I think you have gone right to the heart of the matter. The reason many of us are ambivalent about Gingrich is precisely because he is so eclectic in his conservatism. We have to leap with faith that he will forget about moon mirrors and return to balancing the budget if elected.
I might point out, however, that getting elected is a different matter from governing.
Very recently, perhaps as a result of the influence of the Tea Party and the debt threatening to crash the Republic, conservatism has come to be defined more narrowly than in the past in that we must strictly reside within a constitutional framework marked by the 10th amendment. That suits me fine but I am not sure that it is historically consistent for the Republican Party or even for conservatism.
I have said many times on these threads that many of the people protesting as Tea Party members against federal spending were also out there protesting against Obama for his cuts of their Medicare. That is a microcosm of the dilemma which has confronted Republicans and the conservative movement since Sen. Taft.
I am perfectly willing to get behind the candidate who has Ron Paul's 10th amendment view of the scope of the federal government-provided you get him elected, and we know we cannot get Ron Paul elected.
When Gingrich put his reforms through and balanced the budget etc. it was considered radical and the acme of conservatism. As the times change so has the standard of the times.
There is no single candidate who qualifies as a "pure" conservative as is presently being defined except perhaps Ron Paul and he is on acceptable for other reasons even beyond electability.
To return to the question you raise, is Gingrich, or any other candidate, so eclectic and inconsistent in his version of conservatism that he cannot render a coherent campaign? I think that is a fair question. My answer is that of all these candidates, considering their forensic talents, Gingrich can do that the best despite the fact that he is far from "purest" conservative in the race. Santorum, for example, would take that honor but few believe that he can dominate the election in the Ronald Reagan as opposed to the Karl Rove style.
My subjective judgment is that Gingrich can do that. I say only that the choice is not between Gingrich and the perfect candidate but between Gingrich and a finite field the leader of which is Romney.
