It was no surprise that The Donald dropped out of the presidential race Monday. But still, it was a shock.
And not simply because I had June 13 in the Trump dropout pool. Or because I had never seen even a fake candidate so fully self-destruct in such a short time, even before Trump’s birther detectives could report in from Hawaii.
The real shock comes once you understand why Trump dropped out. It wasn’t because he had been humiliated by Barack Obama. He’s used to being humiliated. And it wasn’t because the ratings for “Celebrity Apprentice” were dropping faster than his poll numbers. That’s show biz.
He had to get out because, finally, Trump knew he had met his match.
Or maybe you missed Newt Gingrich’s weekend rollout of his presidential campaign, during which:
• On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” he called Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan “radical,” adding: “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.”
Surprisingly, the right-wing social engineers didn’t enjoy this description. Neither did Ryan, who joked that “with allies like that, who needs the left?” And so Newt, who does need the right, bravely took it most of the way back, his spokesman insisting there was “very little daylight” between Gingrich’s, uh, radical stance and Ryan’s, even if there was.
• Also on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” — your must-see TV — Gingrich came out in favor of the hated individual mandate, even though he’s been saying recently that, yeah, he used to be for it, but that was years ago. For those who say Gingrich, at 67, is still undisciplined, here’s the quote: “Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care . . . I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.”
When host David Gregory asked whether that wasn’t much the same as an individual mandate, Gingrich replied, “It’s a variation on it.”
And so — surprise — in a new variation, the Gingrich rollback of the Gingrich rollout resumed, with Newt making a YouTube video, saying: “I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.”
Wait, there’s more!
• Gingrich wasn’t stuck on health care. He spent much of the weekend describing Obama as “the food stamp president.” I know, it sounds like racist code, which is why David Gregory asked him if it was, in fact, racist code. Gingrich, the historian, called the accusation “bizarre.”
He looked taken aback, as if it really was bizarre, and all I could think of was Trump saying he, himself, was the “least racist” person he knew, noting there was once a black winner on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
You must be thinking that would be enough for one weekend but, of course, it wasn’t. There are other non-candidates. Mike Huckabee, the populist evangelist talk show host who has been among the poll leaders, also said he wasn’t running, making the announcement on his Fox show Saturday night.
He made the audience wait nearly the entire hour, part of which was spent jamming with Ted Nugent on “Cat Scratch Fever.” Nugent had nothing to say about how this might affect Tim Pawlenty’s chances in Iowa, but the whole thing did lead to at least two questions: When will Sarah Palin announce she’s not running? And, when she does, who’s she going to jam with? Maybe Nugent knows “North to Alaska.”
Meanwhile, the Paulites, pere and fils, were back. Ron Paul, running for president yet again, was in perfect form, saying he wouldn’t have gone after Osama bin Laden last week and that he wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act back in 1964.
But he couldn’t come close to matching his son, Sen. Rand Paul, the likely future presidential non-contender contender, who objected during a Senate hearing to the concept of health care as a “right.” Naturally he compared the concept to slavery.
Rand, an opthalmologist, says “right” implies you would “have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. You are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants, the nurses . . . .”
Yes, in Rand’s futuristic world, you could forcibly make him and his staff give you an eye test. And if you look closely enough, you might spot Gingrich on YouTube saying it’s probably just a variation.
E-mail Mike Littwin at mlittwin@.
