One year for GOP to pull it together

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Updated: January 14, 2012 8:08AM

President Barack Obama and Democrats must be feeling pretty good about his re-election prospects, and with good reason at this moment in time. Republicans started out with a weak field, momentum has swung to a candidate with problematical prospects in November and one contender in the GOP pack hasn’t ruled out a third party candidacy.

The party faithful have never warmed to once-front-runner Mitt Romney for various reasons. Foremost is that he has seemed less than faithful to core conservative principles. His aloof personality is not easy to warm up to. His background of wealth — highlighted in an unbecoming light with his infamous $10,000 bet remark in the latest debate — adds to that distance from the ordinary voter.

That’s why conservative Republicans have turned from one anti-Romney candidate to another in search of one with staying power. And it looks like they may have found that contender in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

He’s an impressive guy: A great speaker and debater with a sweeping grasp of history. A record of conservative accomplishment, including an unexpected Republican capture of the House in 1994, enactment of welfare reform, and forcing the Clinton administration to accept limits to big government and fiscal discipline leading to budget surpluses.

Then again, there are the bad memories. Erratic leadership and sometimes an absence of it have GOP politicians who worked with him and came to revolt against him cringing at the prospect of him capturing the nomination. There’s his tendency to shoot from the lip, as in his disastrous characterization in May of conservative hero Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “right-wing social engineering.” That prompted Ryan to remark that with friends like Gingrich, who needs the left?

There’s Gingrich’s $1.8 million in work for Freddie Mac, one of the government entities responsible for the housing meltdown. There was an ethical lapse with a book deal, as well as infidelity and three marriages. But the conservative base appears to forgive all this in seeing Gingrich as Obama’s equal in oratory and debating.

The GOP establishment — whom the Tea Party base distrusts as much as it loathes the Obama policies — views Gingrich the nominee as a land mine waiting to blow up Republican chances of capturing the White House.

The fundamental problem with Gingrich is that his baggage and his grandiosity would make it much easier for Obama and Democrats to make the election about Gingrich rather than a referendum on the president’s job-killing management of the economy.

If Romney were the nominee, Democrats would also try to deflect attention to Romney’s record as a rich businessman. He could welcome that debate. For Romney, rich means achievement — success as a businessman in creating jobs and in rescuing the Salt Lake City Olympic Games from scandal and financial ruin, success as a manager who understands how the economy works. Obama got rich by writing a couple of books — how many jobs did that create? Republican primary voters would forfeit the Romney success advantage by nominating Gingrich.

Then there’s Ron Paul. The libertarian purist refuses to rule out a third-party run after he fails to be the Republican nominee. That would take votes from the GOP.

Obama and Democrats may have cause for optimism today, but we’re a long way from November, and Republicans can still get their act together.