Staff Report
Are the media about to bury Newt Gingrich for the third time, shoveling extra dirt on his campaign casket to just to make sure?
That’s a distinct possibility if Gingrich loses Tuesday in Florida.
A little over a week ago, Gingrich looked like a serious threat to capture the Republican nomination. He had just won a smashing victory in South Carolina, he was dominating the debates, and he had shot into the lead in the Florida polls while Mitt Romney was getting tangled in his taxes.
If Gingrich could somehow pull out a win in Florida, it would be devastating to Romney, who would be in the position of having lost three out of the first four contests. But that seems unlikely at this point, and Newt is looking more like a one-hit wonder.
Be wary of all prognostications, of course. The media’s track record in this 2012 campaign has been nothing short of embarrassing.
The press wrote off Gingrich for the first time last summer, when most of his staff quit after he took Callista on a cruise and generally failed to follow their advice. Yet somehow, by December, the former House speaker had surged into the lead in Iowa.
Gingrich collapsed under a barrage of negative ads from a pro-Romney group, and that led to the second round of political obituaries. The pundits never seem to learn. Then Gingrich tore up the script by pulling off a double-digit victory in South Carolina, which usually serves as a bulwark for establishment candidates against insurgent challengers.
Has Newt now run out of resurrections?
