Could a narcissistic ideologue with the personal warmth of a salamander win the Republican nomination next year? Under normal circumstances, if the salamander in question were Newt Gingrich, the answer would be no.

But when you consider his competition in the current GOP field — a thrice-married, mentally deranged pro-gay, pro-choice former New York mayor; a flip-flopping, dim-witted former Massachusetts governor who is a Mormon; an actor and former abortion lobbyist and senator whose performance on the stump has left people snoring; and a current senator famous for his meltdowns who has lashed himself to an unpopular war that could well re-ignite just as the campaign goes into its final heat next year — the answer becomes maybe.

“Maybe” in 2008 is as close as Gingrich will ever get, however. So while he is still playing coy about whether he’ll get in, on Sunday he issued a challenge to Fox News viewers:

In the latest sign of how unsettled the Republican presidential race is, Newt Gingrich says he’ll run if supporters come up with $30 million in three weeks.

“I don’t see as a citizen how you could turn that down,” Gingrich said yesterday on “Fox News Sunday.”

…Gingrich has tasked longtime adviser Randy Evans with launching the ambitious fund-raising bid next Monday [Oct 1], and reporting back in three weeks.

“I want the commitments first,” Gingrich said. “If there is, in fact, enough people in the country who think we need this kind of approach and this kind of change-oriented policies, then I think I’d feel a responsibility to run.”

Even if he were to win the nomination, it’s hard to see how Gingrich would stand a chance in the general. The Beltway gang likes to pair him with Hillary Clinton, comparing them as equally polarizing figures on the left and right.

While Clinton has been caricatured by the right as a screeching feminist harpy, she won reelection to the Senate in 2004 with 65 percent of the vote, and even carried Republican counties upstate, arguably because voters got to know her true persona.

If anyone has caricatured Newt, it’s Newt himself. And most voters who remember the 1990s have a clear perception of him. The consensus is that underneath his aloof, know-it-all shell, Newt really is a bully, a blowhard and a jerk.

In a way, the Dems has won against Newt on a national ticket before. In 1996, the Clinton-Gore campaign made then-House Speaker Gingrich the de facto running mate of their opponent, former Senate majority leader, Bob Dole. (His official running mate was Jack Kemp.)

Clinton-Gore won with 49.2 percent against Dole-Kemp-Gingrich’s 40.7 percent. Ross Perot took 8.4 percent.