Predict The Newt Surge

by Stuart Shapiro

Herman Cain has made his predictable descent in the polls.  And the one who profits is former Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich follows Rep. Bachmann, Governor Perry, and Cain as the official alternative to the flip-flopping former governor of Massachusetts. Is Gingrich doomed to follow in the footsteps of Romney’s other rivals.  Greg Sargent is (to say the least) skeptical.

…it’s highly unlikely that anyone who worked with Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker would want him anywhere near the White House. As detailed in many places, but perhaps most memorably by David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf in their terrific “Tell Newt to Shut Up!,” Gingrich proved to be entirely unsuited by temperament and skills for governing, and destroyed the House Republican Conference’s trust in him so quickly that they started plotting against him soon after he took over the gavel.

It’s one thing to have a nominee who might betray conservatives for his own electoral self-interest, as with Mitt Romney; it’s another, and far worse, to have someone who might sell out conservatives because he suddenly wakes up one morning and decides all on his own to go off in some other direction. That’s the danger of Newt as nominee or president.

So, dear readers, here is your challenge. Predict when Newt falls back below 15% and the next person anointed as Romney’s chief rival.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.