Krauthammer on Gingrich: 'He's Done. This is a Capital Offense. It's Over'

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had a tough day on "Meet the Press" Sunday.

So troubling was his performance that syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer told "Special Report's" Bret Baier Monday, "He’s done...This is a capital offense...It's over" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

BRET BAIER, HOST: Charles, how big of a deal is this?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: This is a big deal. He’s done. He didn't have a big chance from the beginning but now it's over. Apart from being contradictory and incoherent as we saw in those two bytes you showed where he contradicted himself in the course of one day on the individual mandate. Calling the Republican plan which all but four Republican members of the House have now endorsed and will be running on, calling it radical and right-wing social engineering is deadly.

I mean, I think every one of these Republican candidates running for the House is going to have a Democratic opponent who’s going to run an ad that you can write today. It’s going to start, “Even the conservative Newt Gingrich, the former leader of the Republicans in the House, says, ‘It’s radical, it’s social engineering.’”

Reagan had the Eleventh Commandment: do not, thou shalt not attack fellow Republicans. This is a capital offense against the Eleventh Commandment. He won’t recover.

As bonus coverage, the discussion later changed to Mitch Daniels:

KRAUTHAMMER: If Daniels does not run – although I think probably he will now - if he doesn't, I think there’s a good chance that either a Christie or a Ryan will be kind of drafted in to bring electricity, new energy into the Party. So, I think that could be, it wouldn't close the list of major candidates if one of those two decides that this is the moment.

BAIER: Well, a Ryan-Gingrich debate would be interesting.

Is Krauthammer right on either count?