Tragic! For now we know that Gingrich won’t even reach that steppingstone, the presidency of the United States, to his predetermined world-historical greatness. And yet he came so close: He was briefly viable at three separate points in this race, before, predictably, tossing it all away — or having Mitt Romney’s super PAC attack snatch it away from him. Let’s recall these three Rises and Falls of Would-Be President Gingrich and share in our despair that the funniest possible presidential nominee, Newt Gingrich in 2012, was not selected in a national primary of his peers.

The Dawn

Rise: For whatever reason (name recognition, actually; that was the reason), many considered Newt a “top-tier candidate” when he first entered the race. “He is in the top tier of prospective candidates but ranks below some of the other contenders,” CNN.com wrote in May 2011, when a CNN.com poll showed him trailing aforementioned “other contenders” Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee. (For more on how all presidential punditry in 2011 was crap, see this.) That same week, Gingrich decided not to participate in the season’s first debate in South Carolina, joining a “batch” of fellow “top-tier Republican prospects — including Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin… Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee,” as Politico wrote, who also fancied themselves too prominent to face such lesser candidates as Rick Santorum. Gingrich, a bold-faced name who’d long toyed with a presidential candidacy, had convinced much of the media, without lifting a finger, that he was a Contender.

Fall: Here’s the sort of reception Gingrich would get from his fellow foot soldiers in the Gingrich Revolution after calling Paul Ryan’s Medicare-busting budget “right-wing social engineering” on “Meet the Press,” shortly after entering the race: “”Why don’t you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself.”

That didn’t help build support from a Republican Party that had just bet its marbles on the purity and truth of all things Paul Ryan. Shortly thereafter, he and Callista went on a cruise through the Greek Islands — not the greatest sign for doubters who thought he lacked the discipline to carry through a presidential campaign. His six-figure debts to jeweler Tiffany & Co., a stupid, private bit of opposition research that didn’t have any relation to soaring federal deficits, still did not sit well with a party fixated on restoring fiscal responsibility. And then, the June Mutiny, when most of his top aides quit en masse — including spokesman (and later top Gingrich super PAC official) Rick Tyler, who a few weeks earlier had testified to Gingrich’s resilience with this glorious, tongue-in-cheek statement to the press:

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

And so Gingrich would reemerge at the top, six months later, for a couple of weeks or so.

The Newtening

Rise: Well, all those Herman Cain supporters who wanted a new unhinged screw-up with tons of baggage only had one place to go once Herman Cain left, right? Bachmann was nothing, Perry was nothing, Santorum (at that point) was nothing, and so the party base turned to its former commander, Newt Gingrich, to once more be the grenade that destroyed another Democratic administration’s chance at effective center-left governance. He’d crush Obama in the debates, after all! By mid-December 2011, Gingrich had hit 40 percent in national polls, opening double-digit leads against Mitt Romney both nationwide and in key early states. “I’m going to be the nominee,” he famously predicted that December. “It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.”

Fall: By Dec. 19, Newt Gingrich had fallen to the mid-teens in Iowa polls. He finished fourth in the state’s kickoff caucuses and fifth in the following week’s New Hampshire primary. When he had had the lead, see, he had pledged to run on positivity ads only — a promise candidates make when their campaigns have no money. Mitt Romney’s super PAC, Restore Our Future, did have money, though, and proceeded to remind voters of all the terrible things Newt Gingrich did, both personally and publicly, in the 1990s. It worked, and Gingrich was pissed.

The South Carolina Putsch

Rise: When Gingrich went to South Carolina, his goal was mostly just to pulverize Mitt Romney out of electability, to show the masses, the cretins, what a horrible choice they were making — a “Massachusetts Moderate” instead of a “Bold Reagan Conservative,” as he defined the choice in typically comical fashion. Winning Our Future, the super PAC largely funded by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, helped him in this regard, by giving him the attack ad money he needed to keep the campaign alive. Romney, to conservatives’ horror, was trashed as a “vulture capitalist” whose record in private equity at Bain Capital saw him buying and “looting” companies that frequently went out of business, while Romney collected fees regardless of the outcome.

