http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190704577026041280212400.html
Why Gingrich Could Win
Herman Cain’s prospects were good until this week brought accusatory testimony from a woman who showed up in person, with detail.
Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls—from near zero to the third slot in several polls—should come as no surprise to people who have been watching the Republican debates, now drawing television viewers as never before. The former speaker has stood out at these forums, the debater whose audiences seem to hang on his words and on a flow of thought rich in substance, a world apart from the usual that the political season brings.
“Substance” is too cold a word, perhaps, for the intense feeling that candidate Gingrich delivers so coolly in debates. Too cold too, no doubt, to describe the reactions of his listeners, visible on the faces of the crowds attending these forums—in their expressions, caught on C-SPAN’s cameras, in the speed with which their desultory politeness disappears once a Gingrich talk begins. Their disengagement—the tendency to look around the room, chat with their neighbors—vanishes. The room is on high alert.
The Gingrich effect showed dramatically at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition forum last month—an occasion for which most of the candidates had, not surprisingly, prepared addresses focused on the importance of religion in their lives. Michele Bachmann told how, after struggle and indecision, she had found her way to God. So did Rick Perry. Rick Santorum provided a lengthy narrative on his personal commitment to the battle against partial-birth abortion—a history evidently from which no detail had been omitted. Ron Paul offered quotes from the Old and New Testaments where, it seems, he located support for his views on the dollar.