Gingrich's rise: Triumph of the geeks

Not long ago, everyone was sure that Gingrich’s geekiness and personal baggage were fatal. That was how Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, the only candidate who could compete with Gingrich on the budget details, went down. Daniels withdrew after it became clear that a) he was probably too wonkish and b) he was deemed to have “baggage” because his wife had once left him, even though she came back. (Daniels officially cited family reasons for declining to run.)

What happened was that times changed — and in ways that “the establishment,” as Gingrich calls it, reviving an old label, hasn’t yet absorbed. The policy stakes are higher now than they were in the last election. If we don’t sort through our fiscal troubles fast, the U.S. will look like Greece. If we don’t figure China out fast, it may become our next great enemy. And the paralysis in Washington is only intensifying.

Voters’ support of Gingrich is their way of talking back to the opinion-makers. They’re tired of being told by pundits what to think.

“This time voters want someone who can work the solutions to the intractable problems,” Douglas Schoen, the author and pollster, told me. “This time they also like that someone is taking on the media, precisely because taking on the prognosticators means you can take on Washington.”