Gingrich Bounces $500 Check To Get On Utah Ballot

Newt Gingrich's campaign is writing checks his campaign can't cash. A $500 check written by his campaign to get on the Utah ballot bounced. Yet, he still thinks that he should be President? He can't balance the books on his own campaign, but fashions himself fiscally prudent?

This is the same Newt Gingrich who only days ago saw his health care think tank declare bankruptcy.

Delegate Math

The GOP seems to still have issues with Mitt Romney and conservatives continue splitting votes between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, but despite the lackluster performance by Romney, the math remains in his favor for an uncontested convention. He's going to be the nominee despite the protestations by Santorum and others.

Here's how it breaks down.

There are 2,286 delegates at stake and it takes 1,144 to win the nomination. Thus far, Romney has won 455 and Santorum has won 199 to Gingrich's 117. Ron Paul has won 64. That means that 1557 delegates remain to be divided up. Even if Rick Santorum wins 60% of the remaining delegates, he'd fall short by 11 (11.2) to capture the nomination. He'd only manage 1,133.2 if he wins 60%. He hasn't done that well in the popular vote overall, and he would have to do so much better than he has to date that it's inconceivable.

The math is even worse for Gingrich. He'd have to win more than 66% of the delegates remaining.

Not going to happen. Neither has any chance based on prior performance, and with Southern states splitting votes between Gingrich and Santorum, all Romney has to do is stay the course and he wins by default.

Super Tuesday Scorecard

I see that the media outlets are busy saying that Mitt Romney didn't score the knockout blow yesterday - even though he won 5 races and was the leader in two others. Rick Santorum won three (and close behind to Romney in Ohio), while Newt Gingrich could only manage to win his nominal home state of Georgia (though not in Virginia, where he currently lives because he couldn't be bothered to get sufficient petitions to get on the ballot in time).

Because of the way the GOP is apportioning votes in most of these states, a win matters, but if you come in 2d you can still pick up delegates. That's allowed Santorum to hang around as much as he has, but the numbers work against everyone but Romney at this point. Romney has racked up 2-3 times as many delegates as everyone else, and the ability to overcome that advantage is narrowing. While there are a bunch of winner-take-all primaries in April, the chances that Gingrich or Santorum could sweep those are slim and none - and slim left town.

Gingrich continues soldiering on claiming that he's going to stay in the race until the convention, but even he's got to know that he's toast. Even his win in Georgia comes with caveats - he might come away with less than half the delegates (because of the proportional delegation rules in effect). No chance at all. Santorum may think he's got a chance, but the statistics run against him as well.

He didn't do badly, but he didn't score enough points to claim any advantage over Romney going into upcoming primaries. It leaves Romney with the advantages of money and delegates pledged thus far. And that's more than sufficient to stay frontrunner and push towards the nomination.

The State of the Race

Just when you begin to think that things will settle down and Mitt Romney will move on towards the nomination handily, along comes the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and the nonbinding primary in Missouri to reveal just how fractured the GOP is right now.

Rick Santorum won all three races yesterday, and while the results were nonbinding, Santorum will use them as a repudiation of Romney's claims that he's the frontrunner.

The triple result amounted to a stinging denial of Mr. Romney’s candidacy from three states where Republicanism is defined by the evangelicals and Tea Party adherents he has struggled to court this year.

His disappointing night notwithstanding, Mr. Romney goes into the next round of primaries and caucuses much better financed than his opponents in what will be much more of a nationwide campaign, capped off by the 11 Super Tuesday competitions on March 6. But the enthusiasm in the race is no longer his alone; his front-runner’s label appears to have lost its shine.

Mr. Santorum’s victory in Missouri was symbolic. The vote will not affect the awarding of delegates, which will be decided at district and state conventions later this year. But more Republicans participated in the Missouri primary than in the Nevada caucuses. And his victory in Colorado was a genuine upset in a state that Mr. Romney easily carried in 2008.