But what really worked for Newt was yelling at a couple of debate moderators. No, really, that was it. He first returned fire at black Fox News correspondent Juan Williams, who had asked him whether he thought it could possibly be offensive to label the first black president a “food stamp president” or to suggest that poor, urban youths would need to become janitors at their schools to learn the value of Hard Work. “Only the elites despise earning money,” Gingrich said, to roaring applause from white males. Then, a few days later, he took on highly targetable, wishy-washy CNN anchor John King, who opened a debate by asking him to address his (second) ex-wife’s tell-all appearance on ABC News that same day. Gingrich was ready with his dismissal of both this question and the mainstream media in general:

Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary, a significant question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.

My two daughters wrote the head of ABC and made the point that it was wrong, that they should pull it, and I am, frankly, astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate.

He would defeat Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary by double digits. The party, disrespectfully, forced Gingrich to continue campaigning in the 40+ remaining states’ contests, instead of simply crowning him president then and there.

Fall: Oh, you know this — Romney’s campaign and super PAC spent nearly quadruple the amount of money on ads in Florida that Gingrich and Co. did. Money: It works! As for the debates, which Gingrich had begun touting as the No. 1 reason to select him to face President Obama one-on-one — well, Mitt Romney, in a vintage Mitt Romney move, hired a new debate coach to teach him not to lose miserably to Newt goddamn Gingrich, and it worked. Gingrich couldn’t even flatten CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer, who essentially wears a sign saying “FLATTEN ME” at all times, when he tried. Romney won the state, and from there on out his chief not-really-challenging rival became Rick Santorum. Gingrich was done.

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A shame, really. Not that Gingrich left much of an impact at all on the election, or could have guided America to better days if he’d become president. He was just funny to watch, is all. And some of his choicest attack lines on rival Mitt Romney will live on through November, thanks to the Obama campaign’s ad team.

Will Newt Gingrich run again? It’s hard to say no definitively, since he is insane. Most likely he’ll do the pre-2012 Newt Gingrich presidency routine, where he pretends that he may run for a little while, just long enough to build up enough PAC donations that can then be converted into a comfortable salary for himself for another few years. We’ll see. If he does run again, though, don’t expect him to do things any differently. He is incapable of change. We salute him.

Is the price of gas correlated to the price of a primary vote? I decided to chart the price fluctuations in gasoline against the price fluctuations of Republican voters since the Iowa caucuses, because the Internet loves charts and campaign finance. If you think filling up your car is expensive, try running for president! (That is probably something Mitt Romney will say on camera at some point this week.)

Here is the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded versus the average amount spent by all the Republican campaigns per vote cast in each primary and caucus so far: (Click all images to enlarge.)

The same chart, without pricey Iowa distorting the scale:

As you can see, the price of gas has actually barely budged and everyone should calm down.

Now, with millions of dollars spent and votes cast, your typical Republican voter is probably asking himself, “How many gallons of gas am I worth, based on what the campaign spent convincing me to vote for them? We’re here to help, typical Republican voter!

I’ve charted how many gallons of gas each campaign could’ve bought with the money spent per vote received so far. (For example: Ron Paul has spent approximately $31.55 for every vote received. This makes each one of his voters worth a whopping 8.24 gallons!)

In primary battles, as in all aspects of life under capitalism, some people are worth more than others. Delegates, for example. While Mitt Romney has spent about $17 per vote received, he has spent $67,000 for each delegate he’s been awarded. So I added Romney delegates to the preceding chart, in order to properly illustrate just how worthless your vote actually is:

A Mitt Romney delegate is worth 1,700 gallons of gas. That is enough to fill 1,000 Cadillacs!

Data from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Energy, AAA, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Still, Newt’s excuse for remaining in the race (besides as a means of confounding the “elite” who are terrified of his multitude of big ideas) is that the GOP nominee needs to win the South, and only he can win the South. He is basically campaigning right now solely to win Mississippi and Alabama next Tuesday.

But polls now show Mitt Romney beating Gingrich in Alabama. Alabama State University’s Center for Leadership and Public Policy has 22.7 percent for Santorum, 18.7 percent for Romney, and 13.8 percent for Gingrich. The Alabama Education Association has Romney winning at 31 percent with Gingrich 10 points back.

I haven’t seen any recent polls in Mississippi, but Rick Santorum’s super PAC is spending big in both states.

