GOP Field Continues to Alter, With Newt Gingrich on the Rise

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." --Thomas Jefferson

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The mainstream media calls it "Flavor of the Month."

Problem is, the polls often do not reflect public opinion, but attempts to change public opinion.

One never knows if to trust a poll, or not. Usually, polls reflect what the pollster intends them to reflect.

The polls have had Mitt Romney at the top all along, but never higher than 30%, which would suggest that 70% of the voters don't like him, if you were able to trust the polls.

The second place spot has changed often, and for a little while Herman Cain even held the number one spot. The attacks against Cain have been gold, and he has strengthened as a result. But, so has Newt Gingrich.

Newt's numbers rose after he decided to announce that the past meeting with Pelosi where he spewed some pro-global warming nonsense was one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Newt's numbers have also risen as Cain's falls, which means that Gingrich may be picking up a lot of those folks that are losing interest in Herman.

There may be something else to Newt's rise, as well. GOP voters are looking for conservatives, but they also realize that the conservatives in the hunt (Bachmann, Cain, Santorum) have a number of things going against them, including executive experience, low fund raising, and a lack of a national following. Romney is not acceptable, considering he and Huntsman are the most liberal of the bunch. Perry has proven time and time again that he is not only not conservative, but under the pressure of debate he is a 53 second moment of dead air. Ron Paul is just nuts. That leaves Newt Gingrich, who sounds conservative, and whose intelligence and political experience surpasses pretty much everyone on the stage.

If only we could forgive him his past transgressions, and if only he could prove that despite past evidence that he is a party hack, he can be trusted to put conservative principles ahead of party nonsense politics.

People make mistakes. People grow from those mistakes. So, as a conservative, I am willing to accept that Newt's past personal difficulties are just that, a thing of the past. But his support of Dede Scozzafava in District 23 a couple years back, or his rubbing elbows with democrats by taking positions that were hardly conservative so that it may look like he was willing to reach across the aisle, are more difficult to look past.

Then again, we are in ABO mode, and Anyone But Obama may be what we are looking at.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Polls: Gingrich Grows on GOP Voters - Wall Street Journal