So there we were, with Romney having won Iowa and New Hampshire and destined to win South Carolina to seal up the Republican nomination with plenty of time to try and unite the party before Tampa.
In politics, a week can be an eternity.
Then sudenly Mitt Romey, "the most-electable candidate", was suddenly looking very vulnerable. "Vulture capitalism" did not do the trick alone but it set the direction, then came his own answers or lackof on tax returns and his claim that he likes firing people.
Santorum ended up willng Iowa weeks later. The South shockingly(not) rebuffed a north-eastern Mormon with a pro-choice/pro-gay/pro-health history, and now Romney isn't a tenth as inevitable as he was a week ago.
We'll see what happens in Florida. Approximately 3/10's of the primary vote was already done by mail, so some of Newt's surge will be unlikely to figure into some of that early vote but it's a southern-state in terms of Republican politics with an addition of Cuban-Americans. Gingrich's and Romney's position on immigration-issues may very well favor Gingrich here. Florida is winner-take-all and a closed primary.
So how's the overall primary battle going? 1 for Santorum, 1 for Romney, 1 for Gingrich? Nope. Romney has 31 delegates, Gingrich has 25. Santorum has 8 delegates, Paul has 10. After Florida, many states are no longer the high-stakes winner-take all like it used to be for Republican primaries. And while they go about their fight, with the movement-right trying desperately to rebuff the establishment once again, the narrative that the Democrats prepared for Romney has already been set in stone.
Romney practiced vulture-capitalism. He's dishonest and awkward and no he did not "come up on the real streets of America" like he claimed. He did inherit millions and millions unlike what he claimed at the debate. He likes firing people. He did not grow up poor, and he thinks he can give a slick answer on whether he'll be releasing his tax returns. He's the one-percent trying to fool the ninety-nine percent. He's inauthentic, like with his social-stances, and something happened to all those hard-drives from his days as Governor of Massachusetts.
If not for Gingrich, Mitt Romney would be working on building his coalition for November. Thanks to Gingrich, Mitt Romney is going to be getting ready for a civil-war. Who would have thought it starts in South Carolina?