• South Carolina GOP primary results
Where does the Republican race go from here?
The first thing to note about the South Carolina primary results is that, in huge contrast to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, turnout was up—way, way up—from 2008. In Iowa turnout was up 3%, in New Hampshire 4%; you could make the argument that non-Ron Paul turnout (and many Ron Paul voters in those states identified as Independents or Democrats) was actually down. Contra, South Carolina. With 99% of precincts reporting, turnout was 600,421, up 35% from the 2008 figure of 445,677. That’s a huge increase. And 71% of these voters identified as Republicans, 25% as Independents. This is a sign of the kind of balance of enthusiasm advantage that Republicans held over Democrats in the 2010 offyear elections. Yes, South Carolina is a safe Republican state in general elections. Even so, John McCain carried the state by just 54%-45% in 2008, while losing neighboring North Carolina 50%-49% and carrying neighboring Georgia by only 52%-47%. The implication from these numbers is that the balance of enthusiasm favors Republicans very much more now than it did four years ago—and that North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes are now out of Barack Obama’s reach.
The best speech of election night came from the rather distant third-place finisher Rick Santorum. “Three states, three winners, what a great country,” he began, finally getting some mileage from the ramshackle Iowa Republican party’s decision, announced on Thursday, 16 days after the caucuses, that he had actually finished 34 votes ahead of Mitt Romney instead of 8 votes behind (with eight precincts’ results unreported and, !, supposedly irretrievable). Santorum insisted that he would go on not only to Florida—which he suggested might not be his strongest turf, it being next door to Newt Gingrich’s Georgia, although Gingrich’s old congressional districts in metro Atlanta are hundreds of miles and several media markets away from any substantial cluster of Florida primary votes—but beyond. He was gracious in congratulating Gingrich on his victory, much more than Romney had been, but made his case solidly: in his conservatism he is less erratic and risky than Gingrich and more solid and true than Romney. A deft comparison, and one backed up by what he has been saying in debates, including the Thursday night CNN debate in North Charleston in which his good performance probably vaulted him ahead of Ron Paul in the South Carolina returns. He argued that his background and experience in winning in Pennsylvania makes him a stronger general election candidate than either—you have to set aside his 59%-41% defeat in Pennsylvania in 2006 to concede this point—and that his determination to speak to Reagan Democrats, to appeal to people who value work and stand up for the truth of marriage, family and instilling virtues in the next generation of children make him the strongest general election candidate. You can disagree with this analysis, as I tend to do, but it is arguable and, more important, provides him an intellectually defensible basis for soldiering on in Florida and afterwards. And, even more important, it provides him a basis for advancing a critique of Gingrich’s leadership skills, as he did in no uncertain terms in the Thursday night debate.
Mitt Romney’s election night message, delivered half an hour or so earlier, was less compelling. He noted, a little more than perfunctorily, that he congratulated Newt Gingrich on his victory, and then went on to condemn “some Republicans” (which would include Gingrich and Rick Perry, but the latter withdrew from the race Thursday morning) who have been demonizing free enterprise. None of the other candidates, he said, have ever run a business or a state, he said, ignoring (probably defensibly) Ron Paul’s medical practice, and “those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against them tomorrow.” He also paid tribute, as he has consistently on the stump, to the ideas of the Founding Fathers and argued that we need a merit or opportunity society rather than an entitlement society: most of his speech was directed against Barack Obama. But it sounds like much of his message in Florida will be directed against the anti-Bain Capital message which Newt Gingrich was delivering ten days or so ago, but which he has under challeng largely though not convincingly dropped. Romney’s robust lead in current Florida polls, and the fact that perhaps 10% of the votes there have been cast already by absentee ballot or in early voting, gives him a boost. But it’s not hard to imagine the Florida numbers turning against him rapidly, as they did in South Carolina. Florida is not nearly as Southern a state as South Carolina culturally, and its registered Republicans have a significantly smaller number of evangelical Christians as was the case in the enlarged electorate in South Carolina, where the turnout is not limited by party registration. But Romney has to expand on the parts of Florida he carried in 2008—metro Jacksonville and the southern Gulf Coast around Fort Myers and Naples—in order to win what is effectively a three- or two-and-a-half-candidate race (with some votes drawn off from Ron Paul). A defense of free enterprise, even coupled with a vigorous championing of the Founding Fathers, plus key endorsements from Cuban-American politicians in Miami-Dade County, may not be enough.
Newt Gingrich earned his triumphant night at the podium, and yet seemed a bit less ebullient and disciplined that I expected. He called General James Livingsgton, who had switched from Rick Perry to him on Wedneday, a Medal of Honor “winner”—though those who have received this award (as one assured me in South Carolina in the 2000 cycle) insist that they are not winners but simply recipients: the idea is that no one seeks an award for such astonishing bravery but only humbly receives it. Gingrich went on at greater length than any political consultant would advise—but then he has resurrected his campaign not once but twice since his original consultants left him—and paid gracious tribute to his opponents, including not only Santorum and Romney but also Ron Paul.
But in the process he embraced causes and took on issues which may not prove sustainable in the Republican contest or the general election. He agreed with Ron Paul on “fiat money” and the Federal Reserve; he made several efforts to go after Ron Paul supporters, which could end him up in hot water later. He presented the general election as a contest between the values of Saul Alinsky and the Founding Fathers. He made generous reference to the Founders, the Declaration and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers as well. He made an interesting point about the “anti-religious bigotry of the elites” and attacked a recent decision by a federal judge in San Antonio who, he said, threatened to put a school superintendent in jail if students said they were praying, saying a benediction or mentioning God. Sounds like a dumb decision—the First Amendment bars a federal establishment of religion and then guarantees the free exercise thereof—but is this really a national issue of prime importance, or just one dumb judge sounding off? He said that no American president should bow to a Saudi king (not a bad general election point) and harshly criticized Barack Obama’s decision, criticized by the mild-mannered economics writer Robert Samuelson as “insane,” to disapprove the Keystone XL pipeline. “Obama is so weak he makes Carter look strong,” Gingrich said, close to the end of his remarks.
Gingrich has long argued that Republicans should emphasize issues on which 70% of Americans are on their side, but he has not always been astute about which issues on which his positions command such support. His victory in South Carolina was a victory not only over Romney and Santorum and Paul, but also over the news media, and signaled (more than I thought at the time) by the standing ovations he received from the audiences in the Fox News and CNN debates from questions by Juan Williams and John King (although neither is personally hated by Republican voters in the same way many others in what we call mainstream media are). In the 1992 campaign cycle Robert McDowell, then a Washington lawyer and now a Federal Communications Commissioner, distributed bumper stickers reading, “Annoy the media—vote for Bush.” At the time I thought was as strong an argument for reelecting Bush as any the Bush campaign was advancing. But it wasn’t enough, to say the least. Gingrich seems to me to have won the South Carolina primary, and by a handsome majority, on an “annoy the media” platform. But is that enough to win the nomination, or the presidency? And does taking on peripheral issues like anti-religious bigotry and fiat money, however cogent the intellectual arguments therefor, get him closer to the first goal or the second? I wonder.
I expect Gingrich to get a boost in the Florida polls from his impressive victory in South Carolina. And I think Mitt Romney needs more than he showed tonight to maintain his lead in the polls. But I think Rick Santorum has gone at least some way to keep himself in the race. And I wonder whether others who have thought a Gingrich nomination would be disastrous to the Republican party will join the Washington Post’s Right Turn blogger Jennifer Rubin, who has been caustically critical of Gingrich, in wondering about “the potential for a new candidate in the race.”
