Certainly no-one will ever accuse Newt Gingrich of having low self-esteem. Talking Points Memo is reporting that Gingrich’s campaign manager Michael Krull has taken to Facebook to vent about the Virginia Republican Party’s judgment that the former Speaker of the House did not qualify to appear on the March 6 primary ballot.

“Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941,” he writes, comparing the campaign’s failure to acquire the 10,000 signatures necessary to compete in the Virginia primary to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. “We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.”

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On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese bombers mounted a raid on American military assets billeted at Pearl Harbor, a Navy base on the island of Hawaii. According to WikiPedia, 2,402 Americans lost their lives, with 1,282 injured. Eight U.S. battleships were damaged, four of them sunk. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed, as well as three Navy cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer.

As Raw Story reported earlier, this is the third state primary for which the Gingrich team has failed to collect enough signatures or missed the filing deadline.

Earlier this year, the campaign saw a mass walkout of essential personnel in the wake of what staffers described as the candidate’s lack of discipline and inability to focus. Some cited Gingrich’s decision to join wife Callista on a luxurious Greek cruise just as the primary season got underway as a typical Newt misstep.

Gingrich remains defiant. According to Krull’s Facebook post, “Newt and I have talked three or four times today and he stated that this is not catastrophic – we will continue to learn and grow. Remember that it was only a few months ago that pundits and the press declared us dead after the paid consultants left.”

And that gives us all the excuse we need, really, to re-publish this video in which actor John Lithgow dramatizes a Gingrich campaign press release from earlier this year. Merry Christmas!

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(image via Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Photostream)