2 things I've noticed:
I keep searching for news articles on what the Newt-bashers claim are his problems: 'dumping his 1st wife while she was in the hospital for cancer' and 'dumping his 2nd wife for a younger model'.
Aside from the many many many moonbat websites all claiming these exact "talking points" about Newt (funny thing, a large number of them quote David Corn!) I finally found a Time magazine article (yep, no bias there).
It did clarify that Newt went to see his ESTRANGED first wife the day after her surgery for uterine cancer, and they discussed the terms of their divorce. So it was already a dead marriage.
Newt did break up with his second wife callously - on the phone while she was at her mother's home. This is the same wife who never even bothered to move to Washington to be with him while he served in Congress, and who described their marriage as "on again, off again". Later she said he'd never run for President because she'd just go on TV the next day and undermine him.
So - I'm having a hard time understanding why Newt's baggage is worse than Rudy's?
Or Hillary's if we're just talking candidates in the process itself, and not this party.
He doesn't have anywhere near the baggage of Hillary. He very well handled a series of questions about his personal life from a smug lib student at a town-hall meeting I saw on C-SPAN, so he can take care of this and put critics on the defensive.
He thoroughly beat HillaryCare in 1994 and had excellent organization until "grownup" Bob Dole who was then starting to run for President and few wannabes in the House undermined him on government shutdown and other issues.
He can express (and execute) Reagan's conservative principles better than any Republican in the field, and that's where we need help in "winning" - our biggest enemies are here at home.