Newt Gingrich’s Retreat: The End

Published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(Germany) on 3 May 2012
by Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Ron Argentati. Edited by Laurence Bouvard.
Newt Gingrich never really had a chance of becoming a presidential candidate. His retreat was long overdue and in the role of chief mudslinger against Mitt Romney, he met his political end.

At the end, he kept his candidacy for nomination in the limelight only for the sake of appearances; he never stood a realistic chance of becoming the Republican Party's nominee for the presidency.

The reason for that was the man himself: He attempted to combine systematic professionalism with passion into a campaign that was ultimately torpedoed by a manic ego combined with his own unstable and fickle character.

His Own Idiosyncratic Ideas

Newt Gingrich was unable to get the party's conservative right-wing base behind him and, as a result, Mitt Romney became the nominee. Gingrich's unspectacular withdrawal from the race was long overdue. Yet that doesn't change the fact that Gingrich is still one of the most interesting and successful Republicans of the modern age; a man who was never intimidated and who never compromised his idiosyncratic ideas and one who in 1994 gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The political demise of Bill Clinton's greatest nemesis came about when he took on the role of chief mudslinger against Romney.


Das Ende
Von Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger
03.05.2012

Newt Gingrich hatte nie eine reelle Chance, amerikanischer Präsidentschaftskandidat zu werden. Sein Rückzug war überfällig: In der Nebenrolle als Giftschleuder gegen Romney fand Clintons großer Gegenspieler sein politisches Ende.


Seine Bewerbung hielt er zuletzt nur zum Schein im Licht der Scheinwerfer aufrecht. Eigentlich hatte Newt Gingrich nie eine reelle Chance, Kandidat der Republikanischen Partei für die Präsidentenwahl zu werden.

Den Hauptgrund dafür lieferte er selbst: Sein manisches Ego in Verbindung mit einem unstet-flatterhaften Charakter torpedierte eine Kampagne, die Leidenschaft mit systematischer Professionalität zu verbinden gehabt hätte.

Seine eigenen, eigenwilligen Ideen

Gingrich konnte die rechtskonservative Basis nicht hinter sich bringen, und so ist eben Mitt Romney der Kandidat der Partei für den Kampf um das Weiße Haus.

Gingrichs unspektakulärer Rückzug aus dem Wahlkampf war überfällig; aber das ändert nichts daran, dass er einer der interessantesten und erfolgreichsten Republikaner der jüngeren Vergangenheit ist: einer, der sich nicht einschüchtern, der sich von seinen eigenen, eigenwilligen Ideen fortreißen ließ - und der die Republikaner 1994 erstmals seit vierzig Jahren zur Mehrheit im Repräsentantenhaus führte. In der Nebenrolle als Giftschleuder gegen Romney fand Clintons großer Gegenspieler sein politisches Ende.
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