DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- Conservatives rule in South Carolina, which explains Newt Gingrich’s stunning double-digit victory Saturday in the Republican primary election.
As this article is written, with 93% of the precincts reporting, Gingrich leads with 40%, Romney is second with 27%, Santorum follows in third with 17% and Ron Paul is last with 13%.
Texas Governor Rick Perry concluded several days ago that he had failed to catch fire even with voters as far to the right as those in South Carolina, causing Perry to make the wise decision to pull out of the race. The conservative non-Romney vote is split four ways and yet Gingrich still won handily.
In fact, he appears to have carried all but two of South Carolina’s 46 counties and he may yet win the other two. But reference to the conservative leanings of SC Republicans does not begin to cover the magnitude of Gingrich’s achievement there. Two weeks ago Romney was ahead in South Carolina by 16% and he outspent Gingrich by more than two to one. Evangelical leaders gathered last week in Texas and threw their support to Santorum.
Yet exit polls indicate that Gingrich won the support of most evangelicals, as well as conservatives in general, late deciders and even married women. The latter is surprising because the thrice-married Gingrich was the target of public attacks by his second wife, amplified by the media, and one would have thought that this would reduce Gingrich’s support among married female voters.
In my view the outcome in South Carolina demonstrates that Romney has failed there despite his extensive organization and heavy spending – failed to convince the Republican voters there that he has morphed into a real conservative since his days as Governor of Massachusetts.
If this is true, Gingrich will have a good chance of winning in future primaries in states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and of course his native Georgia. He may find it harder to win in less conservative states. The fact is that, all over the country but especially in the South, conservatives despise Obama and are looking for a candidate who can eviscerate the President in the general election. Newt Gingrich who, in the debates in South Carolina, delivered scathing attacks on both Obama and Romney, seems now to be the southern conservative choice.
Showing yet again the power of television to sway the views of the people, those debates gave Gingrich the opportunity to resurrect his campaign one more time. His attacks on the media for intruding into his personal life and his insistence that people should actually work for a living blew his popularity off the charts. It enabled Gingrich to convince a plurality of South Carolina’s GOP voters that he is electable – a term which Romney had owned prior to Saturday’s primary.
Now – Newt has won a major victory, but what does that mean for the immediate future? Once again, because delegates in this early primary are awarded on a proportional basis, the victory will give him fewer delegates than would have been the case in 2008. However, his media boost will be phenomenal.
The media hates the idea of smooth progress toward the nomination. They yearn for uncertain outcomes and political dogfights – exactly what they got in South Carolina. We should expect to see editorials in the major papers pointing out important weaknesses in Romney’s campaign which were always there but which somehow they failed to write about until he lost to Gingrich. At the same time we should expect to see renewed attacks on Gingrich for his less than solidly conservative positions on issues like global warming or Paul Ryan’s debt proposal.
What the media outlets are hoping for is a knock down/drag out struggle in Florida and they are likely to get it. Florida is a whole different game from anything the candidates have faced so far in this election. It is the most important state among the early GOP primary contests.
The state is huge, in terms of both geography and population. Its people are diverse and it is the most important swing state in the coming general election. Conservative groups of various kinds have been strong in Florida in recent years but it remains to be seen whether enough of them will rally to Gingrich (remember there are still three conservative candidates in the race) to win the day.
It is distinctly possible that the underfunded Santorum campaign will give up the fight after Florida. But I expect Ron Paul to continue his struggle, counting on his deeply enthusiastic support base to keep him in the game, until one candidate amasses a majority of delegates or the primaries lead to a brokered convention.
Paul is clearly playing for a brokered result as that would maximize his leverage stemming from the delegates he will have won in the primaries and caucuses.
Unlike Santorum and Paul, the South Carolina Primary has actually given Gingrich a chance, albeit not a strong one, to win in Florida. It seems probable that one lesson Newt will have learned from South Carolina is that fierce negative attacks work. Given that he has a much smaller Florida statewide organization and far less money to spend than Romney, I expect Newt to show up in Tampa this week loaded for bear.
Watch to see how much new money flows to Newt now that he has a major scalp on his belt. For his part Romney has still to be considered the favorite in Florida but this could change quickly. He is unlikely ever to be able to convince a majority of conservatives that he is anything better than a center-right moderate. But Romney can develop better, clearer and more convincing rationales for his actions when at Bain capital.
Romney needs to publish his income tax returns in a manner which he can credibly claim is his own choice and not one forced on him by Gingrich and the media. However he needs to do it soon. Perhaps most importantly, Romney needs to regain for himself the banner of unique electability which is his greatest strength with conservatives.
Right now Romney is ahead in Florida by 18 points in the polls but Gingrich has the media momentum. Florida votes in ten days. If Romney wins by a substantial margin Gingrich will likely fade a bit. But a Gingrich win in Florida or even a very close second place finish will “fundamentally transform” the electoral game for Republicans.
Stan Escudero, Jan. 21, 2012
