But after he crashed and burned in the Florida primary, Gingrich learned that there are no third acts in American lives. He tried to be the Southern candidate, but finished a close second behind Rick Santorum in Mississippi and Alabama. Then Newt tried to repeat in Louisiana his one-state-at-a-time strategy that had worked so well in Georgia. Not only did Newt win just 16 percent of the vote, but his wipeout was consistent across all demographic and ideological categories, according to the Louisiana exit polls. What this means is that (unlike Romney with upper-income Republicans and Santorum with evangelicals) there is no identifiable Gingrich constituency in the GOP.

With more than 130 delegates (although all GOP delegate calculations are murky), Gingrich would, in theory, have a role at a contested Republican Convention. Morley Winograd, an architect of the Democratic Party’s arcane delegate rules and a veteran of the contested Kennedy vs. Carter 1980 Convention, suggested in an insightful column in Politico that Santorum and Gingrich should join forces in a last-ditch stop-Romney coalition. With almost all future GOP primaries winner-take-all by congressional district, Winograd theorized that the anti-Mitt candidates could divvy up the districts based on their comparative strength against Romney. There’s only one problem: It is hard to identify a spot on the remaining primary map where Gingrich would be a stronger challenger than Santorum.

So it ends for Gingrich without even a whimper.