GOP poll respondents love the former speaker now -- but they used to see him as one of the least likable 2012 candidates

Newt Gingrich is sounding pretty confident these days. "I'm going to be the nominee," he told ABC's Jake Tapper last week, not even a specter of doubt visible in his face. "It's very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I'm going to be the nominee."

Gingrich spoke in the confident tones of an NFL wideout promising a Super Bowl ring -- and he's right that current polling in Iowa and South Carolina indicate quite obviously that he has an advantage over Mitt Romney in those states.

His star has re-risen, but it wasn't long ago that Republicans were cool on Gingrich. Not just on wanting him to be president, but on Gingrich himself. It's a strange trend that shows how fickle voters can be in deciding whether or not they like someone personally.

Throughout his campaign, few on the right have questioned Gingrich's intellect, or his mastery of policy, or even his presidential leadership skills. But Republicans didn't always see him as more than moderately likable. While personal likability was propelling Herman Cain to the top of the GOP poll charts, Gingrich's favorable/unfavorable ratings lagged behind those of his more successful rivals -- suggesting, perhaps, that his brash imagination had won him the respect of Republican voters, even if they didn't necessarily want to be friends with him. Which -- I think we can be sure -- is something Newt Gingrich was probably fine with.