Thank god for Pat Robertson, eh, Newt? (Eric Thayer/Reuters)
Newt Gingrich,
speaking after his only Super Tuesday victory—his home state of Georgia:
GINGRICH: You know, this is amazing. I hope the analysts in Washington and New York, who spent June and July explaining our campaign was dead will watch this tonight and learn a little bit from this crowd and from this place.
What about
analysts in Minnesota? Do they also not count?
During Newt Gingrich's Tuesday night pep talk to his supporters, the former House Speaker bragged about his home state victory by explaining how the media called his win in Georgia as the first call of the evening, shortly after the polls closed.
However, in addition to the fact that only two other Super Tuesday states closed at the 7 pm EST hour, Gingrich's victory - while a necessary condition to keep him in the race - was one of the least impressive home state presidential primary victories in modern political history.
A Smart Politics review of presidential primary contests finds that Newt Gingrich's 47.2 percent performance in Georgia was tied for the second lowest support for a Republican presidential candidate in his home state since the 1972 cycle, and the lowest number for a winning candidate.
Newt is tied with George Herbert Walker Bush for second-worst level of support, who lost his home state of Texas to Ronald Reagan in 1980. The absolute worst? Pat Robertson, who was as much a serious candidate in 1988 as Herman Cain was this year, but without the frontrunner cameo. (MoV is "margin of victory.")
Newt keeps talking about his "people-powered" campaign, clearly not understanding that the word "people" is plural.