MIAMI -- If you listened carefully to Newt Gingrich's "concession" speech tonight, you heard the first strains of what could be an independent, third-party run for the White House if he doesn't get the Republican nomination.
Gingrich vowed that he would not henceforth run a "Republican campaign but a people's campaign" -- raising the specter, at least rhetorically, that his vision of his role in American history is too large and personal to be contained by a mere political party.
The former House speaker gave his fans a detailed -- very detailed -- vision of what he would do in the first hours and minutes of his presidency. It was as if all the grubby business of running for president were secondary to his imaginative thoughts about how he would run the world starting on January 20, 2013.
Gingrich depicted his march to power as a matter of a personal, direct relationship between him and the voters.
"If I become your president, I pledge to you my life, my fortune and my sacred honor."
Gingrich's vaulting ambition knows no bounds, and so, perhaps, does his plan have no limits for how he is going to get from here to there in the presidential race.
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