Newt Civilization, organizer of thee, arouser of those, also and system designer, struggles to maintain a campaign where children don’t scuttle alongside and laugh. Having scored two primaries eons ago, the Gingrich momentum stretched a tad falls short of maladroit tortoise. With his tracking in the tank and his unfavorable numbers still sky-high, the news breaks daily that people hate him. And GOP executives remind us this week that, if a brokered convention comes the Republicans’ way, only the winners of 5 or more primaries will be eligible for nomination.

So Newt has absolutely, concretely lost. Strike the big top, lead the elephants out to their boxcars, the circus is leaving. Goodbye.

But wait. Has anybody tried to tell voters that the President is a Muslim? GOOD one. Gin-Grich! Gin-Grich!

In a radio interview on Thursday, Newt Gingrich accused the “elite media” of failing to cover President Barack Obama’s ties to Islam, reiterating his claim that the president is “consistently apologizing” to Muslims. . .

“Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama is consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic church?”

“Do you see anybody in the elite media prepared to say, gee, isn’t this kind of odd that we really worry a lot about the Quran and nothing about the Bible?”

No one’s ever questioned the identity or religion of Barack Mustapha Al-Malik Shah’Arab Obama before. This is a gambling, but potentially brilliant, strategy. At first, it appears to be nonsense: the Republicans nearly ended the Obama campaign in ’08 by proclaiming the candidate a bug-eyed Christian from the sect of Jeremiah Wright. But I must admit that, politically, there’s still something there. There’s some room for Gingrich to score points while Republican voters associate the President with unpopular issues, like “Skin Is Black.” More:

“. . it is very bizarre that he is desperately concerned to apologize to Muslim religious fanatics while they are killing young Americans while at the same time going to war against the Catholic church and against every right to live Protestant organization in the country.”

That would be bizarre. If he could see terrorists killing Americans in real time, say by satellite, and then send them apologies. That would be insane, frankly, in too many ways to consider. Nice try.

“Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he’s Muslim]?” Gingrich said. “You have to ask, why would they believe that?”

Because he’s Muslim. It might also be because voters are sledgehammer-stupid.

“It’s not cause they’re stupid.”

Please, let’s not argue.