NEWT GINGRICH does not eat sandwiches; he fundamentally transforms them, radically changing them from solid foodstuff to masticated bolus to energy. Last summer, Mr Gingrich fundamentally transformed the nature of modern political campaigning. How did he do that? By asking for money over the internet. You might think that's nothing new; plenty of small businesses prefer low-overhead online sales to brick-and-mortar shops, particularly if, like Mr Gingrich, they already have a brand. And you might remember that a certain senator from Illinois proved pretty adroit at capturing online donations and using social media to organise campaign volunteers. But those people were not fundamental, radical change-agents like Mr Gingrich. You might also suspect that he moved his campaign online because it was cheaper. His campaign was $1m in debt, and his staff had resigned en masse, frustrated that Mr Gingrich and his wife Callista seemed to prefer plush cruises through southern Europe to actually campaigning for the presidency. If so, you might be a member of the elite, bent on cynically wrecking the campaign of the most brilliant leader America has never had. To Mr Gingrich, getting online donations was nothing short of earth-shattering. As Politico reported, Mr Gingrich "boasted that he was inventing a revolutionary new model of campaigning" by asking for money online. "I told somebody at one point, 'This is like watching Walton or Kroc develop Walmart and McDonald's.'" The real problem was not that he was a profoundly unserious and undisciplined candidate; the problem, as he was only too happy to explain, was that, "Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate and what I'm trying to do."

Just what he has been trying to do was never quite clear. At times it has seemed like he was trying to get elected president. His name has appeared on ballots—notall of them, of course, but on most. Sometimes people actually voted for him: Mr Gingrich has won a whopping two of the 33 states and territories that have so far participated in Republican primaries. By way of comparison, in the 2004 Democratic primaries Howard Dean, another shouty man who will never be president, won the same number. And just as Mr Gingrich won his home state of Georgia and ultra-conservative South Carolina, Mr Dean won his home state of Vermont and ultra-liberal Washington, DC. Their strategies were similar: Mr Dean often said he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party", while Mr Gingrich successfully tapped the vein of angry white resentment and free-floating anger that eluded such stellar candidates as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. The closest Mr Gingrich ever got to laying out a strategy came in the wake of South Carolina, when his spokesman said that "everything from Spartanburg all the way to Texas, those have to go for Gingrich." But of course, that was not a strategy for victory: there just aren't enough delegates there. That was a strategy to ensure chaos at August's convention.

And indeed, for some time now, ever since those states did not, in fact, "go for Gingrich", that has been his aim. Michelle Cottle describes him as being "drunk on a cocktail of spite, narcissism and general mischief", which is generally true, though it ignores the profound personal hatred he seems to bear for Mitt Romney. But now even that goal is receding. On Tuesday he sacked his campaign manager and one-third of his staff, saying he will focus on "winning a big-choice convention this August." In other words, Screw you, voters! You made the wrong choice, but that's okay: Leader Gingrich will graciously offer your superiors a chance to correct your errors at the convention.

Mr Gingrich has lost his last embedded reporters, and he appears poised once again to run an "Internet-based campaign" (silly Newt—Ron Paul is already president of the internets). For months he told audiences that the "elite media" wanted to kill his campaign. Nothing could be further from the truth: we loved it; it was a great spectacle. But in the end, that is really all it was. His biggest cheers came when he told audiences how much he wanted to debate Barack Obama. Mr Gingrich's rise in the polls, and his victory in South Carolina, are almost entirely due to his stellar, vituperative debate performances. And indeed, that will be his legacy. Those audiences that cheered executions, applauded at the notion of uninsured people dying and booed an American soldier who happened to be gay? Those are Newt's people. But of course, debates are theatre; they are spectacle; except for weeding out the crashingly unqualified, such as Messrs Perry and Cain, they settle nothing. Mr Gingrich promises to soldier on, even if he is starting to resemble a certain limbless knight. And he will always have a die-hard cadre of supporters. So will Ron Paul. But cadres are for coups. Elections require masses, and one thing we can say for sure about the American masses is that they do not want a President Gingrich.