Losing either Alabama or Mississippi — or both — would be bad news for what everyone has taken to calling Newt Gingrich’s “Southern Strategy.” (I am guessing half the people mentioning Newt’s “Southern strategy” on Fox every day have no idea what they’re referring to and the other half know perfectly well and think it’s funny.) It would effectively end his campaign, even if for some weird reason Gingrich decided to just keep going for a while longer, because he has some weird point to make.

Gingrich is either exhausted or still enjoying himself, depending on how you read his dancing with his wife to “Rocket Man” last night. (“The song evokes Gingrich’s support for space exploration and desire to develop a colony on the moon,” according to the Post.) He certainly hates Mitt Romney and believes that The People will eventually see the brilliance of Newt Gingrich if only he’s given a national platform. But I’m not sure Gingrich is insane enough to continue past next week. He has already achieved what was arguably his primary goal in running: significantly increasing his earning power.

Gingrich should not listen to them. At all. (Not that Gingrich listens to anyone, besides perhaps his wife, but still.) This editorial can be safely ignored for the following reasons:

First of all, everyone should always do the opposite of whatever a National Review editorial says to do. The opposite of what “The Editors” want is invariably the correct choice, morally and politically. If politicians always made “doing the opposite of what The Editors of the National Review want” a top priority, there would be universal peace and prosperity and kick-ass super-trains crisscrossing the nation.

Second, The Editors don’t even have the facts of Santorum’s surge correct: As Dave Weigel points out, Gingrich, contrary to The Editors’ claims, has won more delegates than Santorum thus far. Santorum has three delegates. Three. The press likes to cover caucuses and primaries even when they’re meaningless and non-binding and feature negligible turnout because those are the only actual events to cover in a primary race, but the result is that a couple of random wins are massively over-imbued with supposed import, leading even the politically savvy Editors of the National Review to believe that Rick Santorum has actually won a bunch of delegates because he got some old people into some auditoriums in suburban Minnesota.

Third, there is nothing about the Santorum surge that makes it any more sustainable or solid than all the previous candidate surges, except that it’s happening while primary contests are actually happening instead of last September. In other words, a Santorum collapse could be imminent, and it could come whenever Mitt Romney gets around to seriously devoting his attention to destroying him with money. Santorum has a lot of room to be attacked from the right, especially since he’s got the Rust Belt Republican politician habit of occasionally sounding sympathetic to working-class resentment of rich people. And his political history is filled with assorted crimes against current fanatical GOP dogma. Weigel posted a good one earlier: An old campaign ad in which Santorum actually admits to loving newspapers.

Oh also something about supporting Amtrak, despite trains being part of the UN plot to destroy American sovereignty.

Finally, there is the fact that Rick Santorum is an unambiguously awful candidate. He is not just a “social conservative,” he is a paleolithic anachronism of reactionary thought. The American people, despite the fervid wishes of a couple bishops and Kathryn Jean Lopez, are not actually remotely anti-contraception. Most voters — especially since the ratification of the 19th Amendment — think women should be allowed to have jobs outside the home. The last time the Republicans won a presidential election, they had 48% of the female vote, and I imagine they’d like to tie or beat that number this year, maybe? Rick Santorum is decidedly not the man for that job, unless scientists invent some sort of mind control ray that falls into the hands of Phyllis Schlafly.

So, no, Newt Gingrich, don’t quit just yet, and I’m not just saying that because having Gingrich around makes a political writer’s work marginally more colorful. All Gingrich really needs to remain “competitive” in the media race through Super Tuesday is one more big check from his rich uncle Scrooge McAdelson.

(Not that Gingrich is going to be the nominee! It’s still going to be Romney unless something unprecedentedly hilarious happens at the convention.)

Adelson, 78, born to Jewish Ukrainian immigrants in Dorchester, Mass., crawled his way out of the New England working class and, in addition to his vast wealth, is known for a stable and enduring second marriage to Miriam Ochshorn Adelson, with whom he has two children.

She is apparently the key to the one subject that links the two men, the country of her birth, Israel.

According to most reports, Adelson got to his mid-50s before ever really thinking about Israel. Then, a single trip to the Jewish homeland changed his life. When he got back to the United States, the divorced Adelson started telling friends he was interested in meeting an Israeli wife. A mutual friend set him up with Miriam, a physician and expert on addictions. Together they have developed two principal enduring passions and philanthropic commitments: centers for the treatment of drug addicts, and Israel.

