Is Anyone Still Paying Attention to Newt Gingrich?

If they aren’t, it’s not for lack of trying on his part.

Newt has been all over the map in the last 48 hours, predicting an upset in the Delaware primary today while also hinting he might drop out of the race sometime this week.

But the fact is, with no embedded TV reporters and just a few print journalists following him around, anything interesting Gingrich has to say is not being transmitted to the voters. His role in the campaign has been reduced to that of a political curiosity — a virtual hanger-on when most of the GOP has moved on and, reluctantly in many cases, accepted Mitt Romney as the nominee of the party.

The results in Delaware will hardly matter. Romney is expected to take a huge delegate haul away from primaries in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island — and that’s even if he loses Delaware.

Newt Gingrich hinted he may withdraw from the presidential race if he has a poor showing in the Delaware primary Tuesday – a state where he has been actively campaigning for several weeks.

“I think we need to take a deep look at what we are doing,” Gingrich told NBC News in an exclusive interview on Monday. “We will be in North Carolina tomorrow night and we will look and see what the results are.

The Guardian lays it on a little thickly when describing the Gingrich campaign:

You have to love that “we” in “we need to take a deep look at what we are doing” there – as if there’s a mighty team of political operatives behind Gingrich, when we know it’s just Newt, Callista and the guy in the elephant costume, RC Hammond, who hasn’t even been paid in a month.

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has something of a post-mortem on the Gingrich campaign:

[F]ollowing Gingrich’s win in South Carolina on Jan. 21, he faded precipitously throughout the month of February before making a mini-comeback with a win in Georgia and second place finishes in Oklahoma and Tennessee on March 6. Gingrich again spiked briefly a week later when he finished second in Alabama and Mississippi but then fell off badly over the last month — winning just eight percent in Illinois on March 20 and 5.9 percent in Wisconsin on April 3.

Gingrich’s average percentage of the vote across all 31 states is 13.8 percent. If you remove Virginia, where Gingrich didn’t qualify for the ballot, and Wyoming (where he received .5 percent of the vote), Gingrich’s average across the remaining 29 states was 14.7 percent.

Gingrich won just two states: South Carolina and his home state of Georgia. He finished second eight times, third five times and fourth a whopping 16 times. In the last month plus, Gingrich finished fourth in Illinois, second in Louisiana, third in Maryland, third in the District of Columbia and fourth in Wisconsin.

All told, Gingrich has received 2,284,557 votes in the Republican race to date, according to this invaluable raw vote chart from Real Clear Politics. As of the end of March, Gingrich has spent $21,417,400 on his campaign, meaning that he paid roughly $9.37 for every vote he got.

Gingrich is one of those politicians you admire for many reasons, but would hesitate to vote for because of his instability and lack of prudence in his language and actions. His attack on Romney’s Bain Capital years was no different than the liberal critique of Mitt’s actions there, leading to widespread resentment even among non-Romney voters. It is almost certain that many of those criticisms will find an echo in the Obama campaign this fall, darkening the Gingrich legacy from the race and certainly lessening his chances that he will play a major role in any potential Romney administration.

But perhaps, in his heart of hearts, Newt would like to retire, or at least pull back from the center of the arena in order to spend more time with his wife and family. After more than 30 years in the thick of every major domestic and foreign policy battle fought between right and left, Gingrich has given his all for the cause and has earned the right to relax a little.