Tired? Who is tired?

"Look into my eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, into my eyes..."

She might have dropped out of the race a while ago, but Michele Bachmann still pops up now and then in the campaign. The other day, she appeared on MSNBC’s morning show and claimed that the Republican party should rally behind one candidate. Said Bachmann: “There’s a lot of fatigue among our party, they are really kind of tired of this. They want us to kind of batten down the hatches and make the decision.” Republicans would also be worried about the ongoing in-fighting, which is giving President Obama something of a free ride now, Bachmann argued: “They want us to get that person because now they want to pivot and focus on President Obama because I think everyone recognizes he can’t have a second term. So now we have to be focusing on him and making him have to answer for his failed policy.”

Now, we should be somewhat cautious here, since Bachmann has a history of making up things, but we do understand that Michele herself just wants this thing to be over. Every mention of the primaries surely brings back memories of her own candidacy, which was what the Webster Dictionary would describe as “a Disaster”. With capital D, that is. Nevertheless, we beg to disagree. First of all, our job here at the SYWBANP Election Center would be a lot less fun if the Republicans decide to back Romney en masse. We still have a whole bunch of primaries to go until the end of June, and we signed up for the full tour, alright?

"No really, trust me, it's hilarious!"

Besides Michele, what’s not to enjoy? Her statements came at the same time as the interwebs got to know Obamaville, by far the most enjoyable and awesome political ad in the history of the universe. Also, we still have Mitt Romney on the campaign trail trying to connect to voters by making jokes (pictured). And then failing miserably. The latest installment in the ‘Romney’s Painful Jokes’ show came in Wisconsin, when the Mittster started telling a joke which more or less begins with the sentence “Funny story: I remember when my father was shutting down a factory here in Wisconsin.” Seriously Michele, who wouldn’t want more of that for another three months? Of course, as the primary season progresses we run the risk of losing the more hopeless hopefuls in the race, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Ron Paul does drop out one of these days. Then again, he never was that funny anyway. But thankfully, Newt Gingrich has no intentions WHATSOEVER to drop out.

As we reported earlier this week, Newt is basically broke and without any chance of grabbing the nomination. So, as we said in the same article, Gingrich should normally just do the gracious thing and bow out. But that’s not how Newt rolls. Rather than admitting he is deeply indebted and backing off, Newt is going for all-out sabotage by doing everything in his power to try and get a so-called open Republican convention in August: “We’re focusing exclusively on what it’ll take to win what we’re going to be calling a big-choice convention in August,” says Gingrich’s head of PR. Hey, he’s not nicknamed The Grinch for nothing.

"Heeeere's Johnny!"

So, what does all this mean? Well, Newt is sacking one-third of his campaign staff, he will no longer travel the country and campaign based on the primary schedule, and he is going to focus on a web-based campaign with lots of videos. Of course, no one in Team Newt will admit that the change in strategy is caused by a lack of money, or that it is hopeless and will mostly lead to unhelpful distraction for the GOP (how about complaining about that, Michele!). For such observations, we need to rely on former colleagues of Gingrich. Politico does a great job in this article, which has some awesome quotes on Gingrich’s character and the wisdom of his new strategy:

“Newt thinks in big historic terms and thinks of himself as a big, historic player,” explained former Rep. Vin Weber, a close friend of Gingrich’s in the House who now backs Romney. “The notion that he’s going to withdraw and just go away is unthinkable. He’s still looking for drama. He’s imagining the first seriously contested convention in our lifetimes.”

“A lot of us who were around him before and didn’t think this was a good idea from the beginning were worried this was the way it was going to end,” said Rich Galen, a top Gingrich aide in the 1990s. “He’s in danger, I think, of becoming a laughingstock.”

“As this goes on, he’s hurting himself,” said Galen. “At first, he helped himself. He was a serious presidential contender and a great debater. But now he’s diminishing himself. Part of his legacy is going to be the guy who insisted on running an unserious campaign for president.”

All in all, it seems like we’re in for an exciting spring with a lot more adventures from the Republican field. Michele Bachmann may feel that this thing needs to be over, but as far as we are concerned, it can’t last long enough!