Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina Republican Primary with Governor Mitt Romney coming in second and Senator Rick Santorum projected to come in third. Both Fox News and CNN called the victory for Gingrich with just over 1% of precincts reporting. Apparently they have some calculus that combines exit polling, demographics, American Idol phone-in votes, and Anderson Cooper’s Twitter account which allows them to call things when only a fraction of the votes are reported.
It’s a huge victory by any measure for Speaker Gingrich, especially considering his campaign appeared to be on life support just a few weeks ago as it has a number of times throughout this campaign. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, perhaps, said it best “Lazarus only had to rise once. Gingrich has now risen twice.” Fellow Fox News contributor Brit Hume brought things back to Earth a bit reminding Mr. Krauthammer, “You have to die twice to rise twice.”
From where I sit, this race came down to three things:
- Republicans, in South Carolina and elsewhere, are not even close to deciding on a nominee. They may not be “in love” with any of the candidates, but they’re sure not willing to let Iowa and New Hampshire do the choosing for the rest of “us.”
- Newt Gingrich clearly had his “moment” of this campaign Thursday night when he lambasted CNN’s King for opening the presidential debate with a question about his ex-wife’s interview with ABC. A combination of that moment and his performance in the South Carolina debates – and those that preceded them – by all accounts catapulted Speaker Gingrich to this victory.
- Mitt Romney is vulnerable. I don’t just mean because he finished second in South Carolina either. He was mortally wounded by a question that should have left the battle scar equivalent to a paper cut. How he failed to prepare himself for a question about his tax returns absolutely baffles me. I’m certain the Romney camp will look back on that moment and wonder if it cost him the race or – at the very least – added several weeks to his primary campaign.
The Romney camp will no doubt spin this as a “home victory” for Gingrich. I’ll leave to your better judgment what that means for his similar win in New Hampshire. Either way, the score now sits as Santorum (1), Romney (1), Gingrich (1), and Paul (0). Now it’s on to Florida where Romney and his SuperPAC have been spending loads of cash for weeks. Conventional wisdom will no doubt make the Former Massachusetts Governor the front-runner there; but if this race has taught us anything, it’s that conventional wisdom may not be that wise.
[...] absolutely laughable to this conservative. Dude won Iowa. Romney won New Hampshire. Gingrich won South Carolina. How bout we let at least one of these candidates claim a second victory before we start playing [...]