“When Newt Gingrich is trying to pull you back to the center, you’ve gone so far right that the average voter can’t see you any longer.” ~ Ezra Klein
Pretty much.
quote for the afternoon
Erik Kain is a blogger and freelance writer. Currently he serves as Editor-in-Chief of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen and writes a tech blog at Forbes. Visit his politics blog here. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The National Review, The Washington Examiner, and the now-defunct True/Slant. You can also contact him via email.
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Jaybird 
Ryan Noonan 
dhex 
Burt Likko 
Barry Hoffman
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Klein, ever the sage, would be far more on point, well, if he were more on point. But two salient factors stand out in my mind:
1. Gingrich isn’t “pull[ing anyone] back to the center”: He’s trumping party line over ideological line. Whether Hoffman’s decidedly more conservative line or the party line is what ought to prevail I’ll leave, at least momentarily, but this is not the emergence of Gingrich the Moderate; it’s simply Gingrich the Republican would-be kingpin.
2. I know not too much about Hoffman, and that he has the Republican “elites”, notwithstanding Newt, on his side, of course troubles me, but the simple fact is that, however she may rate nationally as a “moderate”, and though she isn’t a “radical leftist” (http://themoderatevoice.com/50319/dede-scozzafava-the-real-record/), as her opponents to the right have charged, she’s not really a “moderately conservative” Republican, as some have argued. Maybe a moderate, but not a moderate conservative. Fiscally, she seems to be fairly centrist, maybe a little left-leaning; but socially, she’s decidedly to the left.
Newt Gingrich cheated on his wife at the same time he was wasting four years of the taxpayer’s time and, and putting the entire nation on hold, prosecuting Clinton.
He’s a Republican first, whatever ideology he holds comes a distant second.
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