(Creepy Newt Gingrich campaign poster courtesy of Cain and Todd Benson, via Flickr)
So Newt Gingrich won South Carolina going away. It makes for nice fun for us political junkies, but in the end it is, to quote the Bard:
A tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
Yes, the voters of the Palmetto State decided that they think the disgraced Speaker is the one candidate of the four they were offered that could beat President Obama, but they are not really playing with a full deck in that regard.
There are a lot of things that are going to stop Newt from getting the nomination, and certainly from wining the White House, but the big one is two numbers. 100% and 60%.
The first is Newts name recognition. Everyone in the nation knows that name and can say something about him. The second is his unfavorable rating. Right now, 60% of general election voters have a negative opinion of him.
This is political poison. To give you a metric, half-term governor Sarah Palin had a 49% unfavorable rating when she decided that she would not run for the Republican nomination. And as much as it pains me to say, that was a wise decision from Palin (I guess even blind squirrels find a nut once in a while).
Still one could see how given a choice between the Mad Elf of the GOP (Ron Paul), Pious Pete with a Google problem (Rick Santorum) and a Vulture Capitalist Ken Doll (Mitt Romney), that they would go for a guy that avoids tough questions by beating up on the conservatives favorite hobby horse the media.
You’ll hear a lot from our pundit class about how Americans love a redemption story, how we’ve processed what it means to have the nasty battles of divorce and how Newt’s fiery (race baiting tainted) populism could win the day.
The problem with this is that there is a single thread that runs through his entire life that will absolutely kill his ambitions dead if it is deployed. The problem with Newt Gingrich is not his corruption, it is not his various scam businesses ($5,000 Entrepreneur of the Year award, anyone? Strip clubs welcome as long as you have the cash!) or even his multiple wives.
The problem that these things show is that the erstwhile Speaker has no discipline, none. And while there are a lot of characteristics that we can put up with in a president, a complete lack of discipline is not one of them.
Just take a look at his primary campaign to see it. His entire staff bailed on him because he thought it was a good idea to take a Greek cruise rather than campaign in the early days in Iowa and New Hampshire.
He failed to qualify for the Virginia primary and there are questions about him qualifying for others as well. When he was savagely red-dogged by Mitt Romney’s Super-PAC in Iowa, he got so angry that he actually rolled out what will be the President’s strongest argument against Romney, his past as a vulture capitalist. By doing so he has made that message stronger as the Obama campaign will able to use the statements of Republican challengers to validate their (true anyway) claims about Romney and his past.
His anger has been on display in the debates as well. Sure the cheer-for-executions- Republican base likes it when he gets angry at the press for actually talking about things he has actually said and done, but it does not show the kind of deliberation that we must have from a president.
Rebuffing John King and Juan Williams probably helped him in this last round of voting, but it shows someone whose first reaction at a challenge is to get aggressive. That might be something you want in an action movie hero, but in the real world where real people can die and real wars can start from an uncontrolled mouth, it is a major liability.
I am sure there are those that will say, but Bill, there are plenty of angry people that want and angry president. There are, but the way to short circuit that is easy. You merely ask the question; would you really want the loud mouth down the bar to be the Commander in Chief? Really?
It is not like Newt himself has not said that he is not disciplined. In the last Goat Rodeo he said that if he had one thing to do over it would be that he would not take three months to figure out that he couldn’t be a traditional candidate and run a traditional campaign.
He has basically admitted that he can’t do the things that are required to become president, it will only work for him if he gets to play by other rules, basically his own.
All of this leads back to those two numbers. When everyone knows you and 60% of them don’t like you, there is a very slim chance you can turn that around, but there is still a chance. It will take a hell of a lot of work, and most importantly it will take changing the way you’ve spoken and acted up to now.
There is nothing in Newt Gingrich’s life that gives any indication that he is capable, let alone willing to make those kinds of changes. Three wives, two of which started as adulterous affairs, a history of shooting his mouth off, a chaotic primary campaign, and a temper that is in no way controlled all say that Newt Gingrich will never be the GOP nominee nor President of this nation.
Of course none of that makes it any less fun to watch the Republicans rip themselves apart before bowing to the inevitable.
The nominee was always and still is going to be Mitt Romney. He’ll be bowed, bloodies and weakened by the time he gets it, but he is going to be the Grand Champion of this Goat Rodeo. And he is going to get his plastic ass handed to him in the general election.
The floor is yours.