Tsk, tsk, all this Newt-hatred. As Dick Cheney says, don't count him out just yet.

I am beginning to love Newt for his enemies, notably Michael Gerson as well as the even more usual suspects.

Republicans are violating Ronald Reagan's 11th amendment.

Time to quit pointing fingers at one another and pointing fingers at the complete moron in the White House.

That is Ronald Reagan's 11 Commandment...

Romney = Obama Lite. Unacceptable no matter how pretty he is.

I'm persuaded. Thanks for the post, Peter--esp. the Ponnuru essay, which contains a number of eminently reasonable points having to do with both principled policies that Romney is likely to endorse and the productive working relationship with a GOP Congress Romney will likely have if he wants to be a successful (two-term?!) president.

As annoying as Romney's propensity to appear willing to say or be anything in order to be elected may seem, there is, at least, a case to be made that he is merely being prudent in assessing public opinion (or, if one is more critical, wimpy). But Gingrich's latest critique of Romney appears to demonstrate something more disturbing. He is willing to make any argument in order to demonstrate that he, the Gingrich, is not wrong. I have an adolescent living in my house who is also quite adept at this mode of argumentation. It is my ambition to help her grow beyond it . . .

Then Romney will be our Bill Clinton, whose most forgvable trait was that he was more concerned with what the people wanted than with his principles. On NPR's Marketplace, I heard a pollster from Gallup explaining the attitudes of Americans right now.

https://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/attitude-check/attitude-check-who-do-you-trust

"But one of the questions we've been asking long before my time since the '60s is: What's the biggest threat to the country, the future of the country -- big business, big government or big labor? And when we asked it that way, big government right now overwhelms everybody else: 64 percent of Americans say that's the biggest threat and business is way down there, just 26 percent."

That's the Tea Party vs. OWS, so conservatives can hope that a politician who attends to the polling data will respond to that pull.

Actually, nothing convinces me more that Newt is the guy than the unwillingness to entertain the possibility among NLT "stalwarts." While you guys aren't exactly "Rockefeller Republicans," you do represent the stodgier side of the GOP. In the 1990s I would have agreed with a Mitt-clone as the candidate (a bit more exciting than Dole), but today we need a mover-and-shaker. That's not Mitt, but it is Newt. We are bankrupt, the electorate is on the tipping-point of permanent entitlement-mentality, and the culture-war is all but lost. It's time to roll the dice. Indeed, I think I'd rather see Obama returned to the White House than see another RINO destroy all we've tried to accomplish. At least with Obama in charge it will be the liberals who loose legitimacy.

I'd rather NOT see Obama returned to the White House. It is going to be hard enough going forward with what he has brought America to in the last almost 3 years. How do we undo the damage? When he has nothing to lose and is looking to build an historic legacy, what else might he saddle us with?

Although the promise seems to be a Republican legislative branch, which could happily mean gridlock. Exceppt maybe not when we have secretaries of the cabinet, like Katherine Sebelius, who happliy do end runs around the legislative branch with presidential approval.

Then there is the Supreme Court and some very old justices. Who would Obama pick? We know. Who would Romney pick? We can hope.