What happened to the wooden stake?

"cream rises to the top"

--English idiom

There is a junior establishment in the Washington D.C.-New York power axis. And it is quietly going crazy because of Newt Gingrich’s rise. This junior establishment is like a shadow cabinet in Britain—people from the opposition party with all the credentials and the qualifications to take over when the opposition regains power. They expect power. They have earned it; cream risen to the top based on merit.

The junior elite’s voices are conservatives with credentialed publications—David Brooks at the New York Times, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal. They believe in elite rule, a nation guided by our “best and brightest.” They just all believe, in sharp contrast to liberal orthodoxy, that the best brains since William Buckley founded National Review in 1955 are in the establishment’s junior, less respected, conservative branch.

Just as Democratic elitists tolerate the lower-class, government-dependent voters whose support provides their only path to power, so do Republican elitists tolerate the less-educated rubes who make up the GOP majority. Naturally, however, the junior elite use all powers at their fingertips, including their few national media allies, in a determined effort to keep Republican party control in the elite’s hands.

The GOP elite have been perplexed by what they see as a dangerously thin field of qualified Republicans seeking the presidency in 2012. Preferred candidates Jeb Bush (ex-Florida governor), Paul Ryan (House budget chair), John Thune (South Dakota senator), Mitch Daniels (Indiana governor), and Chris Christie (New Jersey governor) all (along with the feared and detested Sarah Palin) declined to run, while Tim Pawlenty (ex-Minnesota governor) and John Huntsman (ex-Utah governor) failed to catch on. That left the current group, which fortunately includes the wealthy, steady, handsome, and qualified Mitt Romney. For months, it’s been Romney or bust.

And all Romney, until now. Romney has remained in first or second spot in the polls through the boomlets for Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. But now comes Newt Gingrich, the out-of-control ex-House speaker who self-destructed in 1997-98 with his losing effort to shut down the federal government in 1995, followed by his disastrously ill-timed ethics and personal problems at the height of the Republican effort to impeach President Clinton.

Gingrich, forced out as Speaker, resigned from the House in 1998. As we have said, Democrats successfully demonized Gingrich in the 1990s—he became the face of all that was wrong with Republicans. Our junior elite remembers those days well and loathes Gingrich, partly for what he did to the GOP brand.

Gingrich tried to come back earlier this year, but self-destructed again in May when he attacked Paul Ryan’s budget-balancing plan as “right wing social engineering,” followed by a two-week Greek island cruise with his third wife (a women who has benefited from Gingrich’s $250,000-$500,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s), an ill-timed vacation that led to the June mass resignation of most of his campaign staff.

Now Newt’s back again, stronger than ever, much to the delight of a Democratic elite that believe Gingrich will be easily demonized once again, and to the abject terror of the Democrats' elite Republican opponents, who are asking, “Where was that wooden stake when we needed it most?”