Jeff Smith: Can the Newt Boomlet last?

This is just the tip of an oppo iceberg that would make Herman Cain’s look like a pebble.

With the prospects of a vulnerable president and a Senate that’s clearly within reach, I just can’t imagine Republicans nominating someone so noxious among independents, someone with so much baggage. But Newt’s boomlet is yet another sign of the fact that this was really Rick Perry’s nomination to lose – something Perry’s worked diligently to do almost since the day he entered.

Every day this media-manufactured boomlet persists is another day that some enterprising journalist will dig a little deeper into Newt’s past. Like Cain, he’ll claim that the liberal media is trying to bring him down, when in reality, it will be his own pattern of reckless personal, political, and profit-seeking behavior that will do the trick.

(Cross-posted, with author’s permission, from Politico’s Arena)