Combined with the victory in Minnesota, it gave him an important lift that his campaign hoped would translate into an infusion of new donations and support from the conservative Republican voters — evangelicals and Tea Party adherents — who have told pollsters all year that they are searching for someone whom they view as a true conservative.

The victories were Mr. Santorum’s first since the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 — a victory awarded only after the fact. And he used them to reassert himself as the leading insurgent challenger to Mr. Romney, though he told cheering supporters at his headquarters in St. Charles, Mo., that he was setting his sights higher than that.

“I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Mr. Santorum said after thanking God for getting him through the “dog days” of the campaign and the illness of his daughter Bella. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

Newt Gingrich was all but a footnote yesterday and appears that his shelf-life as the alternative to Romney is over. Once again, Gingrich was not on the ballot and will be setting his sights on Ohio during Super Tuesday next month. That's a long time to wait, and both Santorum and Romney will have added to their tallies in the meantime.

Spiteful Newt Gingrich Complains New Yorkers are Elites

Newt Gingrich is a spiteful and hateful politician whose antics were sufficient that his fellow Republicans all but kicked him to the curb as House Speaker and helped impose a $300,000 fine against Gingrich for his ethics violations.

His latest utterances have got New Yorkers shaking their heads in befuddlement:

Many New Yorkers aren’t happy with Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich after a comment he made about residents of the Big Apple earlier this week while stumping in Nevada.

The former House Speaker called Manhattanites who live in high rises “elites” because they ride the subway, somehow suggesting that New Yorkers aren’t real Americans.

“I’m not elite,” said one straphanger. “I work 70 hours a week. Always come down, take a train to Queens and work.”

Maybe the comment stems from Gingrich losing out on an endorsement by New York billionaire Donald Trump, who despite reports that he would be backing the former House Speaker, threw his support to Mitt Romney instead.

Put bluntly, who are the "subway-riding elites" that Gingrich is busy complaining about? Are they the Manhattanites who toil for 70 hours a week working to make ends meet? The secretary rushing to a medical office to care for her patients? The utility worker who is helping keep the city that never sleeps humming along?

If you're a subway rider, I guess you're elite.

I miss out. I don't ride the subway regularly. I ride PATH. That makes me sub-elite.

This is Gingrich's latest attempt at a cultural war, in that he's complaining about the publishing elites around New York City that haven't taken a liking to what Newt's offering. And with Donald Trump apparently spurring his entreaties and endorsing Mitt Romney instead of Newt, I guess that also includes Trump as well.

I guess Newt's idea of what makes a person elite is quite different than the rest of us. To me, an elite is someone who can pull down multimillion dollar lobbying gigs, and has walked the halls of power in Congress as speaker. That's an elite. A schlub who rents an apartment in a walk-up and spends his commute on the subway catching up on sleep while working 60-70 hours a week isn't elite.

That's the heart of what makes New York City beat.

Mitt Romney Wins Decisively In Florida; Newt Gingrich Promises To Continue Campaign

Despite getting walloped by Mitt Romney in Florida by a decisive 46-32 margin (Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were barely evident and had already conceded the winner-take-all state and had moved on to Colorado and Nevada campaigning), Newt Gingrich is still hopeful that he can win the nomination.

Last night, he stood before a podium with "46 states" emblazoned on it all the while talking about how he's going to fight Romney straight through to the nomination across all 46 remaining states:



Problem for Newt is that there aren't 46 states left for him. He's only got 45.

Gingrich's campaign failed to get on the Virginia ballot, meaning he's going to be shut out there come Super Tuesday. While he thinks that he can make up for it by doing well in his former state of Georgia, that's a significant delegate swing in favor of Romney. In fact, it's a 100 point swing. That's nearly 10% of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

Add to that the fact that the seven states up for grabs in February aren't likely to support Gingrich over Romney. That includes Maine (24 delegates); Nevada (28 delegates); Colorado (36 delegates); Minnesota (40 delegates); Arizona (29 delegates); and Michigan (30 delegates).

