The Gingrich boomlet won't last

The idea that he’s a serious presidential candidate is preposterous. Even if he were the nominee, he’d get about 44 percent of the vote. He’d say crazy things. He’d reignite the whole Obama-is-a-Kenyan-anticolonialist business. Or he’d think up something newer and weirder. He’d be a disaster. I’d submit that even his home state of Georgia would be in play if he were the nominee. Georgia right-wingers would turn out in droves to support him, for sure. But the state’s left-wingers would turn out in droves to vote against him, and its moderates would probably tilt against him. He could conceivably do worse in a general election than Herman Cain…

Gingrich keeps impressively at the job of doing and saying things that from a right-wing perspective aren’t so bright. Not long ago he told Jake Tapper of ABC that the big banks need to be broken up: “I think, in retrospect, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was probably a mistake,” he said. “We should probably reestablish dividing up the big banks into a banking function and an investment function and separating them out again.” I’m not sure even Barack Obama has taken this position. It’s a thing most liberal politicians don’t even say. For a conservative one to say it—one who is cultivating Tea Party support, no less—is otherworldly. Gingrich will say anything depending on the moment, and he’s been saying anything for 13 years since leaving office, so there’s a long trail for Romney’s oppo team to survey.