Learn English – History of “oh well”

In the movie Patton, General George Patton tells Erwin Rommel how he defeated him. "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book."

I can't tell if the usage is actually from the WWII era, but the movie came out the 1970s, and the term has pretty much the same implications as badass when it's used as a term of admiration. (See Magnificent Bastard.)

However, examination of Patton's actual quotes suggests that he commonly used the term bastard, so it's plausible.

It's not really an idiom, but a combination of two context-specific definitions of "run" and "ticket".

Here, run means (M-W)

4b: to enter into an election contest

and ticket means (M-W)

3: a list of candidates for nomination or election

Both of these are commonly used and readily understood in the context of political writing. In addition, a google search for run on the Republican ticket, for example, gives over 600,000 results - so although "run on a ticket" is not a stock phrase or idiom per se, the two words are often seen together in the above senses.

Thus,

many members of Congress will run on a ticket with a man they worked with two decades ago

means that these Congress members and Newt Gingrich will be part of the same group of politicians selected by their party to compete in the upcoming election.