So all of Romney's massive ad buy, organization and surrogates evaporate in the momentum of the national race. Rasmussen, which is best at capturing the GOP base, is particularly instructive. Twelve days ago, it gave Romney a 22 percent lead. Now it gives Gingrich a 9 point lead. That swing is simply ginormous. How does Romney stop it in nine days?
My gut feeling: he can't.
Nope:
[Romney] only plans to release his return for 2010 and an estimate of his returns for 2011. That might have been enough prior to the controversy. George W. Bush only released one year of his tax returns. But it won’t work now. As Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith tweeted, “Releasing the 2010 returns is just blood in the water. What about the previous 20 years?”
That's especially true given his father's example.
Insider Advantage (pdf) and Rassmussen both have Gingrich ahead by 9 in Florida. A highlight from Rassmussen:
Throughout the GOP race, Romney has always benefited from the perception that he was the strongest general election candidate in the field. However, among Florida voters at the moment, that is no longer the case. Forty-two percent (42%) now believe Gingrich would be the strongest candidate against Obama, while 39% say the same of Romney.
Ed Morrissey digs into the cross tabs:
Gingrich gets the edge on national security by a wide margin, 54/23, probably due in part to his tough talk on, well, everything. Republican voters trust Romney more on managing the economy, 45/30, and they tie on social issues at 30% each. If this was supposed to be a cycle that was all about the economy, it’s remarkable that Romney isn’t doing better than Gingrich with a 15-point lead there and a tie on social issues. Is national security really that much of a worry about Romney?
Yesterday, Josh Marshall pointed out that Gingrich was almost 30 points ahead of Romney in Florida a little over a month ago:
[I]t’s no coincidence that Newt’s support rose faster and further in Florida than in any of the other four early states. It tells me Florida is ripe ground for Newt to do really well.
(Chart from TPM.)
Irin Carmon celebrates a new regulation from the Obama administration:
[T]he Affordable Care Act requires that “preventative care” be fully covered, with no co-pay, under new insurance plans, and the Department of Health and Human Services accepted recommendations that put all forms of contraception in that category. If you care about lowering the rate of unintended pregnancies, making birth control affordable and accessible should be one of your major goals, right? Wrong. Catholic and other antiabortion organizations immediately raised a stink, demanding a broader opt-out from the new regulations, since they wouldn’t qualify under the limited “religious organization” exemption. In other words, they wanted to deny birth control coverage to the women and men who work for Catholic hospitals or universities, regardless of their personal views on contraception.
Grace-Marie Turner calls the rule "dangerous to the very fabric of our society." Sarah Posner counters:
Churches and other houses of worship have always been exempt from the requirement. But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had pressured the Obama administration to expand that exemption to other religious institutions, including hospitals and universities, arguing that the rule infringed on their religious freedom.
John McCormack looks at the mixed polling on the issue.
Josh Marshall doesn't think Gingrich can win:
It would be quite difficult for Newt Gingrich to beat President Obama. The bigger story is that he would likely devastate the congressional Republican party. He’d probably weigh down the GOP up and down the ticket. And that puts the whole thing in much sharper relief for Republican officeholders, committee chairs and money folks. If I’m right about that, that means they have to and will do virtually everything possible now to crush Gingrich and make Romney the nominee.
Jonathan Bernstein agrees:
Newt Gingrich remains almost as implausible a nominee as he’s been from the beginning of the campaign. He’s still the guy who has flipped on issue after issue after issue, including individual mandates on health care and climate change. He’s still someone who has ethics problems, and marital problems (yes, still). He’s still someone who isn’t much liked or trusted by those Republicans who worked with him when he was in office. He’s still someone who rarely goes a week without saying something that gets him in trouble. He’s still someone who has shown no ability to run a proper campaign — and while that doesn’t always matter, as we saw Saturday night, it’s apt to matter in some states, and in a hypothetical tough delegate battle, that matters.
So does Larison:
Gingrich isn’t going to be the nominee. The Republican primary electorate can’t be that stupid.
Chait differs:
Like almost everybody outside Gingrich's immediate family, I had already written him off twice. But he really seems okay. If some really crazy rich conservatives decide to write him some seven- or eight-figure checks, who knows?
Sean Trende believes Gingrich's South Carolina victory "absolutely will be repeated in state after state if something doesn’t change the basic dynamic of the race":
That’s not to say that Romney’s money and organization don’t give him advantages — they do. He remains the GOP front-runner, in my view, because it isn’t clear how well Gingrich can survive the long haul. But there’s a not-insubstantial chance, call it 35 percent, that Romney won’t be the nominee.
