How ‘Comeback Grandpa’ Gingrich Made a Sensational Reversal

Last week, Mitt Romney seemed well on the way to winning the Republican primaries. After the victory of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, everything is different. The furious Republican voters are on a roll.

A fight for the soul of America is the way candidate Mitt Romney described the presidential elections this year. Meanwhile, there have been three Republican primaries, with three different winners. A social conservative, a pragmatist and a populist. For now, America’s right is very capricious and unpredictable.

At the beginning of last week, Romney, the moderate and pragmatic conservative, seemed well on the way to settle the fight for the Republican candidacy for the presidency in an early stage. He was the winner of the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire and had a 20-point lead in the polls. If he would win there and subsequently in Florida, he would become the Republican challenger of President Obama in November. It was not to be.

Never did a front collapse so fast as Romney’s in South Carolina. Within five days, his 20-point lead changed into a 12-point defeat. Newt Gingrich got 40 percent and he 28 percent. Also, a recount showed that not Romney but Rick Santorum, the family values candidate, had won Iowa. The front runner was brought back down to earth.

The big question now is what the sensational reversal in South Carolina means for the future. Analysts are capable of explaining why things went wrong for Romney in South Carolina. It was not the ads in which Gingrich attached Romney’s past as investment capitalist, but two debates that turned the scales. In these, an aggressive Gingrich opened a populist attack on the elite. That turned the scaled for the conservative voters. Gingrich said on Saturday: “It’s not that I am a good debater. It’s that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people.”

The coming weeks will teach us whether he also understands what voters in Florida and other states want. And whether he will grow as the only candidate that can, in the name of the rebellious conservative Republican base, keep Romney away from the nomination.

Knock-out

No one knows. Florida, where the next primary is being held, is also a conservative state. But it is less religious than South Carolina. It is large, which could be an advantage for Romney, who has more money and is better organized than Gingrich. But the latter now has what each candidate dreams of: the “Big Mo,” the momentum. “Help me deliver the knockout punch in Florida. Join our Moneybomb and donate now,” Gingrich tweeted right after his victory.

The safest prediction is that the Republican nomination will take longer than was expected. “This is a hard fight because there is so much worth fighting for. We’ve still got a long way to go and a lot of work to do,” Romney said.

He hopes that Gingrich will continue to come under fire. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich finished in the back of the field, but now, as the front runner, he draws attention. He presents himself as a populist, who turns against Washington. But as former speaker of the House, he was simply an insider. Questions will also be asked about his character and marriages. Those doubts will not be as easily brushed aside as they were in South Carolina.

But Romney cannot feel assured. Gingrich does not mistakenly call himself the “comeback grandpa.” Furthermore, it is uncertain how voters will respond to the tax assessments Romney will release on Tuesday. It was proven once again on Saturday that the anger about politics among conservative voters is so great that it is unpredictable whether pragmatism or populism will win.