THE REAL POLITICAL QUESTION

The Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but how are we going to make pencils that taste like bacon? Or maybe we should make bacon that tastes like pencils. Narf.

KRUGZILLA nailed it:

Paul Krugman: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Stupid Man’s Idea Of What A Smart Person Sounds Like’

This led to a great POLITICO article:

Is Newt Gingrich as smart as he thinks?

Many conservative intellectuals don't think much of the Mewt:

To the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, Gingrich ... “He strikes me as a guy who thinks of lots of ideas and never runs them through a sanity test before spilling them on a stage,”

"...Nobody thinks of him as someone who has serious positions, white papers, policies on a wide array of issues coming from deep knowledge and experience,” said Roderick Hills Jr., a constitutional law professor at New York University who’s active in the conservative Federalist Society.

Fred Siegel, a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute, who scoffed at the idea that the former House speaker has much substance. ... “The intellectual level of debate in the Senate and the House is very low, and it’s in that context that Gingrich comes off as more profound than he really is,” Siegel said. “He is the tallest building in Wichita.”

Charles Fried, a respected conservative Harvard law professor who served as solicitor general under Reagan, has already decided. Is Gingrich as deep and smart as he thinks he is? “I don’t think anybody can be that smart,” Fried said.