So, When Did FOX News Turn Against Newt Gingrich?

So I guess you'll have to talk to the hand for even posing a question:

During a private campaign event at Wesley College in Delaware last week, the former House Speaker had asserted that News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch had personally turned Fox News against him.

“I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich opined. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.”

Fox News chief Roger Ailes later told an audience at the University of North Carolina (UNC) that Gingrich was “trying to get a job at CNN because he knows he isn’t going to get to come back to Fox News.”

The Daily Tarheel’s Memet Walker hoped to get a reaction from the candidate when he sat down with him in Greensboro, North Carolina on Saturday.

“His aide gave no preconditions; no topics were off limits,” Walker wrote. “That’s why I was so surprised when, before I had finished asking my first question, that same aide cut the interview short and prompted Secret Service to grab and briefly detain me as the former speaker was led away.”

The reporter explained that he had been detained after questioning the candidate about Ailes.

“But before I even had a chance on Saturday to relay Ailes’ comments, his aide pressed his hands against me, and several Secret Service agents stopped me in my tracks,” Walker recalled.

“You’re not asking that,” the aide reportedly said. “You’re done.”

Yet, as I recall last October, while Rick Perry and Herman Cain cratered, the only reason Gingrich had a candidacy going was because he had critical support from FOX News:

Fox is the preeminent political information source for Republican primary voters, and while its reputation for partisanship is well understood, it also sets the terms of debate within the Republican Party.

Fox’s treatment of Ron Paul is an extreme example of how this works. In 2008, after he netted a surprisingly respectable 10 percent in the Iowa caucuses, Paul was barred from Fox’s pivotal pre-New Hampshire debate – even as Rudy Giuliani, who had finished with just four percent in Iowa, was allowed in. And when Paul was threatening to win this year’s caucuses, Fox went after him hard. Presumably, it was his unorthodox views on foreign policy and national security that made Paul unacceptable.

By comparison, Fox’s disses of Gingrich have been less blunt, but the overall effect of the coverage – sympathetic to Romney and hostile to the former speaker – hasn’t been hard to pick up on if you’ve watched Fox much these past few months. The best way to understand this is probably to go back and re-read Gabriel Sherman’s New York magazine piece on Roger Ailes from last May. Sherman detailed how the Fox News chairman had been determined to use his channel to develop potential Obama challengers for 2012 only to grow dismayed by the results:

All the 2012 candidates know that Ailes is a crucial constituency. “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger,” one GOPer told me. “Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.” But he hasn’t found any of them, including the adults in the room—Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney—compelling. “He finds flaws in every one,” says a person familiar with his thinking.

“He thinks things are going in a bad direction,” another Republican close to Ailes told me. “Roger is worried about the future of the country. He thinks the election of Obama is a disaster. He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement.”

Ailes apparently saw great potential in Chris Christie, and spent much of 2011 trying to persuade him to run. But when Christie, after flirting with a late-starting bid, decided once and for all in October not to run, it became clear that the GOP field was set – and that Romney, for all of his flaws, was the party’s most (and probably only) bankable general election option. This helps explain Fox’s generally helpful coverage of his campaign. And it explains why Fox’s coverage helped to deflate the Gingrich bubble in early December and again after the January 21 South Carolina primary, the two occasions when he seemed like a real threat to steal the nomination.

So, what happened? Did Gingrich get too arrogant? Did Murdoch and Ailes change their minds? Why? And when? Early December?

Secret Service now wants to wrestle ME to the ground!