Newt Gingrich: a campaign beyond aide?

Can GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich survive the mass resignation of his top campaign aides? The news, which comes just days before the second major GOP presidential debate – this one in New Hampshire, which will include, for the first time, presumptive GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney – probably won't have a huge impact on the Republican field in the short term. That's because Gingrich, despite his name recognition, and widey regarded intellect, had stumbled so badly coming out of the gate that many observers had suggested he needed to "reset" his campaign – or perhaps, simply drop out. An analysis his team seem to have agreed with. Gingrich's biggest gaffe came during his appearance on Meet the Press in late May when he told host David Gregory that the GOP's "rightwing social engineering " – reflected in GOP rising star Paul Ryan's bill to privatise Medicare – was just as abhorrent as "leftwing social engineering". The response from Republicans – including a swift rebuke from Ryan himself – forced Gingrich to backpedal, publicly acknowledging that his remark was "inappropriate" and leading to a highly publicised phone call to Ryan in which he "apologised". The Ryan fiasco was quickly followed by revelations that Gingrich still had an unpaid $500,000 bill at Tiffany's for jewelry he'd bought his third wife Calista, who was formerly his mistress when Gingrich was still married to his second wife. The Tiffany's revelation seemed to highlight two additional big problems with Gingrich's candidacy – his "family values" record, which offends many social conservatives, especially compared to the stable partnerships of candidates like Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, and his vagueness on budgetary issues, a symptom of his well-known tendency to wax philosophically, while leaving the policy follow up to others. And with most Tea Party activists already distrustful of Gingrich's commitment to their deficit-cutting agenda, evidence of his failure to keep a tight rein on his own personal spending only seemed to show how out of touch he is with the new political landscape in Washington. Gingrich's poor standing with key GOP voter groups was evident in the polls, which showed him with support among GOP voters at just 8%, far behind Romney, Palin and even Rudy Giuliani, who is considering a run. Gingrich also had just 11% support among white evangelicals, placing him a distant fourth. Who benefits from the departure of Gingrich's top aides? That may depend, in part, on whether Gingrich himself stays in the race, which he says he plans to, and on whether most or all of those aides decide to switch to a single alternative candidate (which most observers consider unlikely). The most immediate beneficiary of Gingrich's slippage is likely to be his fellow Georgian, Herman Cain, who bested Gingrich in the last Georgia state straw poll. Cain is the other prominent southerner in the race, with an eye, like Gingrich, to winning in primaries in South Carolina and the deep south. Texas Governor Rick Perry, who's now believed to be close to entering the race, would be a strong competitor for southern support, also. But Gingrich also has appeal to moderates in the party. When Huckabee pulled out, the largest part of his support drifted to Romney, followed by Palin. Much of the same could happen if Gingrich changes his mind and withdraws. But Gingrich is likely to solider on, buoyed by a recent Washington Post poll , which shows him faring second only to Romney in a head-to-head contest with Barack Obama (losing 50-44). Rich Lowry, editor of National Review magazine, may have summed up Gingrich best when he recently wrote : "He is drawn irresistibly to operatic overstatement – sometimes brilliant, always interesting, and occasionally downright absurd." But a candidate without a campaign team? That's about as absurd as it gets.