It was just one week ago today that Newt Gingrich challenged Fox News viewers to raise $30 million dollars for his presidential campaign. “I don’t see as a citizen how you could turn that down,” he said.

Yesterday, however, the AP reported that Newt will stay out of the race:

“Newt is not running,” spokesman Rick Tyler said. “It is legally impermissible for him to continue on as chairman of American Solutions (for Winning the Future) and to explore a campaign for president.”

Gingrich decided “to continue on raising the challenges America faces and finding solutions to those challenges” as the group’s chairman, Tyler said, “rather than pursuing the presidency.”

So Citizen Newt had to choose between running for president of the United States and keeping his cushy seat atop his nonprofit ideas empire, and he chose cushy. Call me old fashioned but I remember a day when public officials put service ahead of everything else, especially their cushy seats.

I guess Republicans really do hate government.

A cynic might suggest the real reason Newt won’t run is because stepping down would remind him that he was forced to step down as speaker of the House after his colleagues learned he was having an affair with a staffer at the same time, under his leadership, their party was impeaching Pres. Clinton for having an affair with a staffer. (And both Gingrich and Clinton were having these affairs when they jointly passed the Defense of Marriage Act into law.)

It’s likely the real reason Gingrich isn’t running is poll results like these: In a CBS poll this spring, 43 percent gave Newt a “not favorable” rating; 16 percent were favorable. In a USA Today poll around the same time, 48 percent were unfavorable, 29 percent favorable.

The public has a clear picture of who Gingrich is. His image probably can’t be rehabilitated — confessing his affair to Father Dobson did nothing for him among “values voters” — but if he’s going to try, it will take a lot more money than $30 million and a lot more time than three months.