The Associated Press has a scoop: Newt Gingrich, who has not been in office for more than a decade after resigning from Congress in what could be construed as disgrace, has no real political support in his home state of Georgia, where he has not actually lived for years.
Gingrich lives in a Washington, DC suburb, because your average ambitious politician would rather be in Washington than in whatever ugly backwater he or she "represents" in Congress. Gingrich hasn't voted in Georgia since 2000, the year he and his third wife bought a presumably lovely house in McLean, Virginia. But because the Republican party platform is explicitly anti-elite and anti-Washington, the longtime member of the Washington establishment is having to pretend to be an outsider in order to maybe pretend to run for president. But no one in Georgia remembers or cares about him.
"He's yesterday," said state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, a veteran Republican state lawmaker, vocalizing a key vulnerability for Gingrich.
Linda Douglas, a Republican from Gingrich's former congressional district in Cobb County, shrugged at the mention of Gingrich's name and said: "Newt was great in the '90s but really, his time seems like it's long gone."
And here is a great quote from a former Gingrich staffer:
Lee Howell, who worked as a Gingrich campaign press secretary, won't be casting a ballot for his old boss if he runs.
"If I was giving a cocktail party and wanted to have good conversation ... I'd want Newt to be there," Howell said. "I'm not sure that he would be the kind of person, would have the skills necessary to be president."
And if Newt Gingrich got a little tipsy at that cocktail party and started Tweeting, the public may not be able to enjoy his witticisms for long! Gingrich apparently deleted every single Twitter update he wrote before July 22, 2010, presumably in case he decides to wildly change positions on something he Tweeted about last year or earlier.
It is much wiser to just selectively delete a few sensitive Tweets, if you are so worried about things you hammered out on your BlackBerry last June, but Gingrich apparently decided that the nuclear option would minimize the damage to his ridiculous farce of a campaign.
To sum up: No one in America likes Newt Gingrich and he has no base of support and his personal flaws are uniquely horrible and public. So please, everyone, remember to take him very seriously as a presidential candidate, because he is so smart and experienced.
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