RUSH: So I got a note from Newt this morning, Newt Gingrich, about a half hour ago, 45 minutes ago. He says he’s in it for the duration. He’s in it for the long haul. He didn’t explain what happened here, but he just wanted to tell me that he’s in it. Now the Drive-Bys are saying that Gingrich’s staffers — and there’s 16 of them, that flew the coop — did so because he took a two-week cruise vacation and you just don’t do that in a presidential campaign. That’s the media saying that. Others are saying it was a disagreement over the direction of the campaign, or what have you.
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RUSH: Fred Barnes’ Weekly Standard blog about Gingrich: “The problem was the wife. Aides to Newt Gingrich have resigned from his presidential campaign in protest of what they felt was a takeover by Callista Gingrich, the candidate’s wife since 2000.” Now this is Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard. “The euphemism offered by departing staffers was they disagreed with Gingrich’s ‘strategy’ for the campaign. Indeed, they did disagree. But it was a strategy –– a part-time campaign, in effect — that Gingrich’s wife favored.” She just didn’t want him devoting full time to the campaign. Apparently, according to Barnes, it was that she insisted they take this two-week Mediterranean cruise together in the midst of launching a campaign that didn’t go well.
The launch was not all that hot. The staff felt, “You better be here every day working on this,” and Newt said: “Nah, Callista wants to go on the cruise.” So they went on the cruise and the staff said, “He’s not serious about this.” So they’re leaving and many of them it is said are heading over to Rick Perry — who, I now have a story that says it’s 90% he’s in; and if Perry gets in, it will reorder everything. But he’s got his own baggage, folks. As governor of Texas, some of you are not going to be happy to learn, he was a big advocate for in state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. People are going to have to understand: A lot of Hispanic votes in Texas; that’s one of the things you have to do. But that then becomes something that people innately hate about politics, is having to do this or do that because that group demands it or that group wants it or you need the vote of that group. It rubs people the wrong way. There are a couple of other things that Perry has done that conservatives will have to get past. One thing you can say about Palin: She’s never going to have a wife problem. I mean, you look at Mitch Daniels, he didn’t get in because his wife didn’t want in, and now there’s Newt. But in Palin’s case, she is the wife. She’s already running the show! So we’ll see.
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