Newt's Re-Resurgence And Why It Won't Last

Newt Gingrich stands smiling and waving next to his mistress…er…third wife at a victory party after South Carolina. He’s got good reason to smile, he just blew the nominee-impending Mitt Romney out of the water with a 12 point victory margin. His momentum hasn’t stalled either, with national polls seeing his popularity continue to rise and Romney increasingly forced to address negative ads and media attacks by the former Speaker, rather than focusing on Obama’s “failed policies”, like he wants to. Of course, the question many of us on the left are asking is, “Gingrich? Really?!”

In the most recent polls, Florida Republican voters are actually favoring Gingrich slightly over Romney. Of course, pollsters are constantly revising and updating their findings as each ad, public appearance, and media statement seeks to sway the razor-thin margin. So far, however, Gingrich seems to have been able to galvanize the conservative base in South Carolina by being willing to tell some “hard truths”, and being completely unrepentant for his past. With hard-line conservatives, that kind of self-righteous indignation seems to play very well. At one recent GOP debate (there have been nineteen to date), Newt was asked about whether he had asked his previous wife for an “open marriage”, while he was supposedly having an affair with present wife, Callista. Gingrich slammed the commentator and the media for opening a presidential debate with a “question like that”, and the audience roared their support.

In a GOP primary season like this one, the many presidential debates have served to make or break campaigns. Gingrich has been a savvy debater through much of the season so far, and in almost every case he has been able to coax the seemingly radically conservative debate audiences on to his side. One of the few exceptions may have been last night. Only four candidates left in the race, the debate seemed to highlight only two. Rick Santorum threw a few weak punches at Romney on the topic of Massachusetts health care, which Romney managed to deflect, despite the connection to so-called “Obamacare”. Ron Paul quipped about Gingrich’s latest toilet-reading idea to place a U.S. military base on the moon. Other than that, however, it was largely a showdown between Romney and Gingrich. However, Gingrich may have learned an important lesson last night. Both Romney and Gingrich are millionaires, both have invested in Fannie May and Freddie Mac, and both have embarrassingly large incomes. On a campaign ad or  stump speech, it’s easy to point the finger at the other guy because he’s not there to retaliate. On the debate stage it’s not quite so easy, particularly when Romney’s response to each of Gingrich’s attacks was, “so do you.” It’s likely that some of Gingrich’s steam will start to leak as voters realize that Gingrich isn’t actually all that different from Romney in the things for which he’s been attacked.