Just as the 2012 campaign is finally starts, Newt Gingrich takes a two-week vacation:

Gingrich’s last public event was a May 27 Rotary Club lunch in South Carolina, and he won’t return to the spotlight until a June 8 screening of his documentary about Pope John Paul II in New Hampshire.

Anyone who thinks this guy is honestly trying to become president is a fool. You could make the case that he's trying to let his error-stricken campaign debut fade into memory, but that's not really how presidential politics work. The way you get people to forget your mistakes is to keep working on a retail, door-knocking level for a while. You don't take yourself entirely off the board like this unless you want to fail.