Newt Gingrich now stands a good chance of being the Republican presidential nominee. I'm not sure politics can get any weirder than this.

Gingrich is a long way from sewing up the nomination, obviously. But last week was quite a week. And Gingrich's rise - his win in South Carolina, his lead in the Florida polls (at least as of early this week) - is particularly impressive given that Mitt Romney was leading in both states only days before Saturday's South Carolina primary. Gingrich has also been closing in on Romney in nationwide polls.

All this happened despite potentially devastating charges by Gingrich's second wife. And he overtook Romney in the Florida polls despite Romney's support by Florida establishment Republicans and his campaign's presence there - and heavy spending -since last fall.

Part of this was Romney's own doing; he fumbled his responses to questions about his tax returns and the Bain Capital-related layoffs. As several conservative commentators have noted, he should have known he'd be asked about them.

("Both of these topics were big issues not merely in Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign, but his 1994 Senate run," wrote Jim Geraghty in The National Review. "How does a candidate get blindsided by 18-year-old handicaps?")

Gingrich is a better debater than Romney, but something else is at work. In his sharp comments, he is identifying with, and giving voice to, the concerns of many white, conservative voters. Those voters bristle at being called racist when they oppose entitlements. And when Gingrich defends his charge that Obama is a "Food Stamp president," Geraghty wrote, he is giving "the fearless, unapologetic rebuke to that thinking they had been yearning to hear for years."

The Wall Street Journal added this: "Since Reagan, Republicans have had a President or nominee who was typically either tongue-tied or timid in defending their policies and principles. With Mr. Obama preparing a re-election assault on those principles, GOP voters understandably want a tenacious advocate. Voters sense that, whatever his other failings, Mr. Gingrich can match Mr. Obama on the issues and won't go down without a fight."

It won't be a surprise if at some point Gingrich flames out, handing the nomination, finally, to Romney. But these early days in the Republican campaign are raising important questions. Among them:

• Will the 2012 election worsen the divisions among Americans?

Gingrich and other politicians are capitalizing on the feeling among many white Americans that their own economic problems are due to give-aways to African Americans and job stealing by immigrants. Democrats ought to be able to talk about fairness, wealth disparity, and Americans' common bonds - and do it without appealing to voters' baser instincts. But it is harder to get that message across in tough economic times than in good ones.

• What will the Republican Party be like in the future?

Clearly, hard-core conservative Republicans and evangelicals do not like Mitt Romney. And right now, they are in open rebellion against a candidate they consider a Republican Establishment choice. Are these early-state votes a signal that the rebels are in firm control of their party?

In a New York Review of Books article in late September, when even the Iowa caucuses seemed far in the future, Michael Tomasky addressed that question. "Party establishments typically mitigate the more extreme impulses of the activist bases," he wrote. "But this isn't happening in today's GOP."

Establishment Republicans in Congress are doing things they never would have done until a few years ago, Tomasky said, digging in their heels, for instance, on things they've gone along with before, like raising the debt limit. This is the result of the no-compromise, Tea Party freshmen.

"A key thing to watch for, in determining the future of the Republican Party," Tomasky said, "is whether this no-compromise base becomes a majority within the GOP electorate during next year's primaries."

We're into those primaries now. And next Tuesday, Florida may tell us a lot about where both the Republican Party and the nation are headed.