Natalie Gonnella
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Despite yesterday's departure of more than a dozen campaign staffers, Newt Gingrich is vowing to charge ahead with his 2012 crusade.
And while some point to John McCain's 2008 campaign as an example of how it's possible to rebound from mass resignations, many conservatives have remained skeptical of the former Speaker's seriousness and self discipline as a candidate, a concern which appears to be the crux of his current campaign troubles.
As recently resigned campaign manager Tyler Schoenfeld commented:
There needs to be an investment of candidate time, to not only actually do the retail politics but to the fund-raising and everything else. . . . It was not evident that what I thought needed to be done meshed with what he thought could be done
Not to mention that less than a month since confirming his candidacy Gingrich has already suffered a number of self inflicted blunders, and his favorability ratings have fallen considerably among GOP voters in recent weeks.
As his competitors quickly capitalize on his current challenges, here's a look at what a number of political pundits have had to say about yesterday's staff exodus and the future of the former Speaker's presidential campaign:
Gingrich and his wife wanted to campaign where, when, and how they wanted; a different kind of campaign. But, they ran afoul of the rule that campaigns look like campaigns look, because there's a design solution that works. The Gingrich campaign was like an airliner with no wings, no engines, and no landing gear. It was a different kind of airliner. But, it couldn't get off the ground.
It is not news that Newt Gingrich is disorganized and undisciplined – his 1,000-ideas-a-minute pace all but ensures it...Staffers have been highly critical of his management style, to say the least, and Newt has been all over the map, from veering toward the fringe with that “Kenyan anti-colonialist” business to veering into RINO territory denouncing “right-wing social engineering.” I’d endorse Newt Gingrich for president . . . of a very good college. It is impossible to imagine him president of the United States. I don’t know why Perry isn’t in, and I don’t know why Gingrich is.
This is dreadful news for Gingrich’s candidacy, of a sort that may have been foreseen when Pete Wehner of Commentary and the Ethics and Public Policy Center predicted that Gingrich would get out of the race before the end of the summer and David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked why so few of Gingrich’s associates from the 1990s were supporting him this time. One justification for the long hard slog of the presidential nominating campaign is that it tests a candidate’s ability to manage. In this case there seems to have been some major problem. It’s hard to see how Gingrich’s campaign survives this mass defection.
The implosion of the Gingrich campaign is a reminder that a myriad of factors go into making a strong candidate and a strong president. There is a tendency sometimes to reduce it simply to where a person stands on the issues. (Do they score eight out of 10 on a checklist or 10 out of 10? Have they cast “heretical” votes?) But Gingrich reminds us that one’s temperament, character, and self-discipline matter too, and those qualities are often harder to discern.
The Gingrich campaign has collapsed so rapidly, so abruptly, and so seemingly hopelessly that it seems incredible that anybody could ever have thought of Newt Gingrich as a serious candidate for president.
Yet only a few months ago, Gingrich ranked as one of the four top-tier candidates for president, along with Huckabee, Palin, and Romney.
You know [his staff] spoke about a difference of views about the direction of the campaign….I think direction is the wrong word…it’s about the seriousness of the campaign…He thinks he can do it Newt Lite and I think he’s got to a staff who think’s that’s utterly impossible in this day and age.
The problem was the wife...The euphemism offered by departing staffers was they disagreed with Gingrich’s “strategy” for the campaign. Indeed, they did disagree. But it was a strategy – a part-time campaign, in effect – that Gingrich’s wife favored.
For what it’s worth, I do not believe Gingrich is dropping out and there are no indications that Gingrich is dropping out. This just seems to be additional evidence that Gingrich’s management chaos has changed little since he was Speaker of the House. I think he thinks this thing was supposed to be handed to him…And I’m not sure if he is back from the Mediterranean yet.
Look this campaign is over…it’s just a matter of it being announced.
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