It's conceivable that Romney takes above 75% of those delegates going into Super Tuesday (considering the possibility for proportional delegations). It would give Romney a commanding lead and one that would give him momentum and make it all but impossible for Gingrich to continue past Super Tuesday.

Spaced Out

Newt Gingrich gave a speech in Florida where he indicated that he would oversee the construction of a manned US space platform on the Moon by 2020.

He's hardly the first to consider a return to the moon and go beyond towards Mars and the outer planets. But because this is the Space Coast that has seen lost jobs due to the end of the space shuttle program, they're willing to grasp at straws in the hopes that some jobs could come back as a result of a renewed manned space program. It's also a political ploy in the hopes that he can gain votes over Mitt Romney.

Yet, it's a rather ambitious timeline considering the fact that President George W. Bush first indicated an intention to send a manned mission to Mars and unveiled the Constellation program. That program would provide the heavy-lift capabilities needed to send men to the Moon and then to Mars. President Obama likewise called for a return to the moon, but budgetary concerns have all but scrapped the Constellation program's manned components.

The Ares rocket system has undergone some tests, including the heavy rocket launch into Earth orbit, but no testing has been carried out for the systems designed to send men back to the moon. Even then, those systems were largely based on a combination of space shuttle and Apollo-type technologies (modern variations of the shuttle solid rocket boosters and a J-2X engine based on the engines that powered the Saturn boosters).

How can Gingrich claim that he can return the US to the moon in the number he claims when he's pulling the plug on all kinds of spending.

After all, this is the same Republican party that has called for reductions in spending that will saddle the NOAA with a diminished fleet of satellites critical for weather forecasting.

Indeed, Gingrich has repeatedly claimed that NASA has squandered billions of dollars over the years. His solution to the money crunch is to cut even more fat and to offer incentives to businesses to reach back to the Moon. Incentives still require money, and pose all kinds of questions over what incentives would be sufficient to draw businesses into such risky ventures.

The infrastructure and equipment costs for a project of this size are considerable. The costs for a manned moon mission would still be in the billions of dollars that the country can't seem to allocate for such purposes.

There's no timeline in place for a return of a US manned space program through NASA, though several private programs are in the process of testing equipment that could return Americans to space without having to hop aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket systems. The SpaceX and Dragon systems are undergoing testing, but they are incapable of the heavy-lift missions needed for a manned mission to the Moon.

Those are the two programs that are furthest along in returning Americans to space. Everything else is still on the drawing board.

South Carolina Prefers Ethically Challenged Gingrich Over Monied Romney

It's rather surprising how quickly voters in South Carolina have shifted preferences from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich. They're all too quick to ignore all of Gingrich's flaws - particularly the fact that his fellow Republicans essentially booted him from power as Speaker of the House over an ethical flap that resulted in a $300,000 fine. Since he left Congress, Gingrich has been a lobbyist and while he claims to be a historian, his fact-challenged rants and revisionist history over his own follies and foibles has actually won over South Carolina voters who once again found someone to vote for other than Mitt Romney.

Romney hasn't helped himself by several poor performances at the last two debates. Particularly, he hasn't answered key questions about his finances in a way that would silence the opposition. He's belatedly decided to release his tax returns, and also noted that his effective tax rate (the rate that he actually pays, rather than the rate that his tax would be computed under the statutory rate) is roughly around 15%. That's primarily because of his reliance on capital gains rather than wages.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this from a legal standpoint; Romney worked for a venture capital firm, and his compensation was all legitimate (though one can question whether his position and company created or destroyed jobs through decisions made by Romney and his coworkers). But by obfuscating on his tax returns and how much money he made, he created a problem for himself that was exploited by the likes of Gingrich and others.

Romney could have thwarted this kind of attack by going on the offensive. He should have defused the situation by claiming that not only will he release the tax returns, but that there's absolutely nothing wrong with making money. Making money is what our nation does quite well most of the time and the job of a venture capitalist is to decide how to spend large sums of money on companies that may or may not pan out. Gingrich and the other candidates who were questioning Romney's taxes are showing anti-capitalistic tendencies by claiming that he didn't pay enough in taxes even as they all rail against high taxes.

