Why Gingrich Won the Debate

David Weigel has a good analysis in Slate of why Gingrich won the debate last night. Bottom line: he's the best debater.

Gingrich never allowed himself to get stuck [...]. His rivals, cursed in their own ways with weaker debating skills, kept letting him out. Ron Paul, never a comfortable attacker, chided Gingrich for consulting for Freddie Mac in the run-up to the financial crisis. "As you say, normally, in your own speeches, the housing bubble came from the Fed inflating the housing supply," said Gingrich. A one-two punch: He called Paul a phony and called himself innocent. "I was in the private sector," he explained, "and I was doing things in the private sector." He charged for his insights. "You're allowed to charge money for them. That's called free enterprise."

This was pure distraction. "Free enterprise," as conservatives like to think about it, has nothing to do with the health of the government. Gingrich was referring to a period when he used his clout and connections to charge a government agency as a consultant. But he slipped so quickly in and out of the explanation that no one nabbed him for it.

 Sounds about right to me - Gingrich is a smart guy, no question about it. As Weigel puts it:

When he talks to Republicans, especially to Republican voters who may not be inclined to back him, Newt Gingrich wins them over with a promise. He will outsmart Barack Obama. He will challenge him to "seven Lincoln-Douglas-style debates," as he said last week at the Republican Jewish Coalition's confab. The president can even "use a teleprompter," jokes Gingrich. It's one of the tightest punchlines in conservative politics.

Tonight's debate in Iowa was the first since Republicans agreed that Gingrich was their presidential front-runner. They've started to imagine him facing off against Barack Obama, the president they consider a pure media creation who can't put two words together unless they're in blue type on a screen in front of him.

While in any case "seven Lincoln-Douglas-style debates" will never happen (every election cycle someone yearns after a return to those, and they never happen, because the risks are too high for everyone involved), there's no question that Gingrich would probably be the most fun to watch Obama debate against. The Republican idea that Obama can't hold his own is obviously fantasy, but this is a party that hasn't been overly concerned with reality for some time, so no problem there.

I think Gingrich's biggest problem, fundamentally, is that no one likes him. He had famously bad relationships with just about everyone he worked with in Congress, and I think he'd have a hard time building a solid working relationship with the party mandarins if he won the nomination - especially because the establishment has lined up solidly behind Romney and might view a last-minute Gingrich upset as illegitimate.

In any case, Democrats should not be concerned. Gingrich is a crank, and he's a scary crank - Gary Trudeau in Doonesbury famously drew him as a bomb with the fuse lit. As we've seen since he's become the "front-runner", he might be good at wiggling out of other people's traps but he's so good at sabotaging himself with his scary, crazy ideas (legalize child labor!) that it hardly matters. I've seen several columnists ask, independently, a question along the lines of "is this really the guy we want with his finger on the button?", and I think that will resonante with voters.

I still think Romney will be the nominee because Republicans always nominate whoever's next in line. But if Gingrich were to get the nomination, I think we'd see a general with low turnout as voters unhappy with both choices stayed home, but I think Obama would win comfortably as swing voters would see him as the safer pair of hands.