FROM THE DESK OF: The Happiest Guy in Florida
BY: Taft Matney
As the sun rose over Florida this morning, just a day removed from the South Carolina primary, there’s no doubt that the happiest guy in the state is Newt Gingrich.
Forget about the piles of direct mail and robocalls in South Carolina. Think about how crazy last week was.
It started on Monday morning with voters and candidates alike believing that Mitt Romney had won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, making him 2-0 coming in to South Carolina.
Let’s be honest. At that point the race was Governor Romney’s to lose. He was poised to win South Carolina 35% to 26% over Gingrich and head to Florida as the presumptive GOP nominee. All he had to do was maintain.
Then, one by one, the wheels fell off the bus.
Monday Night, in the Myrtle Beach debate, he was first hit with the question about releasing his taxes. By completely blowing the answer and coming off as if he had something to hide, it became the defining issue of the week.
No worries for the Romney camp, though. After all, they’d have nearly three days to come up with a better answer for the debate in Charleston where the question was sure to come up again. Right?
OK, so the media asked him on Tuesday and Wednesday to clarify his position on releasing his taxes, to which he replied that he pays a roughly 15% rate, and for some reason he couldn’t figure out how to explain that he’s actually “between jobs” – having been unemployed since 2007.
On Thursday morning, Governor Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed Speaker Gingrich.
Fast forward to Thursday night when, in another nationally televised debate, somebody had the gall to again ask Governor Romney about releasing his tax records. Lucky for him, his team used the past 72 hours to come up with a great comeback if asked if he would release his tax returns in the tradition that his father started. “Maybe,” he responded. That’ll show ‘em, Mitt…or not, as a chorus of boos erupted from the audience.
Never mind the fact that another network was preparing to broadcast an interview with Speaker Gingrich’s second ex-wife that claimed he asked her for an open marriage so he could pursue a relationship the Callista, his current wife.
Did anybody think to capitalize on that? After all, we’re talking about South Carolina where politics is a gladiator sport. Guess not.
Of course there were also the fake emails on Friday. There was the one in the morning that was supposedly from CNN claiming that Speaker Gingrich forced his second ex-wife to have an abortion. CNN had to make several statements saying that the email didn’t come from them, but that didn’t deter the political tricksters who, later that day, sent another fake email to South Carolina Republicans.
By this time the tide had more than turned, and on Saturday, with the aid of Democrats and independents who boastfully voted Republican for the day, a record 601,577 turned out to vote.
Flipping what the polls showed at the beginning of the week, Gingrich bettered Romney 40% – 28% and sent the four remaining campaigns to Florida with only Ron Paul not having a win under his belt.
The bottom line is that the man who started the week as the presumptive nominee now had the same number of wins as Gingrich and Santorum.
Comparatively, Romney spent little time in the state and through a combination of his own actions and inactions, giving up South Carolina was Romney’s own doing. South Carolina wasn’t a big piece of his strategy. His staff was minimal, and a lack of outreach to potential volunteers was not an effective way to build support.
On the other hand, after having his consultants quit his campaign earlier in the year, Gingrich had an effective staff that worked well with activists, provided accessibility to the media, and built a strong ground game.
While it was a roller coaster of a week with ups, downs, twists, and turns, it was also just another week in South Carolina politics. One thing’s for sure, today Newt Gingrich is they happiest guy in the state of Florida.
