Joe Skipper/Reuters 
 
 Last week, New York magazine’s John Heilemann pointed out a deep truth about Newt Gingrich’s peculiar presidential campaign: The very media elite that Gingrich delights in hammering has actually been in his corner all along. The press likes a horse race; the press likes outsize personalities; the press favors an underdog; and the press even takes a strange sort of delight in being ruthlessly attacked. 
 
 Of course most political reporters don’t want Gingrich in the White House. But they’ve had every incentive to keep him in the headlines and overrate his odds of defeating Mitt Romney for the nomination. 
 
 Tuesday night’s Floridian drubbing won’t change those incentives, so we can expect a last burst of media chatter about how Gingrich could still recover, ride a wilderness campaign to a Super Tuesday comeback and fight Romney tooth and nail all the way to the convention. But chatter is all it will be. For Gingrich and his media enablers alike, the dream died in Florida – and here are four reasons why. 
 
 If Gingrich can’t compete in Florida, he can’t compete nationally. 
 
 To date, all of the Republican primary contests have been held in smallish states with distinctive demographic profiles. This made it possible to play up the significance of Gingrich’s convincing South Carolina victory, while downplaying Romney’s New Hampshire win as an independent-abetted, only-in-New-England fluke. 
 
 But Florida’s primary was closed to independents, Florida’s electorate was as conservative and Tea Party-friendly (though not as evangelical-heavy) as South Carolina’s and Florida’s large senior population once looked like it would give Gingrich an edge. If the former speaker couldn’t even come close to beating Romney in such relatively favorable terrain, it’s hard to see how he can hope to compete with him anywhere outside the Deep South. 
 
 The anti-Romney vote isn’t as big as Gingrich likes to think it is. 
 
 As the Florida polls turned against them, Gingrich’s campaign began hinting that Rick Santorum should drop out of the race and give Gingrich a clear shot at consolidating conservatives against Romney. If Santorum weren’t in the race, one of Gingrich’s campaign chairmen in Florida told CNN on Monday, “we would clearly be beating Romney right now.” 
 
 But as it turned out, Romney received as many votes as his two nearest rivals combined. And more importantly, pre-primary polls showed that without Santorum in the race, Romney would still have led Gingrich by a wide margin – as much as 16 points, according to an NBC/Marist poll. The fact that a majority of Republicans still have reservations about Romney, in other words, doesn’t mean that a majority would ever vote for Gingrich. 
 
 Romney’s down-and-dirty Florida campaign eased right-wing doubts about his toughness. 
 
 Romney hammered Gingrich in the debates, and then carpet-bombed him with negative advertisements. 68 percent of the ads that ran in Florida were negative spots attacking Gingrich, and Romney’s only positive ad was a Spanish-language spot that aired 15 times in total. While this gloves-off approach may have tarnished Romney’s image with swing voters, it helped reassure the many conservatives who were attracted to Gingrich because they want a no-holds-barred fighter for the fall campaign. 
 
 As John Podhoretz wrote on Monday in the New York Post, Florida was a test of Romney’s mettle: “The clean-cut Boy Scout Ken-doll candidate from Massachusetts needed to show his fellow Republicans that he could be mean, tough and merciless on the attack — that he could take it to his rival and best him.” Consider that mission accomplished. 
 
 Gingrich’s lackluster debate performances permanently undercut the strongest rationale for his candidacy. 
 
 In truth, the idea that the former speaker’s skills as a debater would give him a significant general-election edge over President Obama was never particularly plausible. Still, many Republican primary voters seemed to be believe it: The promise of a Lincoln-Douglas-style showdown with the president has been one of Gingrich’s more effective rhetorical flourishes, and his showstopping performances in South Carolina were crucial to his upset victory. 
 
 But it’s hard to see how Gingrich’s Master Debater reputation recovers from his poor showings in the debates in Florida. Even if he stays in the race long enough to get another crack at Romney, voters will always remember that he can be bested – that if you prick him, he might just bleed. Once lost, an aura of invincibility is an awfully hard thing to regain. 
 
 Without his debating magic, Gingrich doesn’t have any cards left to play. He won Herman Cain’s endorsement in Florida, but it didn’t help his cause. Sarah Palin had his back, but it didn’t seem to matter. Sheldon Adelson funded his ads, but Romney still massively outspent him. Santorum could have dropped out, and Gingrich still would have lost by double-digits. 
 
 There’s nobody waiting in the wings to help him, no endorsement or donation that can change the fundamentals of the race. If he keeps going now – and there’s every reason to think he will – he’ll be pinning his hopes on a deus ex machina. Every realistic path leads only to defeat. 

 Topics: Opening Shot 
 
 Mitt Romney spent the 10 days between South Carolina and Florida acting very much like a man with a primary to worry about, viciously and repeatedly attacking Newt Gingrich in speeches, interviews and debates. 
 
 But when he took the stage at his victory party in Tampa Tuesday night, he abruptly switched gears and presented himself as the presumptive Republican Party nominee, acknowledging Gingrich (and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul) only in passing and littering the air with carefully scripted put-downs of Barack Obama intended for general election ears. 
 
