By Walter Shapiro, The New Republic - March 26, 2012

Despite Newt Gingrich’s best efforts, it looks like the world is going to have to save itself. A humiliating third-place finish in Saturday’s Louisiana primary should have extinguished the last embers of Gingrich’s wildfire dream of a second-ballot victory at the GOP Convention. Any Newtonian fantasy about stopping Mitt Romney in Tampa requires the former House speaker to continue to accumulate convention delegates. But Gingrich—after winning a combined 9 percent of the vote in Louisiana and the prior Illinois primary—is now in the goose-egg phase of his descent into irrelevance.