Michael Shear reports on Gingrich campaign spokesman Rick Tyler's spin following the hugely negative response Gingrich has gotten this week to his announcement:
Mr. Tyler compared the last several days for Mr. Gingrich to a star baseball player who disappoints the crowd during his first time up to the plate in an early-season game.Shorter Rick Tyler:
“Reggie Jackson once said they don’t boo nobody,” Mr. Tyler said. “Right now, they are booing Newt. We will hit a home run and they will all be fans again.”
If you strike Newt down, he shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.Tyler also makes the LOL-inducing claim that Gingrich has had a week dominated by "positive coverage."
In terms of the Gingrich campaign's Reggie Jackson analogy, I don't think it flies. Gingrich is a figure because he's the former Speaker of the House and has been a fixture in the media for decades. No one's saying that he's Herm Cain or Buddy Roemer. But Gingrich has faced such an immense backlash over his critique of Paul Ryan's Medicare-destroying budget that it's not at all unreasonable to say that he, at minimum, has had a disasterous rollout, and at most, as Charles Krauthammer said, “He’s done. He didn’t have a big chance from the beginning, but now it’s over." Being targeted for criticism by prominent Republicans and conservative media figures is not a good sign. Attempts to spin it otherwise are just that. Gingrich is going to actually have to go out and win conservative base voters over before making a play to the center. Otherwise Krauthammer will be proven right and Gingrich really will be done.