Newt’s Implosion - David Frum

http://www.frumforum.com/newts-implosion

So here’s the question: If Romney does win, how do we make sense of the media narrative of the past 2 1/2 years? Does it mean that the Tea Party was overhyped from the start? Or that Tea Party candidates somehow canceled each other out? Or was the problem one of followership — that Tea Party voters were drawn to candidates so fatally flawed that they failed before they had properly begun?

I think the testing ground for how far the Tea Party could carry the Republican party was the 2010 midterms. You saw some slightly wacko people cary into office, but the ones who made the larger, national storyline (Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle) were defeated. I think that provides some evidence that people wanted to send a message, but not one that was completely daft, and that is what you are seeing now. A lot of populist anger pushing fringe candidates to the front of the pack before they immolate.

With that said, Gingrich's "campaign" was never anything of the sort. This was a bald faced grab at CPAC cash for the next five years or so, a way to regain the spotlight in the new GOP Olympus of kooks and conspiracy theorists. Here we have the weakness in the conservative nomination process: because of the tremendous cash that can be had on the speaking circuit, individuals are drawn to seek the biggest spotlight and say outrageous things that gets one speaking engagements. The problem, as we see, is that it really muddles the process, and voters who for whatever reason really thought that their favorite kook was going to get nominated get angry (they seem to be perpetually angry) and then vow to "punish" the party the next election for "not being conservative enough", angrily nominating Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle.