Alex Massie:

Alex Massie: [W]hat is Gingrich's campaign actually about? Apart from typically loopy notions such as colonising the moon, nothing more than a declaration of independence from a contemptuous (and contemptible) liberal media and an anti-American elite that's notionally happy to embrace American decline. It is a brand of politics that bathes in the warm, comforting waters of victimhood but that has nothing useful to say about the actual challenges the United States faces. If this is so then it is about poking people in the eye, not about problem-solving. Indeed, while defeating suspiciously-cosmopolitan opponents is dandy, losing to them is also acceptable. For defeat reinforces the suspicion that all that's good and holy is under attack. To the Alamo, my friends!

Gingrich offers a politics of the laager. Is there more to American conservatism than this? Of course there is and must be. I still think voters will appreciate this in sufficient numbers to prove Gingrich wrong but perhaps this is too optimistic a view. Romney, desperate and dire as he is, may be a fake but in this instance the fraud is better, that is less grim, than the real thing…