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OK, just ignore my other question now, I see which debate you are referencing here.

And certainly, this is the Gingrich that was attracting a lot of support. The GOP uniter, focused on attacking liberal policies and the liberal media.

I realize that polls are lagging indicators; when I poked around before, it seemed the polls swung before the 2nd debate with the ex-wife question; I might argue that the reason for his final result being twice his polling might have been disgust with the ex-wife question, clearly the polls moved after this first debate.

I would dispute that GIngrich can do THIS again either. First because Romney won’t do another debate, and second because I think once you have lost that “uniter” mantle, you can’t get it back. I think Gingrich tried for a little bit, he was going “positive” again, but it didn’t help.

I would love to be proven wrong, but do you see any indication that, even with Santorum’s issues, and his faltering now in contests, that any swing back to Gingrich is happening?

BTW, of the guys we have left, certainly Gingrich is the most “brilliant” — well if I had to choose my own words, I’d probably say the most capable of inspirational articulation of conservative principles.

And to be honest, I had dismissed him when he started in large part because I saw no real conservative support for him, and I wasn’t interested in spending another election trying to convince conservatives that some candidate, flawed as they were, was “good enough”. I did that in 2008. I wanted to just back whoever the mass of conservatives decided was the best.

By August I realized nobody was going to pick “the” candidate, so I started leaning toward Perry not because he was the most brilliant, but because he was polling very well, was well-received by a majority of conservatives, and his record was very good. But then he fell apart, and since then, we’ve gone from candidate to candidate, but none have held the attention of the “conservative swarm”.

I would gladly back Santorum for President, if he could win, because he is certainly conservative enough to not have significant conservative backlash — once the nomination was over that is, since until that time ANY conservative would get bashed by other candidate supporters.

I would gladly back Newt Gingrich for President, if he manages to come back. I don’t dislike Gingrich, I just don’t think he has a chance, either to win the nomination, or beat Obama (at least not if Obama isn’t so damaged that a ham sandwich could beat him).

I never saw any indication in polling data that Gingrich could overcome his negatives built up over decades. And with conservatives largely rejecting him until he was the “only one left”, it seemed he’d have trouble with the enthusiasm — I think that is borne out by how Santorum supporters don’t largely back Newt as their 2nd choice.

Remember, to the general population of republicans, Romney is seen as conservative. I’m not going to argue that point, just stating how he is perceived. We see that in exit polls, we see how he somehow gets a good percentage of tea party support, we see how he somehow gets endorsements by politicians and other leaders who are otherwise conservative. It doesn’t make Romney conservative, but it means that there are a good number of people who consider themselves conservative who don’t see the race as two conservatives against a liberal.

For that mass, it’s not enough that Gingrich is a conservative, they think he’s not enough and they actually feel Romney might be more conservative, or at least no less. These are the people who keep bringing up pelosi, global warming, Newt and the mandate, Newt supporting TARP, etc. I’m not arguing the facts of those matters, just perception.

And you know that there are people here at FR who argue that Santorum is at least no more conservative than Romney, and a few who would rather have Romney than Santorum. Outside FR, we know that Adelson, the billionare backer of Gingrich, who we assume backs Gingrich because he wants a conservative to win, has publicly stated that his 2nd choice is Romney.

That is what I see as the insurmountable problem. There was that moment when Gingrich was getting attacked mercilessly and unfairly by Romney, but also some of the facts were against Newt; I think he had to separate the two, address the snippets of truth (he did in many cases, apologizing for the Pelosi thing for example), and blow off the rest.

But in my opinion, he went overboard with the attacks on Romney, allowing them to be characterized as “attacks from the left”. (I note Santorum is desparate enough now to be doing some of the same thing, and I think that won’t help him either). For conservatives who didn’t see ROmney as hopelessly liberal, I think that hurt Gingrich. The conservative talk shows calling Gingrich out on that attack hurt him, Club For Growth went after him as well.

That unfortunately played right into Romney’s negative cmapaign — which was trying to paint Gingrich as a fake conservative. It was ludicrous, but then here is Gingrich using attacks that appeared to be liberal attacks on capitalism, and conservatives were calling him out. I think that pushed the uninformed conservative to ROmney, and also propped up Santorum’s numbers in Florida when I really expected them to drop to single digits since he abandoned the state.

This is just conjecture, and given that I have abandoned my previous conjecture, I’m not going to argue that it is informed. But I’m curious about your opinion on the matter, because for whatever differences we have in our arguments, I find your arguments compelling and thoughtful.