Newt's slide is not about attack ads

The pundits automatically assume that negative ads brought down Gingrich. Gingrich suffered the same fate that all the other frontrunners that went down: press scrutiny. Gingrich's baggage led to his fall, as much as the negative ads:

Consider, in early December, Gingrich was at 37 percent nationally in the Gallup Tracking Poll. The latest Gallup numbers at the end of December have him at 24 percent — a drop of 13 percentage points.

His declining support nationally is similar to his dive in Iowa. Yet the negative ads aired only in Iowa. This raises serious doubts that they caused Gingrich’s fall from grace in the Gallup Tracking Poll.

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