Power & the limelight has made him intellectually lazy as well as dishonest!
Newt needs to accept he will never be president. He had a “window of opportunity” right after his fall if he had left DC gone back to Georgia (or Pennsylvania, anywhere away from DC!) and built a constituency, stayed in touch with the grassroots. He didn't do it, he made a bad choice and then proceeded to compound it.
For someone who claimed to be such a Futurist its interesting how he fell back into the old-style politico mold of all power & knowledge flows from the center,from a political elite in DC.
Well that's changing, he jumped on the wrong horse, he has had numerous opportunities to jump off he didn't. He might be realizing his mistake, he is a long way down the wrong road. He could still make a contribution but the presidency is out of the question. He betrayed his conservative constiency and independents still think he is the “Grinch”.
He has nothing now only a lot of sincere “mea culpas” to conservatives would earn him a place at the conservative table. Even then it might be too late he has burned one too many bridges.
IMHO your take on this is right on point. I was once a very solid supporter of Newt, but I had to move on when he started making so many missteps.
I think he still has some ideas and skills that can help the conservative movement, but it’s going to be hard getting anyone to buy into his services.
I don’t know if he was responsible for the revolution his name is associated with, but I do know that he helped and that I will be forever pissed with those who took our good faith votes and turned out to be nothing more than politicians.