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Newt Gingrich is only the latest improbable Republican frontrunner, and unlike those who preceded him — Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain — he has a decent chance of sticking around. That’s partly due to necessity. Just a month from the Iowa caucuses, conservatives don’t have time to anoint a new savior. It’s also because, despite his copious shortcomings, he seems immune to what felled the others. An able debater, he won’t flop like Perry and Cain. He’s not a full-on nut like Trump. And his legislative record eclipses Bachmann’s, which barely exists.

But his late emergence as the “true conservative” poised to challenge Mitt Romney is rich, and its broader significance underappreciated. For two years, the driving force in national politics has been the Tea Party, whose founding myth was that ordinary citizens were rising up in defiant resistance to the hidebound, self-dealing ways of Washington. Greedy politicians had bloated the government and lined their own pockets at taxpayers’ expense, while letting the country go to rot. Prime examples were held to be the expansion of government health care and federal support for the housing market, especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored entities that many conservatives blame for the financial crisis. The mere fact of being a veteran Washington legislator cost respected conservatives like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah their jobs. Should all that anger, energy and contempt for Washington end up concentrating itself in the person of Newt Gingrich, then the movement will have failed when the stakes were highest.

Temperamentally, Gingrich is a good fit. Both his zestful attacks on the media and unbridled self-regard both reflect Tea Party tendencies. But since being deposed as House Speaker in 1999, he has earned millions of dollars by conducting himself in almost point-by-point opposition to what the Tea Party claims to stand for. In fact, he’s a superb exemplification of the way Washington really works.

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