The headline shows up in my internet reader:
“Newt Gingrich endorsed by The Union MisLeader”
One wonders, of course, why we care what they choose—
Their record, of recent, predicts he’ll now lose.
Two money quotes. First, they damn with faint praise:
The New Hampshire Union Leader’s Sunday editorial says the former House speaker “is by no means the perfect candidate” but calls him “the best candidate who is actually running.”
And then, the kicker:
The conservative Union Leader editorial page has a history of passing over the front-runner in its selections. The paper endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, Deleware Gov. Pete DuPont in 1988, Reagan aide Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, businessman Steve Forbes in 2000, and Arizona Sen. John McCain in 2008.
There was no way in hell they’d endorse Romney, but whom of the other clowns they would pick was still anybody’s guess, given the shape of the Republican field these days. Endorsing any one of the other candidates required them to compromise some sort of standard, after all:
Newt Gingrich: basic standards of decency
Rick Perry: basic standards of intellectual competency
Herman Cain: basic standards of fielding a better candidate than the Standing in the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party
Michele Bachmann: all of the standards. All of them.
Endorsing Newt Gingrich is like a casting director saying: “Let’s cast that guy – we can put “two time Oscar nominee” on the poster. Perhaps people won’t remember the drug bust, the public indecency charge and that horrible Indian porn movie he’s done since then.”