 “Thomas Paine is reported to have said, ‘Lead, follow or get out of the way,’” Romney declared. “Mr. President, you were elected to lead, you chose to follow and now it’s time for you to get out of the way!” 
 
 This was a speech by a man who dearly hopes the Republican leaders and voters who have been so hesitant to embrace him will consider the Florida results and at last yield to his inevitability, bringing the competitive phase of the GOP primary season to an end before it hurts him any further. 
 
 And then Newt took the stage at his own Florida party and delivered a rambling and somewhat bizarre speech that nonetheless guaranteed Romney will face at least six more weeks of grief before he can put the nomination battle behind him. Standing at a podium decorated with a sign that read “46 states to go,” Gingrich vowed that “we are going to contest every place and we are going to win.” 
 
 His defiant posture was more of a confirmation than a revelation. As it became clear he was going to lose Florida by a wide margin the past few days, Gingrich repeatedly affirmed his intent to keep his campaign alive through the GOP convention. Since he’s 68 years old and not angling for position in a future election, it’s easy to believe that he means it, and that he’s made his spite with Romney clear only adds to his motivation to press on. And since Gingrich only really knows the language of attack politics, the potential problem for Romney is obvious. How do you unify your party if your main opponent won’t stop shouting that you’re a dirty, dishonest apostate? 
 
 So the real question coming out of Florida is how long Gingrich can actually go on. The literal answer is: as long as he wants. But from Romney’s standpoint, the issue is how long the political world will continue to treat Gingrich like a serious candidate. That is to say, Gingrich can remain an active candidate until the convention balloting if he wants; but if he’s getting clobbered in primaries and caucuses, accumulating few delegates, unable to force Romney into debates and largely ignored by the media, then his lingering presence won’t really be a problem for Romney. This makes the next move of Sheldon Adelson, the 78-year-old Las Vegas casino magnate who has underwritten the last few years of Gingrich’s political life, crucial. When Adelson unexpectedly poured $5 million into a pro-Newt super PAC after the former speaker crashed and burned in Iowa and New Hampshire, it made it possible for Gingrich to bounce back and win South Carolina. If Adelson, whose wife gave another $5 million to the Super PAC in the run up to Florida, makes a similar play now, it will buy Gingrich priceless credibility with the media and political class. As long as Adelson keeps writing monster checks, Gingrich will be a factor, if only because the money will have the potential to damage Romney. The other major factor is the calendar. February will be a light month when it comes to primary and caucus activity, with the limited playing field tilted heavily in Romney’s favor – Nevada, Arizona and Michigan are the headline contests. Assuming Romney wins these states comfortably, he’ll have an opportunity to build momentum in February and open up a significant lead over Gingrich in national polls, delegates and in later-voting states. But Gingrich can probably maintain his relevance through all of this simply by pointing to the early weeks of March, when the Old Confederacy will finally get its say. The basic cultural and demographic characteristics that defined the South Carolina GOP electorate – heavy on Yankee-phobic, Tea Party-friendly conservative evangelicals – will be present in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana when they vote in March. Gingrich can credibly sell those contests as the ultimate test of his “bold Reagan conservative” versus “timid Massachusetts moderate” framing of the GOP race, making it difficult to ignore him between now and then. If he were then to win those states, all of the talk about Romney as a fatally flawed candidate for the Tea Party era would restart and the race would almost certainly last all the way to the GOP convention. It would be the modern equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s upset win in the 1976 North Carolina primary, which stopped Gerald Ford from putting away with the GOP race and triggered a late string of Reagan wins that kept the nomination from being settled before Kansas City. On the flip side, a Romney sweep of Dixie in early March really would shatter the rationale for Gingrich’s campaign. At that point, it wouldn’t really matter if Gingrich stayed in the race; he would then be about as relevant to the GOP race as Jerry Brown was to the Democratic contest in the spring months of 1992. But that’s six weeks from now. Between now and then, Romney can pretend all he wants that the race is over and that his new opponent is Barack Obama; every time Newt Gingrich opens his mouth, the press will be there to cover it, reminding Romney that he’s not out of the woods yet. 
 
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 If you'd just landed here in Orlando from a Gingrich-inspired moon colony this evening you wouldn't have known that Newt had just had his clock cleaned by Mitt Romney by a 15-point margin. 
 
 Magnanimous Newt was not in attendance. Apparently, no one had told the former House Speaker this was supposed to be a concession speech. Who knows, perhaps no one even told him he'd lost. He mentioned Romney only in passing - "Massachusetts moderate" - and never came close to congratulating him, or Rick Santorum (who he needs to butter up) and Ron Paul. 
 
 There was World Historical Newt. How could he defeat Romney? "It was stated at a historic moment in 1863, in dedicating our first national military cemetery by the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who said we have government of the people, by the people, for the people. And we’re going to have people power defeat money power in the next six months." 
 
 
 
 Newt Gingrich speaks in Orlando, but doesn't concede. Photo: Toby Harnden. 
 
