With a fifth sexual harassment accusation leveled against Herman Cain, the 2012 GOP nomination process has scraped the bottom of the barrel — and broken right through the rotted planking to scrape up the fetid, loathsome life-form growing underneath it:
Still, Cain’s loss seems to be Newt Gingrich’s gain. After early struggles that threatened to derail his campaign, Gingrich has found a niche as the self-proclaimed intellectual of the party, unwilling to attack fellow candidates. While Gingrich’s “positive intensity score” was as low as 1 percent in August, he has rebounded to 14 percent in recent days.
According to the new Beltway wisdom, Newt is rising because of his debate-centric strategy of not attacking the other nominees. But given his own past peccadilloes and vulnerabilities, I’d say it has much more to do with a conservative movement that can’t bring itself to say yes to Mitt Romney.
