Newt Gingrich Climbing Back Into the Race

Don’t call it a comeback—because that would probably be overstating it—but Newt Gingrich is starting to show up as high as third in some GOP primary polls, Howard Kurtz notes in a Newsweek profile. Gingrich was largely left for dead after much of his campaign staff bolted, but the ex-speaker was undaunted. “This is football season,” he told his remaining loyalists. “We got hit. Get up.” The goal, he said, was to survive the summer and hope for a fall surge.

And survive he has, thanks to a strong grasp of policy and competent debate showings. “If they could have a debate a night, he’d be the nominee,” former Gingrich strategist Rich Galen says. Of course, Gingrich has flaws too; just ask him. “I am a very complicated candidate, right?” he said recently. “We live in a society where gossip replaces serious policy.” Being written off has kept Gingrich’s gossip out of the spotlight of late, but “if he ever popped up to No. 2 or No. 1,” Galen warns, “all that stuff would just crush him."