Newt Gingrich entered tonight’s Fox News Republican South Carolina Debate with lots of work to do. In football terms, he was down two touchdowns in the fourth quarter of a must-win game.
After one of the best (possibly the best) debate performances of the endless season, he is now down one touchdown with about 7:00 to play. Romney is still the favorite, but Newt is in position to at least keep the newsfolk up late on Saturday if he can repeat his performance on Thursday.
The Gingrich superPAC should immediately cease running King of Bain and start running debate clips. While Newt’s concept of a fall campaign based around Lincoln-Douglas debates is a stretch, Gingrich definitely comes off better in this format than any other way.
Reviews on the others:
Mitt Romney: Romney often takes up huge chunks of time at the beginning of a debate and this was no exception. For awhile it seemed like he would run out the clock and fillibuster his way through the debate. The second half was another matter, as Gingrich continually scored. This is where Romney’s polling lead is so helpful. He doesn’t need to do well, just not terribly and avoid horrible gaffes.
For maximum safety, Romney needs a bit stronger performance next time, to ensure that a repeat performance won’t vault Newt over him to a comeback victory. Interestingly, many of his better answers were on Bain-related questions, not as likely to dominate the next debate. If this debate proved anything it was the less Bain is discussed, the better for the non-Romneys.
Rick Santorum: Santorum had two challenges; distinguish himself from Gingrich as the primary conservative non-Romney and face off with Romney to show he is a legitimate opponent. Ironically, Romney had reason to root for Santorum to succeed, increasing the odds of splitting the conservative vote and giving Romney a South Carolina win. While anything is possible, absent a bigger surge than in Iowa, Santorum’s best-case scenario is a second place finish.
Santorum got about a third of the way to his goal. He did go head-to-head with Romney a couple of times, most notably on voting rights for felons (didn’t have that one on my drinking game list), and acquitted himself fairly well, causing the best programmed debater in American history to fumble over his answer.
Ron Paul: While I’m convinced a larger than commonly accepted percentage of Republicans are at least sympathetic to if not totally in sync with Paul’s foreign policy views, he’s still better off when the focus is the deficit, sound money, etc. The Paul economic program is arguably the most suitable for a large chunk of the Republican audience and he didn’t get much time to talk about it. Instead, he spent several minutes debating when and under what condidions it was acceptable to kill Osama.
As usual, there is no chance a devoted Paulista found anything in his debate performance to make them even slightly waver. He probably didn’t do much to help build support with undecided/non-committed voters. A greater focus on economics in the Thursday debate and Paul still has a chance to approach 20% of the vote and finish a fairly strong third.
Rick Perry: Perry had a solid effort. Gingrich won’t study tapes of Perry, looking for ways to become a better debater, but the Texas Governor is going out in style. If he is headed for a fifth place finish (which seems likely) and an exit from the race, Perry will have at least proven to himself that he was capable of improving. His supporters are probably very frustrated this version was not available in September.
Again, any benefit to Perry from doing well is a bigger favor to Romney, as most Perry votes would otherwise arrive in the Gingrich or Santorum column. If the 5-8% of voters supporting him in the polls stick with Perry on Saturday, and Newt winds up losing by 1 or 2%, it will be interesting to see how Gingrich frames it.
On to Thursday…..if nothing else, Newt did well enough to make it matter. He’ll need an even stronger encore to save his chance of winning the primary.
Related Items:
South Carolina Primary Blog: Runaway Train
Fox News South Carolina Debate Drinking Game
Debate Doubleheader Recap: It’s All About the Moderators
I read lots of commentaries by many who consider themselves “politically versed”
but I take my hat out to you — this time— I totally agree — NEWT hit it off the park. The only thing I regret is no one is addressing the following : while NEWT was getting hammered by Mit’s PACs while in IOWA no one from the left or right raised hell like they are now about NEWT’s PAC. It makes me wonder sometimes where are peoples sense of balance ? The very first that came out of the mouth of FOX moderator was — Hey NEWT why are you attacking Mit ? My answer would be — where were you bastards when NEWT was getting creamed by MIT’s cronies in Iowa.?.
I see Rick Perry is dropping out today. He doesn’t seem to have enough supporters to make a real difference, but it does create better focus for those still in.
My wife and I watched the last debate on youtube. Since we don’t have cable we couldn’t watch it live (and for whatever reason the streaming feed wouldn’t work on either PC). She took notes. We’re both still undecided, but you won’t see us in any poll, because we don’t have a home phone anymore. I wonder how much the movement away from landline phones skews polls.
Hopefully we can stream tonight’s debate.
Hi Bob—been out of commission the past couple days, just getting ready to post something. Newt’s comeback is both more and less amazing than people think. The amazing part is that he went from a good 10 points down to a lead based on one debate. If he was an unproven entity, that would be one thing, but he’s a very established political figure (to put it mildly).
On the other hand, he has a considerable home-field advantage, which isn’t being commented on anywhere near as much as Santorum’s advantage with social conservatives in Iowa or Romney in New Hampshire. South Carolinians are far more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, and were apparently just looking for Newt to give them a reason to believe again. If Newt actually gets elected, expect more volatile approval ratings than normal.
Given the weather forecast for the midlands and the upstate, I think Newt is going to win tomorrow, with 33 percent of the vote or more.
Newt 36, Mitt 32, Rick 17, Ron 15