Newt's Devotion to Callista Sunk Campaign

At a moment when Anthony Weiner's career is imploding because he's a dog, Newt Gingrich's presidential aspirations are dissipating "because he loved not wisely, but too well," opines Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Indulging Callista Gingrich's desire for a two-week Greek vacation when he should have been campaigning cost him a chunk of his staff—and likely deep-sixed his already floundering campaign. It's an irony for someone whose sexual sins never "landed him in as much political trouble as being loyal to his wife."

Sure, he claimed he was writing policy speeches aboard the yacht, and maybe so, Dowd concedes. But the idea that Gingrich is "a man of ideas" ignores the fact that those "ideas are mostly chuckleheaded," she writes, pointing to what she considers his more typical emotional outbursts. And it was his emotion that brought him to this point: "He thought his devotion to Callista would bring him political redemption. Instead, it has brought him political reduction," Dowd concludes. "His campaign now boils down to the two of them." (More Newt Gingrich stories.)