to the former Massachusetts governor’s 24 percent.
This is a good thing. For starters Gingrich has more skeletons in his closet that Jeffrey Dahmer, enough that he’ll never be president, he won’t win the nomination, he’ll probably rise and fall like those before him. The other useful feature is he is a professional grifter. Newt literally makes his living milking conservative faithful, selling his CDs and book at every hamlet and town he visits on permanent tour, and he’s good at it. Between Cain, Perry, Bachmann, and Ron Paul, the grass-roots fundie/racist/ignorant nexus that defines the crazy conservative party these days, the foot soldiers will be financially and emotionally tapped out. There’s still plenty of corporate money to help Mittens, but he’ll have a tougher, uphill battle convincing the grassroots to fund him and fight for his candidacy thanks to those who came before him, and toxic Newt is especially damaging to that already weakened conservative corpus.
So its down to those two? When gingrich implodes, who will the anyone-but-romney be?
Have they got a new evil in a box candidate waiting to be introduced at the last minute?
Who’s left:
Huntsman: He believes in science, worked for the scarykenyanatheistmuslimsocialist and like Romney, wears magic underwear. Basically, he’s everything the fundies hate.
Paul: He’s 72 and doesn’t want to bomb the entire Middle East back to the stone age in a holy crusade for oil. On the plus side, he hates all government regulations and everything the government does.
Santorum: I suspect he may be a time traveler from the dark ages.
On the outside:
Palin: Could still ride into convention on her white horse, Mavericky, to save the day.
Christie: Could be his own running mate.
Jeb Bush: Positive: He’s the smart Bush brother. Negative: He’s a Bush.
Pawlenty: If everyone besides Romney implodes, the party could rush to him in a last minute “block the Mormon” movement. Negative: Zzzzzzz.
I think it has to be Romney, and while he’s not excatly easy to pin down, Romney might not be a total disatser on par with Cain or Perry. At least he’s not a total idiot.