Less than a month after one of the most calamitous political launches in recent memory, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination imploded Thursday when its top officials quit en masse.
At least 16 of the former lawmaker's advisers, including all of his senior campaign aides, departed the fledgling operation in a potentially devastating shake-up. Those who left included Gingrich's campaign manager, his spokesman, top political strategists and key operatives from Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, crucial GOP caucus and primary states. Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who was Gingrich's national campaign co-chairman, also defected, to the presidential campaign of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, where a close political aide to the ex-governor is the campaign manager.
"When the campaign and the candidate disagree on the path, they've got to part ways," said Gingrich's longtime spokesman Rick Tyler, who submitted his resignation Thursday.
'Campaign begins anew'
Gingrich pledged via a statement on Facebook to forge ahead with his candidacy. "I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring," he wrote. "The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles," where he is scheduled to give a foreign policy speech.
But it is not at all clear how he will be able to resurrect an already floundering campaign without a campaign organization. Among those who departed on Thursday were campaign manager Rob Johnson, strategists Sam Dawson and Dave Carney, and South Carolina consultant Katon Dawson.
Recent political history does provide some rays of optimism. In the 2008 presidential race, Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain suffered a similar staff exodus in the summer of 2007. He slowly rebuilt his campaign and went on to be his party's nominee. But it's not clear whether Gingrich has the organization or GOP establishment support to pull off a similar feat.
Badly timed cruise
The shake-up appears to have been prompted, at least in part, by the decision by Gingrich and his wife, Callista, to take a two-week vacation, including a Greek cruise, at a time when the candidate was stumbling. The campaign claimed publicly that the trip was long-planned, but, in fact, the Gingriches' decision to vanish at a critical moment was fiercely opposed by some of his top advisers.
The abrupt getaway also fueled doubts that Gingrich would be willing to invest in the kind of grass-roots effort -- including stumping in the early primary states, where he continued to get a warm reception -- that has kept his candidacy alive so far.
Regaining his footing as a candidate in a crowded 2012 GOP field presented a difficult challenge, even before Gingrich was abandoned by his high command.
Among the former speaker's unforced errors was a disastrous interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," in which he criticized the House GOP's plan to overhaul Medicare as "right-wing social engineering." The remarks were seen as a rebuke to the plan's author, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a rising GOP star.