A tightening race: Rick Santorum (l.) and Newt Gingrich (r.) gained on Mitt Romney in last night’s debate in South Carolina. (AP)
After the first South Carolina debate, everyone was astonished that Newt Gingrich managed to get a standing ovation. Last night, he got two in the opening minutes. It has become a formula: 1) Watch a debate moderator ask Gingrich a hostile question; 2) Watch Gingrich filet the moderator and uncork an epic answer; 3) Watch the crowd go wild.
CNN’s John King opened by addressing directly what had dominated the political chatter all day: the ABC News interview airing later in the night with Gingrich’s second ex-wife Marianne, who claims he wanted an open marriage. It seemed an issue that should have been raised obliquely, if at all. King instead explicitly brought it up and asked Newt if he would like to respond.
Newt replied, “No, but I will,” and then unloosed thunderous cascades of righteous indignation about the superficiality, insensitivity and iresponisbility of the media. The answer was fully of characteristic peppery Gingrich words, like “astounded,” “despicable,” “destructive” and “vicious.” The crowded roared its approval and it felt like that debate was over before it began.
Once again, Gingrich had demonstrated his ability to play at a different level in these forums than his competitors. Once again, he’d created the moment that would reverberate throughout the next 24 hours of debate analysis. Once again, he’d trashed the villian perhaps most hated by Republican voters: the biased, supercilious news media.
If Gingrich wins South Carolina — which seems increasingly likely — he’ll have the debate moderators he used as convenient foils, first Juan Williams and then King, to thank.
The rest of the night was compelling and worthwhile, too. With half the field stripped away, the four remaining contenders have more room to breath, for better or worse.
Mitt Romney is playing the safe frontrunner’s game, but doesn’t quite have a frontrunner’s stature. The extended run of debates has diminished him a bit. He seems too reliant on his rote lines. They’re fine and safe by definition and usually get some applause. But he can’t be as rousing as Gingrich, as scrappy as Rick Santorum or as principled as Ron Paul.
At one point, Romney all but said that Gingrich was lying about his record on abortion, yet couldn’t summon a sense of anger about it.
He’s too polite. At his best, he’s fluid and self-confident and projects a sense of serene competence. At his worst, he seems too eager to say the right thing and downright slippery.
For the second debate, he stammered his way through an answer about when he’s going to release his tax returns. He again said he’ll release them in April when he completes this year’s return. “My taxes are carefully managed,” he said at one point. No doubt.
As Gingrich pointed out, though, April is too late for Republican primary voters to judge whether there’s anything politically damaging in Romney’s returns. Romney got booed a little, and deservedly so.
After Gingrich’s big-bang of a start, Santorum had the best night. In contrast to his unfocused performance in the last debate, he came with a clear plan of lumping Romney and Gingrich together on issues like health care and immigration and distinguishing himself from both.
He had the most cutting critique of RomneyCare anyone has yet delivered on a debate stage. He gave an answer on immigration that was tough, while striking the right tone of sympathy for immigrants.
And he hit hard at Gingrich for his “grandosity” and unpredictability, pointing out that both led to his catastrophic meltdown as speaker. This stung because it was so true.
Gingrich parried as successfully as he could, countering that we need big grandiose change in Washington. But Santorum had injected into the conversation what should be the key doubt in Republicans’ minds about Gingrich.
Santorum has to hope his strong performance is at least enough to get him past Ron Paul for third and keep him in play.
Romney has seen an extraordinary reversal of fortune over the last 48 hours or so. He’s gone from narrowly winning Iowa and leading in South Carolina, to narrowly losing Iowa and trailing in South Carolina in the latest polls. Come Sunday he may only have one win, in his own backyard in New Hampshire, to his name. He’ll still have formidable advantages, but Florida will loom even more larger.
In the next round of debates, he can only hope that no moderators tangle with Newt Gingrich.