(Optional soundtrack to this blog post…)
Well, mother of mercy, this seems finally to be the end of Newton Leroy.
The Definer Of Civilization’s Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces finally hung ‘em up on Wednesday — and how nice it was of his former friends and fellow employees at Fox to mention so high up in that there story how deeply in hock his campaign is — thereby ending one of the longest goodbyes we’ve seen for a primary candidate in a very long time. But Fox wasn’t done with him. Not by a long shot….
With the candidate making his exit official Wednesday afternoon, a close look at his finance records reveals a free-spending machine that ran up a million-dollar debt in private jet flights alone, along with other services and benefits that left the unpaid bill at a whopping $ 4.3 million at the end of March, according to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The campaign says it has paid off $ 500,000 of that total, which still leaves a $ 3.8 million tab. And while huge amounts of money are still owed to a variety of vendors — some of whom might wonder when and if they’ll see their money — the campaign seems to have paid off all its bills to businesses run by Gingrich family members, as well as “reimbursed” the candidate himself with nearly half a million dollars.
In other words, good riddance, you deadbeat bastard, you.
I underestimated how far out of favor with most of the conservative power structure Gingrich actually had fallen. Twenty years ago, he was the intellectual anchor of the movement, the Man Of The Moment, the fount of new and innovative conservative ideas. (Yeah, most of them were new and innovative ideas for how to call your Democratic opponent a dog-fondling Socialist weasel, but people played along with him.) Now, he broke and a joke. This has to be absolutely killing him. Willard Romney, a wealthy Yankee fop with only one real political idea in his head — “Me President Too Some Day” — is cake-walking to the nomination, and he’s doing it on the bones of Gingrich’s career. Moreover, there even is…
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