Republican voters currently prefer Newt Gingrich for their party’s nomination and consider him the most “electable” candidate against President Obama. If the DNC cooked up a Republican candidate in its secret underground labs, I don’t see how they could come up with a better prototype opponent–at a time of revulsion against Congress and Wall Street–than a career politician who was sanctioned for ethics violations while also conducting a secret extramarital affair, who left Congress to become a rich lobbyist, who is personally undisciplined and arrogant, and who enters the campaign season with virtually no money or organization.

But it’s a serious question why Republican voters currently favor him in polls.

We have sorted ourselves into largely homogeneous political communities that only talk to themselves. To judge by some conservative talk-radio that I recently heard, Barack Obama is setting records for abysmally low popularity and should be planning an immediate resignation. (Actual polls show his personal favorability at 47.9%, with 47% unfavorable) Plenty of conservatives live in physical and virtual communities completely free of liberals. Assuming that Obama is sure to lose in a landslide, and hearing very little criticism of the Republican movement that Gingrich once led, they are naturally optimistic about the former Speaker.

I think their isolation is particularly acute, because they have not accepted that most Americans reject strong versions of conservatism–whereas liberals tend to know that their side is a minority. But there are liberals who really believe that 99% of the American people are behind the Occupy Wall Street Movement. That is also a sign of isolation. (For the record, when asked to place themselves on an ideological spectrum, 22 percent of Americans identified as liberals in 2008, 32 percent called themselves conservative, and the rest said “moderate” or “don’t know.” I include “slightly liberal” and “slightly conservative” among the liberals and conservatives.)

If the ruling coalition is in an echo-chamber, sheltered from critical views and convinced that all contrary evidence is manufactured by shadowy elites, that is dangerous for the whole country. But if the opposition party is in an echo-chamber, that is mainly bad for them. They are liable to make tactically foolish decisions.