Newt, Really?

My (pay-walled) column scatches its head but faces what now seems even more plausible after the New Hampshire Union-Leader's endorsement:

Of course, Gingrich could fall again, like the other not-Mitts. In last week's debate, he cited a concern for being "humane" with respect to illegal immigrants who have lived in the US for decades. That glimpse of compassion may doom him with the base. But his timing is pretty good: better to be on the rise a month before the voting begins rather than two months before. And the hardcore base doesn't have many other places to seek refuge. Former Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, is ruled out of bounds because he worked for Obama as ambassador to China. Ron Paul, the libertarian who really should be the leader of this party given its current economic incarnation, cannot get past 10 percent because of his foreign policy isolationism and opposition to torture. And Newt, because he is, after all, a former Speaker of the House, carries some credibility where one-hit wonders, like Herman Cain, don't.

I have to say I still cannot see Newt winning the nomination. He doesn't have good ground organization, and remains toxic in the public at large. The polling currently suggests that Obama would beat Gingrich by 7 points. 47 percent of Americans, moreover, say they dislike Gingrich, compared with only 32 percent who like him. Independents cannot stand him. But this is a Republican party nauseated by its likeliest standard-bearer, Romney, and desperate for something else. Right now, that something else looks like defeat. But as Newt can tell you, this campaign keeps surprising.

Frum sees no such pleasant surprise for Newt or the GOP:

Back in the 1990s, Gingrich made himself one of the most disliked figures in the recent history of American politics. As American political commentator Jay Cost reminds us, within 24 months of becoming Speaker, Gingrich had forced a shutdown of the federal government and sunk to an approve/disapprove rating of negative 25. There Gingrich languished through ethics challenges, impeachment and the revelation that he’d been carrying on an extra-marital affair while attacking Bill Clinton’s own sexual misconduct.

A Gingrich presidency, if such a thing can even be imagined, would be a chaotic catastrophe. A Gingrich nomination would yield an Obama landslide.

The silver lining is surely that a Gingrich candidacy would put out there in clear and uncompromising terms the reality of today's Jacobin GOP. If a Gingrich candidacy were to give us an Obama landslide re-election, it would underline the death-throes of a "conservatism" reeling since the collapse of the Rove project under Bush and Cheney. It would kill off conservatism as it has been and allow for some kind of reformist brand to put down roots. It would give us Huntsman in 2016, or some variant thereof.