So Why Do I Want Gingrich to Drop Out

It's funny, but I really do think Newt Gingrich should drop out of the primary and let Santorum go head to head with Romney.

Really, what business is that of mine? I am not Republican; I am scared to death of what the Republican Party is becoming these days, and I really want to see it self-destruct. So clearly any advice I would have to give cannot possibly be in good faith.

But I still think Gingrich should drop out.

It's a phenomenon I first noticed when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate. Many times before I had read conservative columnists making recommendations about who a Democratic candidate should pick, and always I doubted their good faith. But here I was, thinking that I understood why McCain would want a woman on the ticket, but their must be Republican women who were better qualified. I even ran down a possible list, thinking about the pros and cons (from McCain's viewpoint) of each. And no, I was not doing this in bad faith (at least not consciously so). You might say I was doing it as an American concerned that we have a potential Vice President who was qualified for the job. But really, I was putting myself in the shoes of a McCain strategist.

And so with Gingrich. As an American, I think a Gingrich presidency would be disasterous, but the Republican establishment shares my fears and will keep that from happening. And what else? I'm not a Republican and I wish nothing but ill on the Republican Party. But I still think that Republican candidates should show some basic party loyalty and not do anything harmful to their party. I certainly have no use for the right wing of the Republican Party. But if Gingrich has his heart set on beating Romney and delivering the nomination to a True Conservative, he should show some loyalty to his faction of the party and quit splitting it.

So what gives? Obviously, I can't read Gingrich's mind, so I don't know. The suggestion most often made is that he is hoping by some miracle to win a brokered convention. That seems most unlikely to me, given that the Republican Establishment is going to have a lot of pull at a brokered convention, and the Republican Establishment hates Newt Gingrich's guts. It would also quite legitimately anger Republican voters to see their choice against Gingrich overlooked. I have trouble believing that even Gingrich could be that delusional and that egocentric. If he is, that alone should disqualify him from ever being President.