Documenting the downfall of Newt

How would he do that? Wouldn’t he have to first get into the race?

Yeah, 'cause it’s all about Delaware, not New York or Pennsylvania.

No disrespect to The First State, of course.

What Newt does and how he dresses in his private time should have no bearing on his electability.

And now, yet another of his legions of spokemodels has declared that he won’t get out, tonight at least, no matter what happens in Delaware.

Doesn’t he realize as Delaware goes, so goes Rhode Island?

Newt may be going battier than ever. He’s supposedly been campaigning a lot in DE – WHY? To get the coveted Christine O’Donnell endorsement and lock down all the covens in the Northeast? Seriously, you win Delaware and you win practically nothing. OTOH, if you lose Delaware, you lose… oops, still nothing.

Game over, man. Game over!

Apparently he campaign very hard in Delaware, and his reward was losing 57%-27%. That was actually his best performance and so far it’s the only state where he beat Ron Paul, although not all of the results are in. One of Newt’s daughters says he plans to “reassess” in the next few days. At this point he’s dragged it out so long it doesn’t matter if he quits or not. Except for the fact that his campaign is more than $4 million in debt, that is.

Didn’t he win Georgia?

But WHY?

I meant of the five states that voted tonight. He did win Georgia and South Carolina. Tonight, though, it looks like he’s going to finish behind Paul in four states.

Newt is going to suspend his campaign Tuesday, which raises two somewhat contradictory questions: why not just suspend the campaign now, and who gives a crap if or when he suspends it since it was obvious two months ago that he’d lost?

Final results from Delaware:


PRESIDENT 

236 of 236 Districts Reported

REPUBLICAN PARTY 

                     Machine  Absentee Total Percent 
                     Votes    Votes    Votes Votes 
     NEWT GINGRICH   7550     191      7741  27.1 % 
     RONALD E. PAUL  2924      93      3017  10.6 % 
     MITT ROMNEY    15599     544     16143  56.5 % 
     RICK SANTORUM   1471     219      1690   5.8 % 

Probably there’s some accounting reason.

It’s possible, since that’s why they all suspend their campaigns these days instead of formally ending them. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s about attention. He wants to to make take the announcement into a separate news cycle. If he quit today, it would be folded into the news of Romney sweeping all five primaries. So he’ll get more coverage if he waits until Tuesday and he’ll get to act like his endorsement is a bigger deal. Santorum is still not endorsing.

The other interesting thing is, nobody just stops or quits or cancels a campaign anymore, they “suspend” it – like they’re gonna restart it or something in a few weeks.

I wonder if there’s a bookkeeping reason for that too? If they quit rather than “suspend”, do they have to stop fundraising?

What happens to his 4.3 million dollars in campaign debt after he “suspends” his campaign?

I presume that no more money will be coming in once he is no longer in the race. So does he just stiff the suppliers to whom he owes money?

Yes. If they close down their campaign, they can only raise money to retire their debts. If the campaign is suspended, they can keep raising money and eventually us use it somewhere else.

See above.

Not true - although not as many people will be donating or paying attention.

Not unless he wants to get sued.

“Please donate to my failed campaign so I won’t get sued”

It just does not have a ring to it, you know?

It might for a younger politician who might win next time and be in a position to return favors extended to him now. For Newt… not so much.

I love that in PA he lost to everyone - including Santorum who is no longer running.

I think if it were me, I’d take the hint and fold up tents.

Conan O’Brien last night facetiously quoted Newt as saying, “If there’s anything my two ex-wives will tell you, it’s that I’m no quitter!”