 There was Grandiose Newt. After a long digression into the stump speech he'd been giving all week, he stated: "The reason I’m comfortable telling you all this is I have been studying what America needs to do, since the fall of 1958, when my dad was stationed in Europe in the Army." 
 
 He finished by pledging "﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿my life, my fortune and my sacred honour" if he became president. Coming from a man who avoided service in Vietnam (as did Romney) despite coming from a military family, I can't imagine how this could sound to someone who has sacrificed a limb or a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan. 
 
 Angry Newt was there, getting steamed up about the "five-to-one onslaught" against him and playing being the victim of "the elite media" who "said I was dead in June and July and said I was gone after Iowa, who seemed totally quiet the night of the South Carolina victory" - while at the same time name-dropping David Broder, the late dean of Washington political reporters. 
 
 Denial may not be just a river in Egypt, but Newt was adrift on it in any case. "I think Florida did something very important, coming on top of South Carolina," said Denial Newt. "It is now clear that this will be a two-person race between the conservative leader, Newt Gingrich, and the Massachusetts moderate. And the voters of Florida really made that clear." 
 
 The voters in Florida made a few things clear but Gingrich's uncontested leadership of the American conservative movement wasn't one of them. As Santorum said quite reasonably in his speech in Las Vegas, the result could be interpreted as a message to Gingrich that he'd "had his opportunity" to be the conservative alternative to Romney and it was now someone else's turn. 
 
 No amount of grousing about super PACs, negative ads and being outspent can explain away a 15-point loss after surfing into the state on a double-digit poll lead and a wave of momentum generated by his landslide South Carolina win. 
 
 
 
 Disppointed Gingrich supporters listen to his speech. Photo: Toby Harnden. 
 
 Reality Newt, however, was missing in action. In South Carolina 11 days ago, Romney responded to his humiliation at the hands of Gingrich by congratulating and at the same time laying out a new line of attack that he followed through on in Florida. 
 
 Gingrich offered nothing new tonight and gave no clues about how he will compete on a broader battlefield that very much favours Romney between now and Super Tuesday on March 6th. 
 
 The signs said "46 States To Go" but Gingrich said nothing beyond airy generalities about how he would win them. It was as if he had refused to come to terms with the reality of his defeat in the Sunshine State. The speech, it has to be said, was also a downer. 
 
 Romney is by no means invincible, as Gingrich showed in South Carolina. But a week in which Gingrich lost his temper, whined about negative attacks while launching even nastier and less truthful ones himself and was unable to move from defence to effective offence will hardly give his high-level backers much cheer. 
 
 Gingrich can clearly see a future in which he is President if only everyone was as wise as him, meaning wise enough to recognise his greatness. Alas for Newt, imagining himself into the White House is no more realistic a proposition than his promise to establish a moon colony by 2020. 
 
 
 
 Two young fans carrying the Gingrich message. Photo: Toby Harnden. 

 Even after he loses today's primary in Florida, Newt Gingrich has promised to soldier on all the way to the convention in August. As John Heilemann wrote earlier this week, the former Speaker, unlike many candidates who vow perseverance to the end, might be crazy enough to actually mean it. Gingrich's chances aren't great: As TPM points out this morning, he lacks the money, the organization, and the party support of, say, Hillary Clinton when she took her second-place campaign all the way to the end of the Democratic primaries. But if you ask us, there are plenty of reasons for Gingrich to stay in the race. Here are five of them:
– Mitt Romney positively trounced Newt Gingrich in Florida last night, and the pundits agree that Gingrich's shot at the presidency has been all but obliterated. They also, however, agree that he won't drop out anytime soon: In the New York Times, Ross Douthat offers up four reasons why Gingrich's campaign is "going, going, gone." Here's one: He would have lost to Romney in Florida even if Rick Santorum had dropped out and every single Santorum backer had voted for him—and "if Gingrich can't compete in Florida, he can't compete nationally." From here on out, "every realistic path leads only to defeat." Toby Harnden is even harsher in the Daily Mail. "For Newt, imagining himself into the White House is no more realistic a proposition than his promise to establish a moon colony by 2020." But you wouldn't know it from last night's concession speech, which featured a defiant Gingrich steeped in denial. "The voters in Florida made a few things clear," Harnden points out, "but Gingrich's uncontested leadership of the American conservative movement wasn't one of them." Dan Amira acknowledges that Gingrich has little reason left to hope, but even so, in New York he offers up five reasons Gingrich should stay in the race anyway. He could experience a third enormous surge in the polls, he has a billionaire casino owner backing him, and "maybe a former Bain executive will turn up and admit that he and Romney used to smoke cigars filled with $100 bills as they laughed maniacally about the companies they'd looted." Gingrich will certainly stay in the race, writes Steve Kornacki at Salon, but the big question is: for how long? He can stay in "as long as he wants," but the political world may not continue to take him seriously much longer. "If he’s getting clobbered in primaries and caucuses, accumulating few delegates, unable to force Romney into debates, and largely ignored by the media, then his lingering presence won’t really be a problem for Romney."