When Newt Gingrich proclaimed in early December that he would be the GOP nominee, I argued that his success would doom the Tea Party. How could the movement survive a standard-bearer who once favored bank bailouts, No Child Left Behind, an individual mandate in health care, a guest-worker program, the costly prescription-drug benefit, and the nomination of Harriet Miers? Or a politician who lobbied for Freddie Mac? Tea Partiers once pledged that if they had their way, the GOP would never again have as its champion a federal-government-enlarging, entitlement-expanding Bush Republican, nor a career politician who sells influence to D.C. insiders. Elevating such a man would split the coalition's earnest reformers from its tribal partisans.
As ever, Sarah Palin failed to heed my advice. In South Carolina, she urged voters to cast a ballot for the former House Speaker. And on her Facebook page Friday, she attacked his critics in "the GOP establishment" for employing against him the always dreaded "tactics of the left."
