With all due respect to Markos, I personally fear a Newt nomination. Yes, his unfavorables are extremely high, but this is what we get from a Newt Gingrich nomination:
• A cowed media that so desperately wants to be "fair and balanced" that they will let Newt get away with saying endless amounts of divisive and ugly crap during the campaign.
• A week of Newt at the Republican convention with the most ugly, hateful and poisonous delegates being featured over and over again.
• Months of Newt's eliminationist rhetoric all geared toward myself, my family, my friends and you with his supporters singing loud and proud right along.
• The (hopefully slight) possibility that in the worst case scenario he actually wins the election and then runs this country for the next four years.
Newt Gingrich is a seriously scary man. With such modest credentials he dubs himself as one of America's great intellectuals, which should make any voter race toward the exits. But we are a nation that is perhaps too quick to forgive and too often falls for the promise of snake oil salesmen. He admittedly craves power for powers sake and sees himself as a Messianic figure that will rid America of its enemies, by which he means us.
Sure mathematically it looks like he would be the easiest to beat, but in the end so would Rmoney--a stiff plutocrat is not going to play too well in the general election.
This is short but I think it is important that as a party we not only think about victory, but the conversation we want to have during the election. A Gingrich nomination means that the conversation will be about whatever the bellicose Gingrich wants to have. Is that what we really want?