Newt Gingrich, downballot disaster

It was only a matter of time before GOP Members of Congress began raising these concerns more publicly.

Newt Gingrich’s former Republican colleagues in the House are more than a little nervous about the prospects of sharing a ticket with him in November.

They think he’d run weakly in the suburbs. And among women. And independents. And especially in the Northeast.

To some of them, he’s a disaster in the making, a potentially combustible nominee who could, in a worst case scenario, cost the GOP its newly minted majority.

The concern is serious enough, one freshman Republican told POLITICO, that on the bus ride back from the House GOP retreat in Baltimore last week, Gingrich’s electability was the prime subject of discussion among nearly a dozen members — many of them first-termers.