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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThere was a feeling of joylessness at Newt Gingrich's victory party, despite the best efforts of his supporters, elated over a 40 percent victory, crammed into a Hilton ballroom Saturday at such great density many were drenched in sweat by the end.\n\nGingrich was significantly delayed by a traffic accident on the highway; the DJ was forced to loop Toby Keith's \"This American Ride,\" again and again and again. What he gave was not a victory speech: it was a stump speech. He praised the other candidates and delivered the typical paeans to American optimism. He talked Keystone XL and widening the Port of Charleston (two of his favorite policy points on the stump), and promised to challenge Obama to seven three-hour Lincoln-Douglass style debates. He tossed some conservative red meat: \"The American people feel that they have elites that have been trying for a half century to force us to quit being American,\" he said, to roars from the crowd. He promised, characteristically, to \"fundamentally overhaul the federal government at every single level.\" But none of it seemed to excite him.\n\n It had been the same the night before the primary. The candidate's last event was held on the U.S.S. Yorktown, a 27,000-ton aircraft carrier holding Navy planes\u2014Tomcats, Hornets, Crusaders, Avenger torpedo bombers-a decidedly grandiose tribute to American exceptionalism, a shining sentinel at Patriot's Point in Charleston Harbor. Built in only a year and a half and commissioned in 1943, the aircraft carrier played a major role in defeating the Japanese in World War II\u2014a point not lost on Gingrich, who stood surrounded by military veterans and young Boy Scouts (the Yorktown is now a museum and educational camp site for children) on a stage beneath a giant American flag. With him were Colonel Michael Steele, the company commander made famous for Jason Isaacs' depiction of him in the movie Black Hawk Down, and Bobby Harrell, South Carolina's powerful Speaker of the House, who'd come out to endorse him two days before the race. Both seemed buoyant at Gingrich's surge in the polls.\n\nIt should have been the scene Newt's resurgence, his most triumphant moment since the Contract With America helped Republicans win the majority in the House. But something felt off. A slight rain moved the event inside. Outside the aircraft carrier, protesters screamed about his marital infidelities (\"Third wife's a charm!\") The Scouts' eyes lolled about the room. And Newt was interrupted by a heckler in the small crowd screaming about his House ethics report. \"If you would do you research, instead of yelling mindlessly, you would see I have,\" he said flatly. \"I assume you're for the candidate who won't release his income tax returns.\" Newt looked and sounded exhausted.\n\n None of the embed reporters seemed particularly surprised to see this side of Newt. \"He's just tired,\" one shrugged. It's been his m.o. since the final days of the Iowa caucus\u2014so accustomed they are to his dour campaign performances that some were even describing his victory speech in warm, rosy terms\u2014he \"basked\" and \"reveled\" in his victory. Want to see how buoyant Newt was? Watch his victory speech for yourself:\n\n\n\n \"Look at what he's going through. He's had two meltdowns in his campaign. He was deserted by his staff last year and the he had all these super PACs try to grind him into powder,\" said Michael Bayham, a GOP consultant not affiliated with any campaign but who liked Newt. \"No candidate has ever caught as much hell through the primary and stayed standing. He's been hit with everything. I mean sex, the marriage thing he knew that'd be an issue, his wife knew it'd be an issue. But he apparently believed in the cause enough he was willing to withstand the barbs.\"\n\nStill, the sense that this book tour (the aircraft carrier event was also a book signing) had spun out of control, that he would go home if he didn't truly believe he was the only candidate that could defeat Barack Obama, and was therefore obligated to do this, was pervasive. It's enough to make you want to shake him, to tell him to go home, retire, leave this all behind and spend his days with his grandkids. This can't be much fun. But Newt's winning. And he doesn't seem to be able to stop."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/there-was-a-feeling-of>