Michael Smerconish: Fighting chance for Gingrich?

That which is propelling Newt Gingrich's Florida surge will imperil his general election bid, should he make it that far.

A Quinnipiac University survey last week showed him as having closed a double-digit Mitt Romney lead in Florida. Most significantly, Gingrich is now running ahead among likely GOP voters who were surveyed since the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina.

The plot point for his trajectory was the CNN debate in South Carolina earlier this month in which moderator John King asked Gingrich about his ex-wife's claim that he had once requested an open marriage. It was at least the third time Gingrich was asked about the controversy that day. In earlier interviews, with Ann Curry on "Today" and Gwen Ifill on PBS, Gingrich was staid. At the CNN debate, he unloaded on King.

King would have been derelict in not asking the question. The "open marriage" interview was the dominant political issue of the day, having led the Drudge Report for the previous 24 hours. Imagine if the candidate in the eye of the storm was a Democrat and was not asked about it in a CNN debate. There would have been a hue and cry, and appropriately so. (Later, Chris Wallace of Fox News said he, too, would have asked the question first.)

By asking Gingrich the question at the outset of the debate, King did him an enormous favor. It allowed Gingrich to distinguish himself from Romney in a way that matters most to the base. They don't want a politician to merely face Barack Obama — they want a pugilist! That's why the live audience, comprising partisan GOP voters, loved every minute of Gingrich's ensuing emasculation of King.

Some incorrectly read that reaction as disgust with the media, or intolerance for personal issues at a time when the economy is in such dire straits. As Gingrich might say, that's pious baloney! The conservative base wants its candidate to fight the president. They want someone who will both knee him in the groin and capture 270 electoral votes.

This is the type of audience that in previous debates had cheered when Rick Perry embraced the death penalty and again when there was a suggestion that an uninsured man would be left to die in an ER. Audiences have booed Perry's in-state tuition breaks for the children of illegals, and booed a gay soldier who asked about don't ask-don't tell. More cheering came for waterboarding and torture; and when, in another South Carolina debate, Gingrich confronted Juan Williams about race ("Well, Juan . . ."), he got a standing ovation.

Mitt Romney does not elicit that level of emotion. That's why the former Massachusetts governor is deadlocked at somewhere below 50 percent of the GOP vote despite the length of his campaign, superior war chest, and organization.

Eric Erickson, writing for Red State, got it right when he said: "The base is angry, and right now, only Newt is left to fight for them, as imperfect as he is. We may still end up with Romney, but voters aren't going to let him have it easily."

That Gingrich's incendiary CNN debate response was pivotal to his primary victory is not subject to debate. But whether that sort of demeanor will help him in a general election is an entirely different matter. The carnivorous GOP base will pick the nominee — but the next president will be determined by quite a different constituency: independents. There is an emerging body of data speaking to their electoral strength.

In a survey released Jan. 9, Gallup revealed that the number of individuals now identifying themselves as independents — 40 percent — is the highest in at least the last 60 years. That's the same percentage who told the Wall Street Journal and NBC last August that their approach to the issues was "moderate." No wonder a USA Today analysis released Dec. 22 showed that Democrats are in decline in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans have similarly dipped in 21 states — but independents are up in 18!

After studying this emerging electorate, Linda Killian has just published The Swing Vote. In the book, she notes: "In several Pew Research Center polls over the last few years, more independents say the Republican Party comes closer to their views on foreign policy, national security, and economic issues. But they say the Democratic Party is closer to their views on social issues."

So what are they looking for?

"The people that I talked to, those swing voters in the center, all said to me almost without exception, 'Look I don't want the government in my personal life. This is true for someone who is 70, or someone who is 25. They say, 'We want to do our own thing. We want a strong defense. We think government spending is too much. We want effective government,' " she told me last week. Killian said the overriding unifier among the swing voters she studied was a concern about the influence of money in politics.

So does the surging Newt have a shot at this constituency? Unlikely. Long before anyone could have forecast the Gingrich juggernaut, Killian wrote in her book:

"The extreme partisanship on the Republican side can be directly traced to one man — Newt Gingrich. Gingrich, who had been elected to Congress in 1978, had formed a group of GOP House members called the Conservative Opportunity Society and was advocating that Republicans become more partisan, negative, and less interested in compromise with the Democrats."

According to Killian, the person who could best reach the independents isn't running. "They want a Bill Clinton, someone who feels their pain, someone who is working for them."

No wonder a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll reveals that among independents, Gingrich gets just 28 percent against Obama, who wins with 52 percent. By contrast, Obama narrowly edges Romney with independents, 44 percent to 36 percent.