Newt had made moves to appeal to movement conservatives: converting to Catholicism, amping up the Wacky, and sending out fundraising letters. But his endorsement of a Republican against a conservative independent candidate in an obscure New York special election isn’t going over well:
Gingrich has done serious damage to his credibility among the people who’ll choose the next Republican presidential nominee. Conservatives and libertarians who’d already doubted Gingrich have used the Scozzafava endorsement as a cudgel, a way to emphasize their own concerns.“Newt’s hurt himself a little bit,” said David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a pol with experience in intra-Republican squabbles that dates back to the Ronald Reagan-Gerald Ford primary battle of 1976. “It’s obviously not fatal, but if you go with the establishment all of the time, people assume that you’re part of the establishment. And that’s not a good place to be.”
Newt has met The Teabag Terror, and it rejects him. Quod erat demonstatum.
