It was Callista, officer, who forced her husband to make his inelegant comments on Medicare that infuriated the conservative base. It was Callista who used witchcraft or voodoo to make it impossible for well-paid, experienced campaign aides—all of them adults—to earn the trust and respect of a veteran political operator. It was Callista who was behind Newt’s embarrassing glitter-bombing by a gay activist. And it was Callista who placed a gag and handcuffs on her husband and forced him to take a vacation away from the oppressive Washington heat.

Well I, for one, am not buying it. And I have to say I’m a little ticked off that Newt Gingrich’s campaign collapse is suddenly all Callista’s fault.

Come to think of it, the GOP’s “wife is the villain” motif is not completely novel. In the 1980s, before the Reagans became America’s version of Grandpa and Grandma Moses, Nancy Reagan was the Cruella de Ville to Ronnie’s sweet-as-a-puppy-dog presidency. And in 2008, that role was played by Jeri Thompson—Fred’s so-called trophy wife—who prevented his campaign’s genius, faultless advisers from making the former Tennessee senator our nation’s commander in chief. (Fred, by the way, would have none of that. He used to joke, “Jeri’s not the trophy wife. I’m the trophy husband.”) So far, however, the 2012 campaign has taken all this up another unsavory notch.