The compensation for those decisions is quite often not in dollars, but in stock in the companies in which the venture capital firm invests in. Thus, the venture firm and its employees often get compensated in stock - capital gains, rather than wages.

Rick Perry Drops Out Of 2012 Race; Endorses Newt Gingrich

It shouldn't be all that surprising that Rick Perry is dropping out of the race for President.

The announcement from Mr. Perry was expected to inject fresh momentum into Mr. Gingrich’s efforts to emerge as the leading alternative to Mitt Romney. It was unclear whether Mr. Perry would campaign with Mr. Gingrich in the final two days of the primary campaign here.

Mr. Perry will not participate in the debate here on Thursday evening, an aide said, and will make the announcement to supporters and contributors in South Carolina at an 11 a.m. news conference. He had been aggressively campaigning across the state, hoping that the first Southern primary would revive his candidacy.

It was the second time that Mr. Perry had signaled that he would leave the race. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago, Mr. Perry said that he was returning to Texas to reassess his campaign, but he decided to press ahead in South Carolina.

Mr. Perry was in the single digits in recent polls here, but his withdrawal from the race could affect the outcome of the primary by giving conservative voters one fewer alternative. He had been appealing heavily to South Carolina’s evangelical voters.

The decision by Mr. Perry, which was first reported by CNN, narrows the Republican field to four candidates.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is competing with Rick Santorum to emerge as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, has urged Mr. Perry and Mr. Santorum to drop out of the race to coalesce support among conservatives.

He repeatedly failed to make a positive impact on voters despite having a major warchest. Perry's campaign never could figure out a ground game and Perry's repeated gaffes, most notably failing in a debate to remember the three cabinet departments that he would eliminate as President showed that he wasn't ready for prime time.

Perry says that he'll endorse Newt Gingrich for president, which will not come as much of a surprise since the social conservatives are all scrambling to find which candidate remaining can challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination. I don't think that Perry's endorsement will count for much, as Gingrich is still lagging behind Romney significantly in polls in the next round of states.

The candidates remaining in the campaign trying to topple Mitt Romney besides Gingrich are Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Paul's support tops out at no more than 20% in any of the states where he's competitive, and Gingrich has pretty much signaled that he will stay in the race if only to smear Romney at every opportunity. Like Paul, Santorum's best showing was in Iowa and is expected to be nothing more than a footnote in upcoming primaries.

Thus, at this point, the idea of endorsements and shifting support among conservatives is all about jostling for the scraps and trying to force Romney to move even further to the right. That is a political maneuver that is fraught with danger particularly since candidates need to be able to tack to the center during the general election in the attempt to gain independents and moderates. If the GOP nominates a more conservative candidate (say Santorum or Gingrich), it would most assuredly result in an Obama landslide, precisely because the GOP extremist positions, on everything from global warming to creationism and religion in the classroom, is antithetical to what moderates and independents want in their candidates. It would marginalize the GOP in a way that hasn't been seen in generations. Paul's chances for a nomination are even lower, because his libertarian positions don't jibe with the GOP positions and appeal to an even smaller percentage of people - to say nothing of Paul's racist and anti Semitic past (those newsletters simply cannot be ignored).

Another Lagging GOP Candidate Drops Out

If you blinked, you might have noticed that Jon Huntsman was running for President. His GOP campaign never amounted to much, and it is now over. Huntsman simply couldn't get his message across to GOP voters who were far more conservative than Huntsman.

Huntsman will now throw his support to Mitt Romney, and GOP conservatives will continue looking for the anti-Romney to throw their support to stop the Romney steamroller from taking over. Neither Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum are lighting up the conservative votes and there isn't much excitement among voters generally. Everyone, including the candidates themselves, seem resigned to a Romney nomination and are simply going through the motions. However, Gingrich is looking to do all he can to smear Romney because of personal animus.