John Cassidy agrees that Romney isn't inevitable:
the main reason I think Newt could win is what is happening to Mitt's campaign. Outside of his own backyard, the former Massachusetts governor has yet to win more than twenty-seven per cent of the vote. At this stage, he is beginning to look ominously like another establishment favorite from the North East who had everything going for him except the voters in his own party: Ed Muskie.
Ed Morrissey calls Florida a "a survival state for Romney":
Losing South Carolina will undermine confidence in Romney’s ability to close the deal, especially by getting beaten so badly by Gingrich, who was third in polling two weeks ago and finished fourth and fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively. If Romney struggles in Florida, Gingrich might not need a lot of organization in the following couple of weeks to start winning races, no matter how many resources Romney throws at those states.
Henry Olsen thinks the Latino vote could boost Gingrich in Florida:
[Florida is] the only state where Latinos cast a significant percentage of the vote in the GOP primary, about 12 percent in 2008. Then, Romney got clobbered 50-16 by John McCain. Newt has started to run ads on Spanish stations in Miami alleging Romney is anti-immigrant, and Newt’s notably more compassionate line towards illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for a long time might pay pay dividends here.
Jazz Shaw says Gingrich is more stable than his foes suggest:
The common theme among many – particularly Santorum supporters – is that all they really need to do is wait for a while and Newt will blow himself up and go away. I mean, he always does, right? Well, Newt’s combustible tendencies may be real, but they haven’t managed a feat of self-immolation yet. Every time he says or does something which veteran observers think will be a fatal shot to his own foot, he somehow manages to turn it into a positive and gets standing ovations from the base.
Seth Masket thinks the Gingrich-Romney showdown will test whether GOP elites really determine primary elections:
If Gingrich were to somehow win the nomination, that would be pretty astounding, and we'd have to say that the system has changed. Perhaps the overwhelming number of debates changed the dynamic, and party insiders didn't control those as well as they can control primaries. Perhaps the rise of Super PACs made a difference, allowing a very, very small number of eccentric wealthy people to have inordinate influence over the contests.
Andrew Romano says Obama won on Saturday night:
[A Gingrich nomination] would be the luckiest thing that has ever happened to Obama. The amateurness of Gingrich’s candidacy is obscured when he’s on the debate stage, which is where most voters have encountered him. But on the trail, it’s unavoidable. As I wrote Saturday, “the level of nontraditionalness on display [at Newt’s campaign events is], to borrow a phrase, utterly profound—so profound, frankly, that it makes it hard to imagine Gingrich ever really being able to ramp up and go toe to toe with President Obama’s ultrasophisticated reelection operation.”
Jonathan Cohn isn't celebrating:
Maybe the Gingrich schtick stops working outside of South Carolina and the Republican base – and maybe, if he somehow won the nomination, he’d be the gift to Democrats that everybody supposes. That's the safe bet. But in a year that’s already proven so unpredictable, how can anybody be sure?
Andrew Sprung sympathizes:
Yes, an unstable demagogue should be a lot easier for Obama to beat than a candidate who'd make a plausible president — e.g., judging by past work product, Romney. But in a two-party system, either party nominating an unstable demagogue is a danger to democracy, both because any incumbent can be beat if economic conditions are bad enough or if catastrophe strikes, and because the takeover of one major party by extremists, reactionaries and hatemongers means we are always on the knife's edge. The counter-argument, often expressed by Sullivan, is that only by electing an extremist and getting its clock cleaned can a party submerged in its own ideology be dragged back to the center. That may have worked in the case of Goldwater. But Goldwater was a sober statesman compared to Gingrich, Perry, Palin.
Jennifer Rubin pens an open letter to Republican leaders:
It seems, gentlemen, it’s time to get off your .?.?. er .?.?. time to get off the bench and into the game. It is time to make the case for winning conservatism — a conservatism attractive to centrist voters that can be translated into a reform agenda. If conservatism becomes a movement of anti-media bashing and hyperbolic rhetoric, it will cease to be a force in American politics. And if it is led by an egomaniac whose personal advancement takes precedence over any principle, the GOP will be (correctly) mocked.
Pejman Yousefzadeh urges Romney to unload on Gingrich:
[A] reason why Gingrich won is that Romney has been playing it safe, believing that the nomination will be his, and that he can train his fire on President Obama. That thought should be banished from Romney’s head; he has to use the upcoming contests to decisively put away his competition. He can do so by going on the offensive against Gingrich, who actually represents a target-rich environment for Romney.
Romney is already taking that advice. Peter Lawler doubts it will be effective:
Negative campaigning against Newt, I fear, is like chemo: It won’t work as well the second time. His line that all the charges against him are part of the dispicable media plot to destroy him and all other decent men who run for president has taken hold. There’s also the problem that Romney won’t be so good in bringing the charges in person.
Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik anticipate a campaign that goes until at least March:
Gingrich will fight hard, using elite opposition to him as a battle cry that has resonance with rank-and-file party members still smarting over the establishment’s “imposition” of John McCain in 2008. That makes the White House happy, even though it is not obvious that a long campaign is automatically bad for Romney. After Mitt’s self-inflicted wounds over releasing his tax returns during last week’s debates and stumbling answers on some other topics, it’s clear that Romney needs plenty of training before any fall showdown with Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton made Obama a better candidate during the 2008 slog; Gingrich might do the same for Romney. Or Romney and Gingrich might destroy each other, with Paul and Santorum, if he remains in the race, inflicting additional wounds on the eventual nominee.
Dave Weigel checks Sherman Cainbert's vote total:
Five of the candidates on South Carolina's ballot had suspended their campaigns before the vote; Herman Cain was the first to do so. And yet he got 6,324 votes, more than all the other drop-outs put together. Stephen Colbert's Super PAC "campaign" for Cain inspired real, carbon-based humans to come out and vote for Cain as a joke. (BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray actually met some of these people.) In Charleston, where Colbert and Cain held a pre-vote rally, Cain actually came in at 2.3 percent, better than twice as good as he did statewide.
Nate Silver wonders whether the rules of the game have changed:
My view is that Mr. Gingrich’s win in South Carolina alone is not enough to be paradigm-breaking. But if he follows it with a win in Florida, all bets are off. Not only would that represent further evidence of Mr. Gingrich’s strength, it would suggest that we had been weighing the evidence incorrectly all along.
And John Heilemann predicts GOP panic should Gingrich continue winning:
If Gingrich wins Florida, the Republican Establishment is going to have a meltdown that makes Three Mile Island look like a marshmallow roast.
Jeffrey Frank examines the trajectory of the GOP:
In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California’s Commonwealth Club, was asked if he’d like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment—the sort that has since taken place—and he replied, "I think it would be a great tragedy . . . if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line." He continued, "I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion." Therefore, "when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people."
Ten months before the general election, the increasingly angry, suspicious, and divided party of Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry seems ever more immersed in its current orthodoxies. None of the candidates, though, seem the least bit interested in even addressing how they, or their party, might actually govern the "whole people" of a fractious nation.
Emily Badger talks to Phil Bernstein, a lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture, about the future of construction. Bernstein wants to reform an industry that's changed little over the last 50 years:
Today, small tripod-mounted lasers are coming online that can scan rooms and buildings in a single day and turn them into digital models. Such models can then be compared against digital plans for a building’s construction, replacing the old-fashioned method of eyeballing it. … Imagine scanning a construction site at the end of each day for such a precise diagnosis (and then paying the contractor for exactly the 8 percent of the project his firm had completed that day). "That’s a huge idea," Bernstein says.
Along the same lines, Robert Krulwich recently marveled at "flight assembled architecture," a structure built by flying robots:
As humans (none of them, I presume, in the construction trades) applauded and gaped, four helicopterish thingies swooped through the air, somehow avoiding each other, and one by one, settled on some "brick dispensers." Using small plungers they then plucked one brick at a time, carried each to the "building site" and slowly created a wall. It took a few days, but what emerged is a twisting, undulating tower, designed by Swiss architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler.
Our sense of smell helps us pick genetically suitable mates and tell healthy individuals from the unhealthy. But we've learned to beat the system:
Very early in our human history, we began to take advantage of smells produced elsewhere in nature to perfume our bodies. We think of perfume as lovely in moderation, but there is another way to think of perfume, as a way to cheat. When you apply deodorant or perfume, you are covering up the odors produced by your bacteria with an odor regarded as pleasant, at least to the conscious brain and perhaps, if the perfume and deodorant companies have done their jobs, to the subconscious too, which is important since that seems to be where the decisions are being made.
(Photo by Tim Dorr)
I would quite like to see an Obama-Gingrich election. It's not that Mr Gingrich would be the best president. But watching Mitt Romney pivot to the centre with the smoothness of a consultant flipping to his next slide, a manoeuvre we can all expect him to execute the minute he wraps up the nomination, will be depressingly predictable. The perception that he will say whatever he feels he must to become president is not founded on sand. Mr Gingrich, by contrast, can almost certainly be counted on to be the same Mr Gingrich we've seen in the primaries. Say what you like about the man, but he has ideas, says arresting things, and most of all, would make the clearest possible contrast with Barack Obama in the general election.
Tim Maudlin pops a certain science fiction bubble:
What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence.
(Chart from The Economist)
The Dish 