GOP contest continues to tighten up
Comments (...)The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Monday, Jan. 23:
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(MCT) — So Romney didn’t win the Iowa caucuses ...
The Republican presidential primary road started with a car lot full of candidates. After three diverse tests, voters tossed some models aside and narrowed it to two choices. Newt Gingrich’s surge to win South Carolina puts him in the driver’s seat as the only candidate with a realistic shot at stalling Mitt Romney’s cruise to the nomination.
Rick Santorum has failed to capitalize on his belatedly awarded win in Iowa, even with a South Carolina electorate perfectly set up for him. Ron Paul’s caucus-state strategy will ensure a drip of delegates but no clear path to victory. Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and now Rick Perry are hitchhiking home.
That leaves Gingrich, whose South Carolina triumph makes him the only realistic non-Romney alternative. The highway now runs through Florida, where GOP voters must choose between the faster, flashier and less reliable midlife-crisis sports car in Gingrich and the solid family sedan in Romney.
Gingrich zoomed from a double-digit deficit to a 12-point victory in less than a week in South Carolina to clarify the issue. Florida, the first winner-take-all GOP primary, is a closed vote with 57 delegates at stake. Romney and his super PAC have spent about $7 million there already in TV and direct mail, and early voting is under way. His remaining opponents have yet to invest significantly.
Florida is the first big-state test, with more projected GOP primary voters on Jan. 31 than Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina combined. It’s the most diverse state so far and, therefore, the one that would best reflect the challenges of a national campaign. What happens there will have a big impact down the road.
Exit polling from South Carolina shows Gingrich beat Romney among decisive subgroups: conservatives, women and late-deciders. Most important, Gingrich won among voters who rated electability a key factor.
That had been a Romney calling card. For now, the question of his inevitability disappears with it. Romney’s task, as he said himself, is now a long-slog win to face Barack Obama in November. No one will hand it to him.
To get there, Romney must rally from what must be considered the worst week of his years-long campaign. Gingrich’s debate performances certainly made a difference, but Romney cut off his own legs with an unsteady handling of questions on his private capital past that he had to have expected. Romney took a first step toward repair Sunday by announcing that he would release his 2010 tax return and an estimate of his 2011.
South Carolina Republicans said they were willing to ignore Gingrich’s volatile, erratic past for the RPMs of his gut-instinct campaign, his willingness to throw free-market capitalism under the bus for personal gain. Romney’s slower, steadier pace was left in the dust for the moment but has miles to go. The question is whether he can pass and hold a lead when the Gingrich express inevitably hits the skids.
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