The Adelsons have always maintained a mainstream but clearly right-wing line regarding Israel. They are major supporters of the American Israel Political Action Committee, of Birthright, an organization that brings Jewish youth on “roots” trip to Israel, and they love Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s conservative prime minister, as well as Gingrich, who has long been a fervent defender of Israel.

Not much is known about Gingrich in Israel, but it is thanks to support from Adelson that, in Israeli media reports, he is almost universally referred to as “Netanyahu’s friend.” There is no public information confirming an actual bond between the prime minister and the former speaker of the House, but Netanyahu is, coincidentally, a thrice-married politician known for a messy personal life and for playing to his religious and conservative base.

And both men benefit greatly from Adelson’s support.

It was in order to help a future Netanyahu candidacy that Adelson, in 2007, established Israel Hayom (Israel Today) a daily tabloid newspaper that quickly rose to have the widest circulation in the country. The newspaper was founded on the conviction, widespread among the Israeli right-wing since Netanyahu’s first term in office in the mid-90s, that the media held a deep-seated antipathy to Netanyahu.

A much-repeated rumor, impossible to verify, has it that Adelson has told Israeli friends he is happy to lose even $150 or $200 million dollars on the venture.

Conservative estimates hold that for now, he has lost at least several tens of millions of dollars. The paper boasts an extensive and expensive list of journalists and analysts, it is printed in massive quantities and distributed widely and for free, yet it does not display advertising in sufficient quantities to offset significant costs. It is a rich man’s luxury.

Israelis uncomfortable with the paper’s big shadow have bestowed it with a jokey moniker, Bibiton, a play on Netanyahu’s nickname, Bibi, and on the Hebrew word for newspaper, Iton.

On Thursday, new revelations about just how deeply Netanyahu is entwined with the Adelson’s newspaper came to light, and now threaten to blow open an unsavory, and perhaps illegal, link between the American billionaire and the prime minister.

Israel’s Channel 10 revealed Wednesday night that Dror Eydar, a media columnist for the Adelson-owned daily, who frequently pens irate articles accusing the Israeli media of an anti-Netanyahu bias, is simultaneously on the prime minister’s payroll, as a speechwriter and adviser.

This is the first indication that a direct connection may exist between the prime minister’s staff and the paper, which while right-wing and pro-Netanyahu, has always maintained a line of neutrality.

It remains unclear just how much the scandal will affect one of the largest media outlets in the country, but some expect there will be resignations from within the prime minister’s office.

To entertain the notion of how big a player the Israel Hayom is in the diminutive and struggling Israeli media market, the mere question of where Israel Hayom is printed is a matter of life or death for several other daily newspapers. Israel HaYom is now printed at the presses owned by the liberal, intellectual and highly regarded Ha’aretz, ideologically Israel Hayom’s antagonist.

The owner of a rival paper, the popular, mass distribution daily Ma’ariv, is known to be vying for the printing contract, which is worth about 100 million shekels, or about $27 million. Whatever Adelson decides could determine, at the twitch of his wrist, the fate of either of these established, traditional national papers.

Not the least of the issues that create unease among wide swathes of Israelis is the fact that Adelson, a controversial and enigmatic whale that has taken virtual residence in the local media pond, is a foreigner residing abroad. He has never pretended to be an Israeli. But whatever decision he makes, in the words of Ma’ariv columnist and Channel 10 analyst Ofer Shelah, “is not a decision for which he will pay any price. We will. Yet the future of pluralism in the Israeli media market may reside in his hands.”

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an expert on the media, points out two positive aspects of Adelson’s emergence on the Israeli scene.

“After many years in which the Israeli right wing claimed it was discriminated against by what was perceived as a generally left-wing media, and after many years in which this was a real perception held by many Israelis, now it is very difficult to make that case. Israel Hayom has the largest readership in the nation, and it is without question a right-wing operation.”

Secondly, in Israel’s very small and concentrated media market, with very few published papers, “the simple addition of another one is a positive thing.”

“The problem,” he said, however, “is that because the paper is distributed for free, the pressure this puts on other papers — that are already struggling to survive — is huge. This could even cause the collapse of another newspaper or papers, and if that happens, it should be viewed with real concern. It would be very negative, principally because it would not be the result of free competition among outlets, but it would simply be a consequence of the huge amount of money Adelson has at his disposal.”

An additional and related concern, Kremnitzer said, is the influence a foreign citizen can acquire on the free market of opinions in Israel.

