Newt Gingrich finally “suspended” his campaign yesterday, a week after telling everyone he would. After waiting for everyone on the planet to beg him not to go, he decided he was too good for us. Paul Constant at The Stranger live-blogged the moment.

This is basically a blowhardy version of Gingrich wagging his fist at the press and bellowing “YOU’LL ALL BE SORRY! I AM A GENIUS!” He quotes a favorable column published today that posits Gingrich’s best days are ahead of him. I think he might start literally masturbating in a minute or two, because all this figurative masturbation is obviously getting him hot. Gingrich says he’s going to work on energy independence. “If we do it right, we actually will not only create energy independence…we will create trillions of dollars in royalties” to help reduce the national debt. Gingrich also promises to go to college campuses to encourage Social Security privitization, as they do in Chile, and he wants to “re-emphasize the work ethic.” There’s no reason, Gingrich says, to give people pay for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.” That’s his legacy, right there.

I’d say I’m going to miss him; he’s provided hours of endless fun with his talk about moon colonies and his nothing-but-superlatives speech pattern: “This is the most important election in the universe, Barack Obama is the worst person in the history of the galaxy, and I am fundamentally the only person since Pliny the Elder who knows what to do about it.”

But people like that don’t give up and go away, especially if they’re in hock to the tune of $4 million. He’ll be out there selling Newt 2012 commemorative plates until 2015. So, as the country song goes, how can we miss him if he won’t go away?

Bonus: Kent Jones at The Maddow Blog has issued a challenge for readers to come up with their version of a Newt farewell address. Go for it.