Newt Gets No Love From Fellow Republicans

Delusions of grandeur and an overly inflated ego are what Newt Gingrich is all about. That's not just my assessment, but those of Republican Peter King, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island. He was among the Republicans who came in the class of 1994 that led Newt to become Speaker of the House.

“What I don’t get is why anybody is surprised by anything this guy does,” Rep. Peter King was saying yesterday afternoon, on his way to a Fordham-St. Joseph’s basketball game. “All Newt ever cared about was Newt. He’s the single most narcissistic guy I’ve ever met in politics — and boy is that ever saying something.”

Pete King, a Republican out of the 3rd Congressional district, out of Nassau and Suffolk counties, and somebody who was right there when Gingrich was Speaker of the House, was just getting started.

“(Gingrich) puts himself in a different universe from everybody else,” King said. “He actually does compare himself to de Gaulle and Churchill, and Reagan. And Margaret Thatcher. I believe the guy is suffering from some messiah complex, one where he believes it’s his destiny to save America and lead America.

“I know the guy a long time, and I can tell you that he absolutely doesn’t care if bringing Romney down destroys his own party. And remember something about these attacks: They aren’t coming from the left, whatever liberal wing there is in our party. They’re coming from a right-wing conservative like Gingrich. It would be like Democrats attacking Obama on health care.

“But Romney’s campaign hits Newt in Iowa, and now he’s willing to pull the whole house down on top of Romney and everybody else to get back at him. So at least one thing about the guy never changes: He can’t take it. When he was Speaker, he’d say anything he wanted about Democrats, call them corrupt and evil. Then one of them would come back at him, and he’d cry.”

Gingrich is a smug phony. So are those just discovering his true character, what a political scrub he is and always has been, even as he wants you to think he is smarter than everybody else in the room. Rick Perry joins Gingrich in these attacks on Romney now, talking about “vulture capitalism.” But Perry is like some third goon in on a hockey fight. He didn’t have the guts or the brains to go after Romney this way until Gingrich did.

Gingrich is more than willing to damage what chances the Republican party has to win in November all because he thinks he is entitled to win the nomination over Romney and thinks that Romney has done him wrong. Newt can't manage to get ahead of even Ron Paul in the first two races, and yet thinks he's entitled to being a front-runner. His chances keep slipping further and further away, but that's not going to stop Gingrich from continuing his attacks on Romney's business experience while at Bain Capital.

Indeed, Gingrich is doing all he can to turn business experience (something that would ordinarily be considered a positive by Republicans who key in on such experience over political experience or ties) into a negative and making the Democrats' arguments for him.

We'll know more about Gingrich's already less-than-admirable character and judgment after he fails once again in South Carolina's primary. If he does poorly once again, will he pack it in and quit the race, or will he continue to stick around so as to be a thorn in Romney's side? I'm betting on the latter - since Gingrich's oversized ego will not allow him to do anything other than that. He can't admit to himself that he's got no chance to be president and the most he can do is hurt the ambitions of a fellow Republican.

Rounding Up the Iowa Caucus Results

Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. I see that Santorum lost to Romney by all of eight votes. Not bad for a guy who was seen as too extreme for PA when he was booted by his constituents from the US Senate. Now, he's probably not extreme enough for the Iowa voters but will have his moment in the sun as the anyone but Romney candidate de jour. Meanwhile, Romney probably wasn't extreme enough for Iowa voters, who found themselves splitting their votes for everyone else, rather than giving a thumbs up for Romney who actually spent more money in 2012 than 2008 to lose votes over the 2008 numbers.

Still, all is not completely lost. Perry may have been battered into his senses and will likely drop out in the next few days. Bachmann, whose senses are extraterrestrial, wont have the good sense to drop out, even though her chances remain on the other side of nil (but will at least make for some entertainment value). Gingrich has vowed to stick around - and to stick it to Romney who he despises. That too will be for entertainment value, but Gingrich went from being a contender to also-ran in record time, if you don't count Herman Cain or Rick Perry.

And then there's the crazy uncle, Ron Paul, who will claim he got the youth vote and his 3d place showing will somehow be proof that he's got momentum. Alas, we've seen that from Paul before, and Iowa will be his high water mark (not counting VA, where only Romney and Paul are on the ballot).