“And even more worrisome than that is the question of the independence of the prime minister’s judgment when he becomes dependent on a person who is not an Israeli citizen and on a source of funds that is foreign,” he said.

No Israeli law restricts foreign ownership of media outlets, and Adelson’s activities are not challenged even when they are called into question for influencing Israel’s democracy.

“In my opinion, everything Sheldon Adelson has done is completely legal and legitimate,” said Moshe Negbi, a legal analyst for the Voice of Israel radio and a professor of communications at Hebrew University. “I’m sure Sheldon Adelson is not operating for any personal advantage. He does not personally need Netanyahu. He’s not advancing his own interests. I think he believes with his whole heart that Netanyahu is the best medicine for all of Israel’s problems. He has very right-wing views in many areas, and it is his right. In addition, he is willing to spend his own money to advance his ideas and his ideology.”

“It is part of his freedom of expression to use his money to advance his opinions. It’s the same as Amos Shocken, [the owner of Ha’aretz] who I admire greatly, who is willing to lose a lot of money to advance his point of view,” Negbi added.

Negbi’s concern lies with the “inability of the capitalist, democratic system to find the tools to regulate censorship that is brought on by business people who deal in media. There is no legal way to say to a person with money how he can manage his own property.”

“A generation ago, the concern was with governments’ attempts to control opinion. Now, the person who controls such a popular paper has tremendous power over what the public hears and does not hear, and therefore over the public’s political opinions.”

The issue is worldwide, but Israel’s case, according to Negbi, is particularly extreme due to its size. Israel’s total population is 7.5 million people, about the population of northern California’s Bay Area.

Despite the legal propriety of his actions, Adelson, who is accustomed to operating with a very wide berth, occasionally skirts the customs and ethics of Israel’s media world in a manner that raises eyebrows, or sometimes, causes fury.

The latest revelations made by Channel 10, a struggling commercial network known for a bold and authoritative investigative style, are only the latest in a series of skirmishes that threaten his reputation in Israel.

Last September its news division broadcast a critical but unchallenged profile of Adelson’s global casino operations. In reaction, Adelson threatened to sue. Both Channel 10’s news director and its legal counsel examined the claim and determined that no apology was due. But Channel 10 shareholder Ronald Lauder, another conservative American Republican and a friend of Adelson, thought otherwise and ordered that an apology be extended.

When the apology was issued on the main news broadcast last week, outrage ensued, including the resignation of two senior Channel 10 executives.

“This is exactly the crux of the matter,” Shelah, the columnist, said. “The media is at its knees and apologizing for something its professional authorities determined required no apology because they depend on the ongoing financial stream from someone who is a non-resident of the state. In this case, two of them.”

“That two people live in the US and have a relationship does not bother me. And Adelson was just normal in demanding an apology he did not deserve. But the problem was Lauder, who forced this behavior on Channel 10,” he added.

Lauder, of the Lauder cosmetics fortune and a former ambassador to Austria, is also president of the World Jewish Congress and is, like Adelson, close to Netanyahu. In 2011 alone, he pumped an estimated $16 million into Channel 10 to keep it operational.

The realization that in a moment of pique Adelson was able to rock Israel’s entire media world and possibly impact upon a government decision regarding debt relief for Channel 10 caused a nationwide shudder and reconsideration of his influence.

The latest revelations are sure to underscore the concern, expressed by Kremnitzer, the law professor, that Adelson may influence day to day decisions in the prime minister’s office.

“If Channel 10 were obliged to apologize for a broadcast not due to proper procedure like the correction of a mistaken pronouncement, this is clearly a grave abuse of the power of influence. This is what I mean when I say ‘negative and dangerous,’” he said.

The scandals have caused much worried flippancy in Israel about the political Kabuki theater Adeslon may have been dreaming up this winter, in which Gingrich and Netanyahu, both his protégés, could have a run at running a new US-Israel relationship.

“We are a very little country. And into this crucible Sheldon Adelson arrives, with a legitimate motivation. He sees a leftist liberal media and says, ‘I will establish a right-wing conservative balance,’ you know — fair and balanced — and balance out the media market. It’s all well, except for the problem that invariably arises when someone who literally has no budget limits is willing to invest his unending amount of money in Israel,” Shelah said. “What do you do then?”