So, let me get this straight, Newt Gingrich is the hope of the GOP? If you listen to Sean Hannity on a somewhat regular basis it would seem this would be Hannity’s assessment. At every opportunity Hannity places the idea in front of his listening audience, even repeatedly asking the former speaker when he’s going to run.

Come on Sean; pull your head out of your fourth point of contact. Yes, it is true Gingrich was the co-author of the GOP’s “Contract with America”, but then what? Well, let’s take a look back in time shall we?

It was under then Speaker Gingrich’s leadership that the Republican Party focused on the perjury charges against Clinton as a unifying campaign theme in national Republican advertising during the 1998 mid-term election. While Newt believed this theme would ensure gains in the November elections, the GOP instead lost five seats in the House — the worst performance in 64 years for a party that didn’t hold the presidency. Polls showed that Gingrich and the Republican Party’s attempt to remove President Clinton from office was not as popular a theme as he had thought among the American public.

Gingrich, as the leader of the GOP in the House suffered much of the blame for the election loss. Facing a rebellion in the Republican caucus, he announced on November 6, 1998 that he would not only stand down as Speaker, but would leave the House as well. Even though he had been handily reelected to an 11th term in that election, Speaker Gingrich declined to take his seat, and according to Newsweek, he had lost control over his caucus long before the election, and it was possible that he would not have been reelected as Speaker in any case.

So, the man who led the GOP to the worst mid-term election loss in 64 years for a party not in control of the White House; the man who resigned from the House of Representatives, not only as Speaker, but as a member of that body; the man who also filed for divorce from his wife while she was undergoing cancer treatments, so he could marry a staffer with whom he was having an affair is the man who Republicans should turn to? This is the man who will lead the GOP out of the desert and into the Promised Land? Good Luck with that.