More Rats Fleeing from the SS Newt

In today's Newt News, his two top campaign fundraisers resigned today. That makes 18 senior staff people who have resigned from Gingrich's floundering campaign over the last three weeks.

The departures of fundraising director Jody Thomas and fundraising consultant Mary Heitman were the latest blow for the former House speaker who watched 16 top advisers abandon his campaign en masse earlier this month, partly because of what people familiar with the campaign spending described as a dire financial situation.

People don't realize it yet, but this presidential campaign is the end of Newt Gingrich as we know him. Newt's whole America Solutions empire is premised on the idea that Newt Gingrich is a creative guy who has real influence in the Republican Party and the American government as a whole. But now that Gingrich is embarrassing himself so thoroughly on the campaign trail, it's gradually coming out that Newt doesn't have any influence and hasn't had any influence since he resigned as speaker in 1998. It turned out that Newt Gingrich was exactly what his worst critics said along--a megalomaniac blowhard who couldn't be trusted with anything.

Sooner or later, Newt's going to get hit with a new reality. After his presidential campaign ends sometime after he gets 5% in the New Hampshire primaries, people are going to stop buying Newt's movies, videos, books and pamphlets, they're no longer going to participate in his projects, and are going to stop coming to his web sites. Sooner or later, America Solutions is going to either be dramatically downsized or go bankrupt.

My bet's on the latter.

That doesn't mean that Newt's going to starve or Callista won't be able to afford more platinum hair die. There's always room for a megalomaniac blowhard to hustle for a hard-earned buck on the right.

It's just that most of us aren't going to hear about it.

The Rick Perry Bubble

Texas Governor Rick Perry is thinking of running to be the third president of the Confederacy--after Jefferson Davis and George W. Bush.

My impression of Rick Perry is that he's not all that smart. I've always disagreed with people on the left who thought George W. Bush and Sarah Palin were stupid. Both of them are bright, clever people who decided on ignorance as a life strategy.

Rick Perry strikes me as more like George Allen and Mike Pence--just kind of dumb.

That doesn't mean that Perry couldn't be president. His political consultant Dave Carney certainly has a good idea of the niche Perry could occupy in the presidential primaries as someone who would “take the wood to Obama.”

About 40% of Republican voters didn't think Obama was born in the U. S. until he produced his "long-form" birth certificate.

That constituency is looking for someone who would be particularly aggressive toward Obama and Perry could fill the bill.

But Perry could also find out that the media and primary voters are going to expect to make an instantaneous transition from breathy anticipation of a Rick Perry candidacy to charismatic fulfillment of their expectation.

If Perry is not up to that, there's a good chance that he'll drop like a Fred Thompson stone.

For what it's worth, my initial opinion is that Perry doesn't have what it takes.

Winning the GOP's "Highest Unfavorables" Title

Before Newt Gingrich announced his presidential candidacy, his "unfavorable" ratings in national surveys were high but not as high as Sarah Palin's and Donald Trump's.

Americans also already know and have fully formed opinions about Palin, Trump and Gingrich. And in many cases, their verdicts are harsh. A recent independent national poll from Quinnipiac University reflects the trio's electability problems: 58 percent of respondents said they would never vote for Palin or Trump, and 42 percent said they would never vote for Gingrich.

Now that Newt's running for president, I imagine that his negatives will start inching up to the Palin/Trump level. Maybe he'll eventually surpass Palin and Trump as the most unpopular politician in Aemrica.

The "Anybody But Sarah" Express Moving Onto the Next Stop

Think of it as the Anybody But Sarah Express. The American people don't want Sarah Palin to run for the Republican nomination for President, the GOP doesn't want Sarah Palin to run, and the media doesn't want Sarah Palin to run.

But it looks like somebody has to run from the Tea Party perspective.

It's just that so many people don't want Sarah Palin to be that person that some Tea Party honchos are picking up signals that they could jump on the "Anybody But Sarah" train and have started asking their friends, checking out fund-raising, and scheduling trips to Iowa and New Hampshire.

At various points, that's included Indiana Congressman (and major league dummy) Mike Pence, Minnesota firebrand Michele Bachmann, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Actually, I'm surprised Rand Paul hasn't scheduled a trip to Iowa.

But today, it looks like Mike Pence is dropping out of speculation.

Next stop, Michele Bachmann.

Mort Kondracke: Surprisingly Astute About Palin

Fox regular Mort Kondrack gets something right about as often as it snows in Miami. But he does nail Sarah Palin's chance to get the Republican presidential nomination:

It used to be easy to predict who the next Republican presidential nominee would be. It was decided by primogeniture: The next oldest guy in line got to be the king. It’s not so easy looking to 2012, with former Vice President Dick Cheney out of the running and a woman, soon-to-be former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in . . .

And I do believe she’s in — damaged in her chances, maybe, but fully intending to make a run and very popular with the shrinking hard core of the GOP . . .

Does she have a chance to get nominated? You betcha. She’s attractive, charismatic, ambitious, tough to the point of ruthlessness and smart, if still woefully ignorant.

Before she announced her resignation, she was tied in a CNN poll with 2008 candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and a Pew poll showed that she had an 85% approval rating among conservatives and white evangelicals, to 52% for Romney.

RSI agrees with Kondracke that Sarah Palin has a real shot at the GOP nomination because she's the candidate who's most popular with the hard core of the Republican Party. The fact that the Republican Party is shrinking down to that hard core gives her an advantage over Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

The main question for Palin is whether she's astute enough to cash in on her advantages. It looks like the answer to that question is "no." But it's not like Romney and Huckabee are geniuses either.