What a difference a day can make in a presidential election year. Rarely do so many major political stories and events unfold in a single day with such breathtaking speed.
For Mitt Romney, it was a day of bad news and good news, and still another indication that the contest for the Republican nomination is far from the cakewalk envisioned by the former Massachusetts governor.
The good news was that Romney's lead in the South Carolina primary-now just a day away-is holding at roughly eight percent, despite some fluctuations and recent movements indicating that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may be closing in. Romney's position remains ahead of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
The bad news for Romney was more profound: after weeks of careful counting and recounting, Iowa GOP officials now say that Rick Santorum-not Romney-is the official winner of the January caucus, winning by 34 votes. Previous unofficial tallies had given Romney a razor thin edge of eight votes overall, but now Santorum becomes the beneficiary of the larger share of delegates based on the proportional math.
Iowa Republican officials concede, however, that the true total may never be known. Voting results from a few Iowa precincts are inexplicably missing. Still, the final results give Santorum a sanctioned victory in what was already something of a moral victory because of his come-from-behind virtual tie with front-runner Romney.
Romney's apparent Iowa victory, coupled with his relatively easy win in New Hampshire the following week, handed him bragging rights as the first Republican to win both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Not so now. History, according to the final math, was not broken.
The obvious result is that a decisive win in South Carolina becomes even more important to the Romney campaign-and all three of Romney's challengers. Since 1980, no GOP candidate has won the nomination without first claiming victory in the Palmetto State.
Santorum, albeit retroactively, can now claim a real victory as his own. Whether a true victory on the night of the Iowa caucuses would have helped enhance Santorum's momentum going into the New Hampshire primary days later remains unclear. Santorum, who had been challenged only a few days ago by Gingrich to drop out of the race in order to allow conservatives to coalesce behind a single candidate-presumably Gingrich-clearly hopes to channel the news from Iowa into a vindication of his once long-shot candidacy.
So this was clearly a day of mostly good news for Rick Santorum.
Gingrich, who had gained traction in South Carolina in the last few days, saw his own share of good news and bad news as well.
At noon, former Texas governor Rick Perry announced to reporters that he was suspending his campaign, saying that he saw no viable path remaining for his presidential bid. At the same press conference Perry endorsed Gingrich. Conventional thinking says that Perry's departure leaves Gingrich and Santorum as the only traditional conservatives left standing to battle the more moderate Romney and the mostly libertarian Ron Paul.
But Gingrich also faced what may yet turn out to be his worst day of challenges yet. Early today ABC News announced that tonight's broadcast of Nightline would include a special interview between investigative reporter Brian Ross and Gingrich's second wife, Marianne Gingrich. In the interview Gingrich's ex-wife claims, among other things, that during the period when Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer, he came to Marianne Gingrich and essentially asked that she share his affections with Callista, the woman with whom he was having the affair. Gingrich's ex-wife told Brian Ross she was not prepared to share her husband in what amounted to an open marriage.
The charges are explosive, and the timing inconvenient for the former House Speaker. Voters in South Carolina will begin going to their polling places Saturday morning, and Gingrich has hope to keep the momentum flowing in his direction for a possibly upset over front-runner Romney. Gingrich also had to face an onslaught of thorny questions throughout the day as reporters began to pile on the story of Gingrich's ex-wife's accusations. Gingrich attempted to deflect the controversy as much as possible, but the weight of the brouhaha seemed to distract the Gingrich campaign at the very moment when the political energy in the Palmetto State seemed to be flowing away from Romney and toward Gingrich.
At the CNN-hosted Southern Republican Debate in South Carolina, moderator John King began with a brief recap of the accusations made by Marianne Gingrich. Though the question was meant possibly as a soft pitch to the former Speaker-enabling him perhaps to simply deny the accusations and insinuations and get the troublesome matter behind him-Gingrich instead used the opportunity to slam the media for a preoccupation with things scandalous and irrelevant to what concerns most Americans.
"I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature," Gingrich told King in front of the audience of Republicans, "of much of the news media...makes it harder to govern this country, makes it harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a Presidential debate with a topic like that." The room erupted in cheers and whistles at Gingrich's response. But Gingrich went further.
"Every person in here knows personal pain," Gingrich said as he gestured with his hand across the crowded room, "every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife, and make it two days before a primary, and make that into a significant issue in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything as I can imagine."
Gingrich cited the fact that his two daughters from his marriage with Marianne had written to ABC News complaining about the report's distortions and misrepresentations. Gingrich told King that he was "frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate."
"I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans," Gingrich said. The remark brought most of the halls GOP faithful to the feet with cheers.
King was careful to retort that the story was not a CNN-inspired story, but one already broken by other media outlets such as ABC and an item now being examined by many other news organizations. But Gingrich cut King short, blaming CNN and its producers for pandering. "John, it was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it, don't try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start this debate with it." Gingrich went on to stress his position that the story is false.
