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Newt's worst problem is Newt. When he does interviews like this he helps his cause. He needs to show he's still relevant, informed, and the person who can solve problems.

If he's making a run, he'll have to stay serious and not take much "time out" from the endeavor. He'll have to show his intellectual capabilities without setting himself apart from others who get it. JMHO

I would quote to Newt every night the words of Burke, “To innovate is not to reform.”

Newt thinks he has to come up with off the wall innovations and he spouts off with them. It killed him for a decade and he has only in the last few years become viable again.

Newt's worst problem is Newt. When he does interviews like this he helps his cause. He needs to show he's still relevant, informed, and the person who can solve problems.

Newt would be at his best setting GOP policy and strategy. Newt makes people like Karl Rove look like drooling idiots with dunce caps. Newt also knows how to smack down and shame the blatantly biased media a la Trey Gowdy. Newt's platform he was running on was fantastic. He basically said I'm not bothering myself on red herrings, I'm interested in 70% issues. Strict enforcement of immigration laws wins nearly 70% approval and includes Democrats, Blacks, legal immigrants, and homosexuals. I work with a lesbian ultra liberal that was a signature collector for a ballot measure to prevent drivers licenses from being given to illegals.

Gingrich didn’t take time out and he did stay focused on the issues. The problem was the Romney started personal attacks (scurrilous videos) and instead of ignoring them, Gingrich responded with an ad that Romney’s secret supporter, Rush Limbaugh, declared to be “un-capitalistic.” It wasn’t, but Rush was very devoted to Romney and practically broke down in tears the day before the election describing what a “decent, decent man” Romney was and how lovely his automaton wife was as they walked into the polling place.

Gingrich should have ignored the Romney campaign ad, but everybody was telling him that he had to respond in kind. So he questioned Romney’s ludicrous statement that he was a “small businessman.”

Romney’s business was arbitrage and M&A, and the photo of him on the cover of Fortune that showed him and the other young Mormons tossing $100 bills around was not exactly that of a Main Street small businessman, which was how Romney was presenting himself.

I think it was some advisor who told Gingrich to do an ad attacking this (since Romney had been attacking Gingrich because he was divorced and remarried), but Gingrich should not have done it since he had run a very dignified campaign until then.

In any case, Romney had a lot more money and even though Gingrich was very popular here in Florida, it was Romney who had the money for the yard signs, the hired people at the intersections, etc.