The race is Romney's to lose, and he's done just enough to not lose so far. But he hasn't done enough to win either. There's little enthusiasm, and his negatives are starting to show in a big way. The extremists in the GOP are continuing to tout other candidates who are pushing the right wing extremist agenda envelope, and that works against Romney, who has struggled to stay consistent (I know, wild understatement there - he's flip flopping in the breeze) in the hopes of trying to peel off independents and moderates in the general election. But trying to appeal to moderates wont work when the GOP primaries is all about catering to the extremists in the party, and that works no where better than in places like Iowa.

Rick Perry Sues to Get On Virginia Ballot Despite Missing Deadline; Newt Attempting Write-In Campaign

Rick Perry's campaign is a clown circus and this latest episode shows why he doesn't deserve the GOP nomination. He couldn't even be bothered to get on the Virginia ballot. Perry now suing to try and get on the ballot. He claims that the VA election law is too restrictive (even though he's a state's right kind of guy - and Virginia is within its rights to demand that someone trying to get on the ballot must secure signatures from all districts).

Virginia requires that candidates must get 10,000 signatures statewide, including 400 signatures from each of the state's 11 districts. Perry claims that this restriction is unconstitutional, but that shows that Perry is thoroughly clueless.

"Virginia ballot access rules are among the most onerous and are particularly problematic in a multi-candidate election," Ray Sullivan, Perry's communications director, said in a statement.

"We believe that the Virginia provisions unconstitutionally restrict the rights of candidates and voters by severely restricting access to the ballot, and we hope to have those provisions overturned or modified to provide greater ballot access to Virginia voters and the candidates seeking to earn their support," Sullivan said.

What else is Perry's campaign supposed to say and do considering that they failed miserably to put together a ground game to secure the necessary signatures. Getting those signatures requires a ground game, and both Newt Gingrich and Perry failed miserably.

In Gingrich's case, he actually lives in Virginia and he missed the deadline as well. Instead of suing, he's trying to mount a write-in campaign, except that Virginia doesn't allow write-in ballots.

That leaves only Mitt Romney and the lamentable Ron Paul on the ballot in Virginia. Yes, you read that one correctly. Everyone else has ceded Virginia to these two candidates as flawed as they are. And considering that Mitt should win handily, these other numbskulls have given Mitt a 100 delegate advantage (50+ to Mitt, -50 to themselves right out of the gate).

These candidates have only themselves to blame for not getting their acts together - or revealing that they're not ready for prime time. Only Romney's campaign has put together a national campaign and secured spots on all state ballots - the minimum national ground game necessary to run for President. Everyone else trails badly, and the Virginia example shows why everyone else is trailing Romney where it counts.

Another Sign That Romney Will Win GOP Nomination

On the heels of the ongoing exposure of Ron Paul's racist and anti Semitic newsletters and vile connections to white supremacists, we're now seeing just how badly run the campaigns of Mitt Romney's opposition truly is.

Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have both missed the deadline to get on the Virginia ballot. How insanely stupid is that? That's massive levels of fail all rolled up into a ball.

For Gingrich, the stupid/fail is compounded by the fact that this is the state in which he currently resides.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has failed to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 Republican primary, a development that complicates his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination.

“After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary,” the Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday on its Twitter website.

That shows just how weak Newt's ground game truly is. He can't even manage to gain the necessary 10,000 signatures needed to get on the Virginia ballot. It's something we saw from Herman Cain as well. Despite how well they polled at various points, the ground game indicated just how incompetent and lacking the campaign operations were.

Rick Perry's in no different position. Not only are his polling figures in the dumps, but he couldn't get the necessary number of signatures either. That's despite all the campaign fundraising and warchest he had put together.

All this inures to Mitt Romney's benefit. Despite all of Mitt's own problems and flip flopping on a wide range of issues, to say nothing of the fact that he's more moderate than the conservatives that rule the roost in the primaries, he's at least managed his campaign better in that he's secured positions on the ballots, rather than letter major states pass him by.

