CHARLESTON, S.C. — Just after the polls closed Saturday in
South Carolina, Hogan Gidley was talking to reporters inside Mark
Clark Hall at the Citadel, where Rick Santorum was holding his
campaign’s Primary Night celebration. Mitt Romney “was going to be
3 and 0 until three days ago,” said Gidley, communications director
for Santorum’s campaign, adding that the results of the past two
days — including the belated news that Santorum, not Romney, was
the winner of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses — had “blown a hole in
[Romney’s] inevitability.”
Newt Gingrich’s victory Saturday took away what was always
Romney’s strongest argument: That the former Massachusetts
governor’s well-funded campaign machinery made him the odds-on
favorite in the Republican field, capable of clinching the
nomination early in the primary process, thus uniting the party for
the battle to defeat President Obama. The perception of Romney’s
inevitability — as the “It’s His Turn” candidate whom GOP voters
have so often chosen as their presidential nominee — helped him
pile up a huge fundraising advantage over his rivals. Inevitability
also helped Romney garner endorsements from eminent pundits like
Ann Coulter and popular politicians like South Carolina Gov. Nikki
Haley. Despite his relatively moderate record, Romney was endorsed
by the conservative editors of National Review, who last
month mocked Gingrich with a cover story illustrated by a cartoon
depicting the former Georgia congressman as a ludicrous space
alien.
All of Romney’s advantages evidently counted for naught
when Palmetto State voters went to the polls Saturday, where they
delivered a shattering blow to any thought that the “inevitable”
Romney might lock up the nomination early. The prospect of a long
fight for the nomination now looms, and some have even
speculated about a “brokered convention” when Republican
delegates gather in Tampa in August. That’s a far-fetched scenario.
The last time the GOP had a brokered convention was when Thomas
Dewey won the 1948 nomination on the third ballot. But the mere
fact that it has been suggested indicates how Romney’s defeat in
South Carolina has revived the possibility that the 2012 Republican
campaign might be something other than the predictable coronation
of the party establishment’s choice. And the end of Romney’s aura
of inevitability came with astonishing swiftness.
After Romney won the New Hampshire primary Jan. 10, he
appeared to have overwhelming momentum.
A Rasmussen poll taken Jan. 16 — the Monday when former Utah
Gov. Jon Huntsman quit the race and endorsed Romney — showed
Romney leading Gingrich in South Carolina by 14 points. When the
votes were counted Saturday night, however, Gingrich won by more
than 12 points. This apparent 26-point swing from Romney to
Gingrich was driven by late-deciding voters who, according to exit
polls, broke decisively toward Gingrich, and was almost entirely
attributable to his strong showing in the televised debates last
week. But in his victory speech Saturday, the former college
professor put his own interpretation on that obvious factor. “It’s
not that I’m a good debater,” Gingrich told his cheering
supporters. “It is that I articulate the deepest-held values of the
American people.”
Such are the “grandiose thoughts” of the man who, as the
Romney campaign pointed out in a press release last week, has
compared himself to famed leaders like Moses, Abraham Lincoln,
Woodrow Wilson, Charles de Gaulle, and even the 13th-city Scottish
warrior William Wallace, who inspired the movie
Braveheart. Gingrich’s tendency to envision himself as a
towering colossus of world-historic significance, a man so
transcendently important to the fate of humankind that he cannot be
judged by the standards that apply to mere mortals, is one reason
why some conservatives are uncomfortable with the idea of Gingrich
as the GOP nominee. Santorum expressed the nub of that discomfort
in Thursday’s debate: “I served with him. I was there. I knew what
the problems were going on in the House of Representatives when
Newt Gingrich was leading there. It was an idea a minute, no
discipline, no ability to be able to pull things together.”
Referring to his own work to expose the House banking scandal,
Santorum said Gingrich knew about the abuses but “did nothing,
because you didn’t have the courage to stand up to your own
leadership.”
