Newton Caesar Augustus Americanicus Gingrich

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. Now that Newt Gingrich is "leading" in the GOP polls, is his head (and attendant pomposity) growing larger by the hour, or is it just my imagination?

TAPPER (ABC News): “You are going to be the nominee?”

GINGRICH: “I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.”

In Gingrich World, the sun, the moon and the stars have aligned; and no earthly force can stop Newton Caesar Augustus Americanicus Gingrich from his ascension to the throne. Or so he thinks. Jonathan Chait rolls his eyes: "Here’s what’s going to be so entertaining about Gingrich if he manages to pull this off. He has always had a gigantic sense of his own world-historical importance. He managed to maintain it, even as he ran his campaign into the ground and turned himself into a national joke. Now imagine that he actually comes all the way back and wins the nomination. It will utterly confirm every self-regarding instinct he has – which is to say, every instinct he has."

Frightening, isn't it? Again, it's probably just me, but every time I see Newt I think of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the man who "fiddled" while Rome burned. Nero wasn't expected to rise to power either. And like Newt, the Emperor craved attention, had a taste for extravagance, and was thrice married. Hmm. I wonder if Newt plays the lyre?