Gingrich’s Rise Alarms Republican Establishment

Is Newt Gingrich a candidate capable of beating Barack Obama? This is the most frequently asked question in Washington since the former Speaker of the House has become the top hopeful for the Republican presidential candidacy. The conservative “establishment” fears that the nomination of Gingrich, a temperamental and undisciplined personality with a controversial past, would serve reelection on a silver platter to the current president.

For this reason, Gingrich was the principal object of his companions’ and rivals’ attacks in the presidential debate on Thursday, the final one scheduled before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Gingrich assured that he is perfectly capable of defeating Obama, among other reasons because he [Obama] “will not have a leg to stand on in trying to defend a record that is terrible and an ideology that is radical,” but he left many doubts about his own viability up in the air.

Gingrich is the current favorite in Iowa and several other states slated at the beginning of the Republican primary season calendar. As opposed to other Republican hopefuls who topped the polls in previous months, Gingrich has maintained his position for several weeks and has demonstrated himself to be a tough competitor against the man who has always been the candidate: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

But, the Republican field remains very open and in the midst of the current uncertainty, anything could happen, including a victory in Iowa for the latest personality on the rise, Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian conservative who greatly arouses Tea Party sympathies for his radical combat against the State, and like in Occupy Wall Street, for his opposition to any war and his criticism of financial elites.

However, at this time, Gingrich is the man to beat. He unites the most conservative votes, those suspicious of Romney’s supposed centrism and he possesses the experience and intellectual capacity to come out of the debates unscathed and respond brilliantly in interviews.

This experience and intellectual resources are, at the same time, the motivation behind the doubts about his presidential candidacy. During the mid-’90s, Gingrich became the most powerful man in Washington thanks to his conservative revolution that ended in giving the Republicans control of Congress.

Not long after, however, this power came back to hurt him. His work as speaker was chaotic and provoked a mountain of enemies among his own ranks. They organized what was then known as a coup d’état within the party. Among those promoters was a young Ohio representative, John Boehner, who now occupies the role that Gingrich possessed at that time.

Gingrich’s final die was cast upon making up his mind to reveal that, while participating vehemently in the accusations against President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky matter, he himself was carrying on an extramarital relationship with a young member of his team of aides named Callista, who today is his third wife. Callista exercises a great influence over his campaign and personality, such that she convinced him to convert to Catholicism.

But this episode is not the worst of his history. There are others that worry many Republicans, such as his doings of having received several million dollars by consulting for Freddy Mac, the firm that is at the origin of the real estate bubble that caused the 2008 crisis, or the opening of a half-million dollar account in his name at the jeweler Tiffany’s¸ apparently for payment of favors.

In this campaign, Gingrich has made suggestions as polemical as eliminating the prohibition of child labor and has incurred numerous contradictions with proposals defended in the past.