One should know one thing - no ground game = no nomination. Yet, far too many candidates have shown that they don't understand that essential fact.

Fading Newt Tells Gay Voters To Consider Obama Instead

So much for courting Log Cabin Republicans. Newt Gingrich has no problem telling off potential gay voters; they should go vote for Obama.

The Republican presidential candidate told a homosexual Iowa man at a campaign event on Tuesday to vote for President Obama.

Scott Arnold, a Democrat and associate professor of writing at William Penn University, approached the ex-House speaker in Oskaloosa wanting to know how Gingrich would represent him as President, according to the Des Moines Register.

"I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama," Arnold told the newspaper.

The Gingrich campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

He likely thinks that offering up such pablum will help him win the Iowa caucus and conservative voters in general, even though he needs every voter he can get as he's slipping badly in the polls.

What an asshat.

Yet, the problem is deeper than this. The antipathy and open hostility towards gays and lesbians is palatable across many of the current GOP candidates, including Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich. Who is a Log Cabin Republican supposed to vote for when confronting such hatred and venom? While they are trying to make the GOP more inclusive, they're going against a rising tide of hate despite the fact that the nation is moving towards a more inclusive and equal opportunity environment (such as expanding gay marriage and gay rights).

Newt's Odd Understanding of the US Constitution

One doesn't need to look any further than Newt Gingrich's exception to his rule to see the absurdity of his claim that he'd simply ignore US Supreme Court decisions with which he didn't agree, and that he'd consider abolishing some courts or impeaching other judges with whom he didn't agree.

That's not a separation of powers argument; it's a tremendous overreach and one that's ripe for tremendous abuse.

As a historian, Gingrich said he knows President Thomas Jefferson abolished some judgeships, and President Abraham Lincoln made clear he did not accept the Dred Scott decision denying that former slaves could be citizens.

Relying on those precedents, Gingrich said that if he were in the White House, he would not feel compelled to always follow the Supreme Court's decisions on constitutional questions. As an example, he cited the court's 5-4 decision in 2008 that prisoners held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had a right to challenge their detention before a judge.

"That was clearly an overreach by the court," Gingrich said Saturday. The president as commander in chief has the power to control prisoners during wartime, making the court's decision "null and void," he said.

But the former House speaker demurred when asked whether President Obama could ignore a high court ruling next year if it declared unconstitutional the new healthcare law and its mandate that all Americans have health insurance by 2014. Gingrich said presidents can ignore court rulings only in "extraordinary" situations.

So, using Gingirch's standards, if President Obama considered the ruling to be an extraordinary situation, the President could simply ignore the Court's ruling so as to continue the health care reform package even if the Court found it unconstitutional? The howls that would come from the GOP and the conservative base that Gingrich is courting in the 2012 election season would never be louder than if the President simply ignored a court ruling the health care law was unconstitutional because the President simply thought that the health care law was an extraordinary situation. He'd probably be the first to claim that President Obama should be impeached for ignoring the Court.

Moreover, this is yet another blow to the Court's power of judicial review, which puts the Court in the position of deciding what is constitutional and what isn't.

Now, judicial review doesn't mean that the Courts are infallible or that they always make the correct decisions. After all, the Court found that slavery was acceptable before the Civil War and that it approved of actions that were later found to be unconstitutional (see Brown v. Board of Education, for example).

Meanwhile, Gingrich thinks that the Constitution doesn't provide for a right of same-sex marriage. A Court would be justified by the plain language of the Constitution to allow for same-sex marriage because the 14th Amendment requires equal protection under the law using the same kind of rationale as used in Brown and its progeny.

In other words, not only is Gingrich a poor historian, but an even worse scholar when it comes to constitutional matters. But he's shrewd enough as a politician to know that the GOP base he's courting would like to see policies it doesn't like eliminated one way or another, even if it means ignoring longstanding powers of the Courts or a vast expansion of presidential power (but only when held by the "right" people.)