Your morning jolt: Newt Gingrich talks of life as a citizen

Newt Gingrich had placed his hopes on a good – no, make that decent – showing in the smallest of five states that held GOP presidential primaries on Tuesday.

He didn’t get it, clearing only 27.1 percent in Delaware to Mitt Romney’s 56.5 percent. (A total of 28,591 votes were cast in that state – about a third of what Cobb County generated on March 6.)

But after last night’s print deadline, my AJC colleague Daniel Malloy, who’s been tracking Gingrich, caught a hint that the former Georgia congressman is contemplating a primary afterlife. Said Gingrich:

…So we want you to know that as citizens, we are going to be right their standing shoulder by shoulder with you and that, as we think through about how we can best be effective citizens over the next week or two, we are going to rely on you for help and you for advice.

Malloy also picked up this quote this morning:

“We’ll be working out the details of our transition and we’ll have information for the press in the next couple days,” Gingrich said. “But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama. We will find ways to be helpful but I do think it’s pretty clear that Gov. Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee.”

It sounds like Gingrich intends to call it quits – but on his schedule, not anyone else’s.

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Over at the Washington Examiner, Byron York noted the turn in Mitt Romney’s rhetoric, from GOP front-runner to conciliatory nominee:

“Let me also commend the people who had the courage to run for president on our side of the aisle this year,” Romney said. “Some still running, some have gotten out of the race…Michele Bachmann, and Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain, and Rick Perry, and Ron Paul and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Each is going to provide a vital role in making sure that we win in November.

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But Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics that Mitt Romney, who cleared 58 percent in Pennsylvania, is still bedeviled by a lack of grassroots GOP enthusiasm:

[A] review of Republican primary election data since 1972 finds that Mitt Romney’s performances in Delaware and Pennsylvania mark the first time a GOP frontrunner has failed to reach the 60 percent mark in a contest conducted after his last major challenger dropped out of the race.

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Newt Gingrich may yet be squishy when it comes to Mitt Romney as the GOP’s presidential nominee, but the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama does. Here’s the video his Chicago HQ has cut loose this morning, dumping on Romney’s bid for the college-age crowd:

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The Washington Post has a piece this morning on Mitt Romney’s hiring of Richard Grenell as a national security and foreign policy adviser, who’s apparently vulnerable to attacks from both the left and the right:

Grenell, who spent seven years at the United Nations heading the communications department for the U.S. mission, has had to scrub snarky tweets aimed at women — particularly Democrats and liberals — and the media, while the Romney campaign has had to fend off criticism from social conservatives who object to Grenell’s appointment because he is gay.

In one entry removed from his Twitter account, Grenell wrote of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: “Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline Albright.”

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Look for the topic of farm chores forbidden by the federal government to dominate talk radio over the next week or so. From the Daily Caller:

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

…The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

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The Rome News-Tribune today has a rather tentative endorsement quote from Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who attended a meet-and-greet for David Doss, a local GOP candidate for the state Senate:

“David is one of those guys that you’re not going to always agree with, you’re going to butt heads with from time to time,” Cagle said. “I have learned to respect him.”

Doss is a former member of the state transportation board, and has broken several lances in jousts with state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, a close Cagle ally and chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.

Cagle also told the crowd that he expects a court challenge to legislation passed by the General Assembly this spring, which would open Internet sales of some goods sold in Georgia to a sales tax – to be paid by the retailer.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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