Rich Lowry of National Review offers TIME readers a case for former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich to end his presidential campaign.

Santorum has outclassed Gingrich. The former Pennsylvania Senator is famously undisciplined, but compared with Gingrich, he’s a robot. He can be prickly, but compared with Gingrich, he’s Little Miss Sunshine. He has won nine contests, more than four times as many as Gingrich has. Gingrich absurdly talks as if the competition to be the anti-Romney won’t be decided until Utah on June 26 or the third ballot of a contested convention. If he believes what he says about Romney’s weakness in the fall, he owes it to his party and his country to defer to Santorum now.

And he can spare himself the indignity of his campaign’s desperation. As much as he is a historian or policy wonk, Gingrich is a sloganeer. His latest inspired formulation is $2.50-a-gal. gas, a promise beyond the power of any President to deliver unless he seizes control of the entirety of the world oil market. Gingrich calls his miracle fuel Newt Gas. It is a testament to the durability of his self-regard that he can stand at a lectern festooned with a little gas-pump logo, as he did during his latest nonvictory speech, and congratulate himself on his seriousness.