¿Podría Gingrich resucitar a lo McCain?

The Washington Post:

In an election season that already has taken more than its share of unlikely turns, few moments have seemed more improbable than the crowd scene Friday afternoon at a Chick-fil-A along a busy suburban thoroughfare here. At least 400 people jammed the restaurant, leaving those in the back straining to get even a glimpse of a man whose presidential candidacy had been left for dead not five months ago.

Against the glassed-in playground stood Newt Gingrich, microphone in hand, promising: “If you’re with me, I think we will win the most decisive election in modern times, and I think we will win it by a shockingly big margin.”

It is probably stretching things to declare that the former House speaker has made a comeback after the collapse of his debt-ridden campaign in June, when most of his top political operatives abandoned him.

But as the size of the Chick-fil-A throng suggested, there are signs that Republicans are giving Gingrich another look. Fundraising has picked up after his strong debate performances and amid the continued frostiness that many activist Republicans feel toward presumed front-runner Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.

One by one, hot new alternatives to Romney have arisen and stumbled: first Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, then Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive Herman Cain has shot up in the polls, though his vulnerabilities become more apparent with every news cycle. So more than a few who have been turning out lately to see Gingrich are wondering: Could he be the next would-be Cinderella to try on the not-Romney slippers?

(...) While Gingrich’s political career has seen a series of resurrections and reinventions, his recent setback shook him more deeply than any had before.

(...) “We went through the two worst months in my career. I would say June and July were the hardest months, worse than the two defeats [in his first House races] in ’74 and ’76,” Gingrich said, spooning his way through a bowl of soft-serve ice cream.

Former campaign insiders were giving the media a picture of him as hopelessly undisciplined and gaffe-prone, more interested in selling his books and screening his movies than in campaigning. American Solutions, the once-vast advocacy organization he had established, went out of business.

His income, largely from the sales of his books and movies, fell to “dramatically smaller than it was — more dramatic than we intended would be the right way to put it,” he said. And with the revelation of Gingrich’s six-figure tabs at Tiffany, even his shopping habits became a national punch line.

“We were being beaten up on every front. We were getting beaten up by the media. We had consultants who were leaving us in debt while attacking us, which I thought was astonishingly unprofessional. We were making transitions in our businesses that turned out to be much harder than I thought they would be,” he said. “And because of the intensity of the news media attacks, it became very hard to raise money.”

He said he hadn’t grasped the full extent of his campaign’s financial precariousness, which still included more than $1 million in debt in its third-quarter filing, because “I was looking at cash on hand and didn’t realize they weren’t paying the bills.”

Even the elements were conspiring against him. The August earthquake that left most of the Washington area unscathed did significant damage to his McLean home; days later, Hurricane Irene flooded his basement.

“It’s very funny, because as bad as it got — pretty miserable — [his wife] Callista would say to me, ‘You just have to wait until the debates.’ She said the gamble in this campaign is that when you get into the debates, people will decide you’re real,” Gingrich said.

His performances did get him noticed — this time, in a good way. “You look at Newt Gingrich and you can’t help but have the reaction, ‘Gosh, what could have been?’ ” self-proclaimed kingmaker Rush Limbaugh told his radio listeners after the Sept. 12 debate in Tampa. “Newt was like the adult in the room.”

(...) Gingrich is clearly having a good time, even as he continues to campaign on a shoestring.

“I have no conflicts,” he said. “I have no consultant near me trying to get me to be who I’m not.” His stump speech lasts an hour, touching on an eclectic array of subjects that include brain research and “rebalancing” the judicial system.

As of Thursday morning, he said, his campaign had raised $1 million in October, which is more than it did in the previous months combined. With the new resources, he expects to open five offices in each of the three earliest states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — within the next two weeks.