Newt is a bright man but he carried baggage heavy enough to bring down a fleet of 747s. His candidacy was a non-starter from the beginning. Or as some said his was a campaign if it can be called that, was like a “Hindenberg ready to explode.” It was both quixotic and in a terminal state of disarray ending in a humiliating embarrassment punctuated by penguin bites, bounced checks in Utah, and a never ending on-again off-again mode. It would have been better if Newt took a role similar to Sarah Palin and influenced the election of conservatives with less baggage. He did however do lasting damage to Santorum who may very likely have dealt Romney a fatal blow had Romney been beaten in MI where he won with 3% points or in OH where Santorum came within 1% of beating Romney. No wonder that even the left-wing media called Santorum’s campaign “phenomenal” for its 11 state wins and over 3 million votes cast on a shoe-string budget.
This primary season is now over. Gingrich says he wants to make Obama a one-term president and will campaign for Romney. At the end of the day this is an epochal election. Anybody but Obama. I hope a Romney win will give Gingrich and Santorum key roles in enacting some radical reforms.
One thing to keep in mind is that we cannot be sure that the four conservative Supreme Court justices and the moderate who often votes with them, Anthony Kennedy, cannot guarantee themselves or us that they will survive until 2017, and we can't let Obama be the person who picks their replacement. If the worst happens to one of the five, a replacement chosen by Romney might not be our ideal, but we could pressure Mitt not to pick someone obviously bad...whereas we can be sure the person Obama would pick will be awful.