With Rick Perry’s stumble last night, I emailed Reagan biographer Craig Shirley for his thoughts on whether or not former Speaker Newt Gingrich might become the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Shirley is currently working on a new book about Gingrich’s professional life from 1973-1994, ending with the Republican revolution.
Here’s what he had to say:
“Citizen Newt” will come out next year as this story is still being played out in dramatic fashion. We are witnessing one of the greatest–if not the greatest–political comebacks in American History.
It is a story rich in irony (remember the consultants who left Newt for Perry?) and personality durability. In the end, Gingrich’s durability might be one of his greatest assets, like Clinton’s and Nixon’s and Reagan’s resilience was for them. Clinton, Nixon and Reagan all staged dramatic comebacks as well. All were pronounced politically dead by the intelligentsia but they had other ideas, as does Gingrich.
It is also a story about how the elites have finally and completely walled themselves off from the American people and thus from reality. I mean, these people are proclaiming Romney all but the nominee when every conservative I know loathes the idea of him as the nominee.