In the end, South Carolina wasn?t even close.
Newt Gingrich?s commanding victory over Mitt Romney in the first-in-the-South primary shook up the GOP nomination battle as the race heads to Florida ? and ensures an epic Sunshine State showdown.
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Winners & Losers in 60 seconds
Below are POLITICO?s nine takeaways from the results:
1) Romney may not realize he?s having a near-death experience
Maybe that will change by the time Romney hits the Sunday morning shows. But his concession speech in Columbia bore few hallmarks of a candidate in the midst of a moment of self-awareness after a humiliating defeat in a state with a perfect track record of picking the eventual GOP nominee.
Without naming him, Romney slammed Newt Gingrich for using ?weapons of the left? to attack him in the primary, and said those ?weapons? will be used against the eventual nominee in the general election.
He overlooked a few things.
Over the course of the last several days, Romney?s hurdles have been largely of his own making ? thanks to his halting and muddled responses, stretched out over two debates, over whether he would release his tax returns and then over how many years? worth he?d put out.
It?s an issue that Romney needs to resolve quickly with a simple answer, one that he sticks to repeatedly. And it?s hard to see how he now can afford to wait until April to put the returns out.
There?s another serious issue at hand: South Carolina conservatives dealt Romney a serious blow by overwhelmingly voting for Gingrich. Romney?s share of the vote, about 27 percent, is near the polling level at which he was stuck throughout much of the year. His inevitability argument has taken a major hit. His Mormonism may have played some role, but it doesn?t likely account for his margin of defeat.
Gingrich has experienced at least two near-death experiences this cycle and kept going. It?s hard to kill someone twice, and even harder to do it a third time. Gingrich is also proving to have the qualities Romney has lacked ? passion and anger, and an ability to pivot quickly.
Romney, of course, is forced to contend with a year in which the party?s base is energized against the establishment ? and he is the establishment candidate.
Strong candidates have often gone through near-death experiences ? John McCain circa 2007 comes to mind. There?s no reason Romney can?t do the same: He is still the favorite to be the nominee, and his campaign is built for a long haul.
But he needs to have standout performances in the two Florida debates this week, and he needs to turn the page on difficult questions about his wealth. He also needs to be able to take a real fight to Gingrich, and carry out the attack without faltering ? and in his own words. He is no longer, after his defeat, able to retreat behind surrogates.
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