Newt Gingrich Suffers His Gettysburg in Jacksonville Debate

The CNN televised debate in Jacksonville, Florida may go down as Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg.

Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances ...

Yesterday many were giving Newt Gingrich a 50/50 chance to win the Florida primary. From there he would stand a good chance of winning the Republican nomination and marching against Barack Obama in the fall election.

But tonight's debate in Jacksonville, Florida was a rout. Newt charged Mitt Romney on unfair ads, on investments, on immigration. And Mitt repulsed every charge. Newt, in full retreat after a Mitt countercharge calling Newt repulsive, couldn't even defend the grandmother ground on immigration:



Rick Santorum did make some inroads against Mitt Romney on health care. And Ron Paul came across extremely well. But for Newt Gingrich, who has lived by the debate, it was death by debate.

The Civil War raged on for 22 months after Gettysburg. The end in Florida will come when voters go to the polls on Tuesday, January 31. If Newt loses, the Gingrich campaign isn't over. But I suspect the moment before the debate opened in Jacksonville will be Newt Gingrich's high water mark.