The exchange appeared to give Gingrich an opportunity to channel righteous indignation into a grand slam home run, and seemed to be another indication that the former Speaker's formidable debating skills may yet pose a challenge to the conventional view of Romney as inevitable. Romney, for his part, gave a modest performance during the debate, but still faltered from time to time when confronted with the issues of his personal tax returns and his once-flexible position on abortion.
When a member of the audience asked the candidates when they planned to release their personal tax returns, Gingrich jumped in-answering "about an hour ago!" King then redirected the question to the other candidates. Romney, restating his position from earlier debates and interviews, said he will release his tax return, as planned, in April. When pressed by King, Romney seemed unable to offer a solid justification for delays, prompting a few grumbles and boos from the audience.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, seemed more resolute. He said he did not plan to release his tax returns unless conditions changed. Further, he quipped that he might be embarrassed for his earnings to be compared to that of the others on the debate stage, a remark which generated laughter from the audience. Paul added that "it may come to that, but right now I have no intention of doing so."
Paul added that he is never challenged to release his financial records since he has no conflicts of interest, adding "I don't even talk to lobbyists."
Former Pennsylvania senator Santorum said he did his own taxes on his computer at home, adding "and I am not at home." Santorum said once he got back to his home he would complete his taxes and make the information available.
Earlier in the day Gingrich had apparently hoped that the tax issue might serve as a wedge to clarify in the minds of voters what to expect with a Romney nomination: a presidential race in the fall in which the Democrats would be easily able to portray Romney as rich and out-of-touch with Main Street Americans.
Later in the debate Romney was asked about his claim of helping to create more than 120,000 jobs through his work with venture capital firm Bain. Romney fell back into a somewhat defensive position, stating that he expects attacks from the left on his commitment to capitalism. "My view is that capitalism works," Romney said, "free enterprise works...and find it kind of strange on a stage with Republicans to have to describe how private equity and venture capital work."
Romney went on to explain that although some of the companies he worked with while at Bain lost jobs, but that on the whole the companies affected had a net gain of over 120,000. One company he cited was Domino's Pizza. "There's nothing wrong with profit, by the way," Romney added to some cheers from the hall, "that profit went to pension funds, to charities, it went to a wide array of institutions. And by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people."
Romney went on to say he plans to defend capitalism and free enterprise from attacks from Barack Obama and the left throughout the campaign.
Romney also sought at one point to take Gingrich to task for the former Speaker's many claims of success over his long career in Washington, especially as it related to the Reagan revolution. Romney cited Ronald Reagan's diaries, published in 2007.
"I looked at the Reagan Diaries," Romney said, "and you're mentioned once in Ronald Reagan's diary. He says you (Gingrich) had an idea in a meeting of young Congressmen, and it wasn't a very good idea and his dismissed it. That's the entire mention."
But Gingrich counterpunched, citing the examples of the bad economic era of Jimmy Carter, the robust growth of the Reagan years, and the stagnant periods that followed the two major tax increases in the years that followed after George H.W. Bush and later Bill Clinton raised taxes. Gingrich says that as Speaker he presided over a return to the Reagan formula of lower taxes and economic growth. "And," Gingrich said, "11 million jobs showed up."
Romney also hit back as well, comparing Gingrich's four years as House Speaker to Romney's own 25 years as a businessman.
Though the two clearly agreed on the fundamentals of the economic engines of capitalism, the two candidates were engaged in a battle to defend the relevancy of their own work on the last few decades.
Later, Romney would have to face attacks from Rick Santorum over health care and abortion, and again, the assaults on Romney were mostly challenges to his conservatism-or lack thereof. When Santorum confronted Romney with the facts of the health care system Romney helped develop for Massachusetts while governor, Romney was forced to defend his program.
Santorum made a direct comparison between "Romney-care" and "Obama Care," essentially saying that the former Massachusetts governor had engineered a big-government health care plan which costs taxpayers dearly.
"The idea that you have created this marketplace," Santorum said, "with this government-run health care system, where you have very prescriptive programs about reimbursement rates...just like what President Obama is trying to put in place here. You are arguing for a plan that is top down...is not a free market health care system."
Still later, Romney took hard hits on abortion, the hardest punches coming from Santorum.
Though Mitt Romney's performance was generally cool and controlled-as are many of his debate performances-the consensus view after the debate seemed to be that Newt Gingrich had scored best overall, with Rick Santorum a close second. Gingrich's challenge may yet prove that Romney is not the inevitable nominee.
But with Santorum and Gingrich still dividing the big tent of conservatives-Tea Partiers, evangelical conservatives, social conservatives, anti-Washington conservatives-Romney has to merely hold on long enough to outlast the remaining field of four, theoretically past Florida. If Romney hasn't secured the real estate necessary to call himself front-runner by then, the GOP may be in for a long spring of caucus and primary fighting.
