As reported today in Red State, editor and radio host Erick Erickson gives his thoughts in the Horserace.  Of interest is his take on current GOP poll-topper Newt Gingrich.

Erickson asks the only pertinent question:

The question now is can Gingrich overcome his Sisyphean legacy? Gingrich historically has reached the top of the political pile only to spectacularly roll back down it. Conservatives in the 90′s came to loath him as an obstruction to conservative dominance. During the George W. Bush years, Gingrich charted a third way that is now starting to come back on him.

Gingrich, for many, is a man that frustrates.  They like how he talks, they like what he has to say.  And, they wish he wouldn’t talk so much and say so much.  Recently, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online posted a litany of Gingrich’s “…Not So Greatest Hits.”  A review of any candidate, for any office, will produce a list of moments that some will disagree with, and the candidate might want to take back.

With Gingrich, the poll numbers don’t lie.  Rasmussen’s national poll has Gingrich at 38%, with Romney at a distant second with 17%.  (As an aside, Romney also has plenty of mis-steps in his career.  I’m looking for that list on NRO next.)  But Erickson points out that a lead now does not a definitive lead in the primaries make:

If Gingrich can weather the storm for the next three weeks, it becomes Newt Gingrich’s race to lose. History is against him. The voters, so far, are for him. Waiting off stage for his second close up should the voters break out the hook for Gingrich is a governor from Texas — the man who inherited Gingrich’s original campaign team.

In the same Rasmussen report, Perry is at 4%, along with Rep. Michele Bachmann and, surprisingly, former Senator Rick Santorum.  It will be a lot of ‘watch and see’ where the Gingrich support goes if he should stumble.  However, it can be agreed that right now that Romney has been supplanted, and it is Gingrich’s opportunity to lose.