These were strong words coming from a fellow Republican,
but evidently did not persuade South Carolinians against voting for
Gingrich. And when the victor emerged triumphant Saturday night, he
was magnanimous toward Santorum, specifically praising the
third-place finisher for the quality that the former Pennsylvania
senator had accused Gingrich of lacking. “Rick Santorum showed
enormous courage in Iowa when he had no money, nobody covered him,
and he just kept campaigning,” Gingrich said, inspiring someone in
the audience to shout “V.P.” But Santorum seemed indifferent to the
intended compliment, and uninterested in being the running mate on
a Gingrich-led ticket. In a
Sunday morning interview on ABC’s This Week, Santorum
called Gingrich ideologically “erratic” and “a high-risk candidate”
for Republicans, and dismissed the argument made by some
conservatives that they must unite behind Gingrich in order to
prevent Romney from winning the nomination. “I’ve
beaten Mitt Romney,” Santorum told George Stephanopoulos, referring
to his win in the Iowa caucuses, which wasn’t officially confirmed
until 17 days after he edged Romney there. “Newt Gingrich has
beaten Mitt Romney. The idea that conservatives have to coalesce in
order to beat Mitt Romney, well, that’s just not true anymore.
Conservatives actually can have a choice.”
Santorum’s vow to continue campaigning, with the
expectation that Republican voters will eventually rally to him as
the “consistent conservative,” provoked mockery from Democrat
strategist James Carville. Appearing on CNN Saturday night,
Carville called Santorum a “headless chicken” who had been
decapitated by finishing third in South Carolina:
“Everyone knows that a
headless chicken is dead except the
chicken.” Carville has an especially personal hatred for Santorum,
who in 1994 won his Senate seat with an upset defeat of Democrat
Sen. Harris Wofford, whose campaign was directed by Carville and
Paul Begala, who had been previously credited with masterminding
Bill Clinton’s 1992 election. And even as Carville was evoking
laughter on the CNN set with his barnyard humor, Santorum’s
campaign was releasing the allegedly dead candidate’s schedule for
the next two days. By 2 p.m. Sunday, Santorum was holding a
town-hall meeting in Coral Spring, Florida.
Many candidates have risen and fallen in
this long struggle for the Republican nomination. Gingrich’s
campaign was twice written off as doomed, first when his staff
exited en masse in June, and again after he finished
fourth in Iowa, where he was buried under an avalanche of attack
ads. Gingrich placed fifth in New Hampshire, but it was Huntsman,
the third-place finisher in the Granite State, who quit the race
six days later. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had refused to drop out
after placing fifth in Iowa, waited until two days before the South
Carolina primary to quit and endorse Gingrich — the same day it
was learned that Santorum and not Romney had won Iowa. Meanwhile
the libertarian-themed campaign of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who placed
second in New Hampshire, still has a strong base of donors and
activists that cannot be neglected as a force to influence the 2012
race. Paul’s campaign indirectly helped Romney by piling onto
Gingrich with attack ads in Iowa, then gave the same sort of
indirect boost to Gingrich by slamming Santorum with attacks in
South Carolina. And one member of Romney’s campaign staff told me
Friday that they expect Paul to be a formidable contender in caucus
states like Nevada, which votes Feb. 4.
In less than three weeks, the GOP field
has been winnowed from seven candidates to four, and each remaining
campaign argues that it can keep going for many more weeks.
(Santorum, whom many critics dismiss as lacking the financial
resources for a long campaign, raised more than $1 million in a
72-hour online “money bomb” last week.) No one can doubt the
possibility for further sudden changes in this campaign year of
unprecedented turbulence.
It was raining in South Carolina when
Gingrich claimed his victory Saturday night in Columbia, and the
sky in Charleston was still overcast with heavy clouds early
Sunday. But by then the Republican candidates had already flown to
Florida and, whatever the weather there might be, the campaign in
the Sunshine State will be free from the previously gloomy shadow
of “inevitability.”
