Sahil Kapur January 26, 2012, 5:32 AM

Newt Gingrich has pulled off the remarkable trick of turning one of his biggest liabilities into an asset: he has spun the fact that hardly any establishment Republicans like him into evidence that he’s an outsider who will upend the dreaded status quo.

The former House speaker has lived in the D.C. area for decades, spending much of his non-Capitol Hill time working on behalf of establishment entities like Freddie Mac and the health care industry. Yet he has curried favor with the GOP base by regularly firing missives against “elites” and entrenched Washington interests on the campaign trail and in debates.

“We have tremendous institutional biases against doing the right thing and getting things done,” Gingrich said in the Republican debate Monday. “The establishment does not want to lose their positions. This will be a very hard and difficult journey. We need to get America back on track despite our elites and entrenched interests.”

But not all Republicans buy that line, said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. “Just look at his speakership,” he emailed TPM. “Conservatives abandoned him not because he challenged the status quo, but because he accommodated it.”

A GOP aide piled on: “Newt’s problem is his open marriage with conservatism. He has a long history of straying from his limited government vows. He spent much of the 1990s in bed with big government Republicans and lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.”

One possible explanation for Gingrich’s tack is that Mitt Romney is cleaning house in the endorsements race, while many prominent Republicans strongly dislike Newt — and fear disaster for their party if he becomes their nominee for president.

Pundits and prognosticators have predicted that the GOP establishment’s vehement opposition to Gingrich will keep him far away from the nomination. Luckily for Gingrich, he realized that voters don’t really care what they think.

Newt Gingrich