There was some suspicion that Newt Gingrich (like, presumably, Donald Trump) would not take the official plunge (though, like Haley Barbour and, incidentally, Trump, he has been running in truth if not in the FEC’s eyes). Many pundits and prognosticators believed he was just running for the publicity.

And I’m not saying that isn’t the reason.

Like Barbour (who was the RNC chair during the Republican Revolution of ’94), Gingrich experienced rose to great prominence in the mid-nineties.

Barbour went on to have a renaissance, becoming governor of Mississippi (incidentally, defeating the candidate who employed me on his campaign, then Governor Ronnie Musgrove) and going on to become chair of the Republican Governors Association, taking that organization to new heights of influence and import.

Newt has had no such renaissance and has mostly lived off the remnants of the past glories.

Another source of Newt’s continued appearance of influence (I suspect it being more appearance than fact) is the class of Republican Representative elected to Congress in the Republican wave of ’94, which also swept Newt into the Speaker’s chair. Newt got much of the credit for the Republican ascendancy that began with that wave election.

Then Democratic wave elections in ’06 and ’08 sent many of those class of ’94 members back to private life.

The Republican wave election of ’10 not only saw some of the ’94ers lose in primaries, it also meant that memory and influence of that class replaced in prominence by the Tea Party class of ’10.

In other words, a Republican Congress dominated by members with no attachment to Newt and only vague recollections of him from fifteen year old newscasts and half remembered newspaper articles – and those articles and newscasts were, likely as not, about how he got politically and strategically spanked by Bill Clinton or his two (reported) affairs with legislative aides and a pair of messy divorces.

What this means, is that if Newt to keep any sort of influence – perceived influence on currents debates being the source of the former Speaker’s income – he has to go all in. He has to find a way to become relevant to a new generation.

As a man who craves money, power, respect, and glory, Newt currently faces the prospect of seeing his stores of all four drastically diminished in favor of a new generation of conservative leadership that has risen in recent years. He hopes that by joining the race, people will pay greater attention to him and that he will be able to join this new generation and vampirically extend the life of his prominence, media contracts,  and ability to raise soft dollars for his various non-profits (which are then mainly used to keep Newt in the spotlight).
P.S. – By the way, how is that Newt Gingrich got this reputation as being some sort of Republican/Conservative intellectual and idea man? What actual ideas has he had? I may disagree with them, they may frequently be devastatingly wrong (see: Iraq War), but there have actually been real conservative intellectuals and idea men (and women). Folks like William Buckley and Irving Kristol. But Newt? Let’s be serious.