Honestly, Guys? Newt Gingrich?

The answer may be yes. Not only is Gingrich moving up in polls, but Herman Cain's supporters continue to consistently name Gingrich as their second-choice. Given how awful Rick Perry's favorabilities have been of late, even with Republicans, I basically believe at this point that he's cooked. But Romney's not gaining any ground, and the re-emergence of Gingrich puts him in a tricky spot. Assume that at some point Cain implodes, and most of his support goes to Gingrich, setting up essentially a Romney-Gingrich match-up. Here's Romney's problem: Gingrich is perhaps the only person in the field who is more conservative than Romney, not an eccentric libertarian, and can talk coherently about policy. And Gingrich can do that! The things he says are very, very wrong, but he's in a different league than Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, even Rick Perry. Paired against any of those people Romney could say not only "vote for that guy and you'll just make Obama's life easier," he could say "that guy is flagrantly incompetent." And even in the Republican Party flagrant incompetence matters. But Newt Gingrich is clearly competent. He's not as electable as Romney, but that's a hard argument to make outright without coding it through incompetence of some kind. Gingrich's campaign originally collapsed due to some strange combination of lack of buzz and strange inept dysfunction, but now that he's back I think he's the most credible threat Romney's faced all year: a genuine conservative with stature, gravitas, and competence. He trumps Romney, matching him on his strengths and lacking his most glaring weaknesses. Once it becomes Romney-Gingrich, how exactly does Romney win?

(All stipulating that the serial sexual harasser cannot continue to survive indefinitely, of course. If I end up being wrong about that, hey, I won't be complaining.)