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Why Newt Won

Shana Pearlman explains why Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina Republican race.

By Shana Pearlman

23 Jan 2012, 09:30

South Carolina, the buckle of the Bible Belt, stuffed full of conservative Christians and red-blooded Americans who like to go hunting, fishing, and going to church…just voted the victor of their presidential primary a thrice-married former Washington insider with baggage the size of Brazil and a Rolodex full of every gladhander and lobbyist this side of K Street.  They didn’t do it because they liked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s policy positions or his stance on the issues.  South Carolinians voted for Gingrich for one reason and one reason alone: they want someone to take it to Obama.

On the Friday before the South Carolina primary, ABC News aired an interview with Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, who claimed Newt asked her for an open marriage.  She claimed that for that reason Gingrich did not have the character to be President.  That night, at the debate before the primary, moderator John King of CNN led off by asking Gingrich about the interview, asking him if he would like to respond to the allegations.  Gingrich said “No, but I will,” and spent the next couple of minutes using King as a rhetorical punching bag, ending with “And I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate,” precipitating the first standing ovation at a presidential debate for 32 years.  That question was a gift to Newt Gingrich, and allowed him to overcome the deficit that Governor Romney had opened up in South Carolina thanks to Gingrich’s ham-handed Super PAC attacks on Bain Capital.  Exit polls showed that late-deciding voters broke for Gingrich, and it may well have been that John King won the debate for the former Speaker.

But it isn’t just the pushback about the speculation regarding his personal life that is giving Gingrich his surge.  It’s also that he’s refusing to accept the notion that conservatives, simply because of their policy positions, are racist.  When Juan Williams of Fox News asked Gingrich whether he could see why people criticized the comment “Obama is the food stamp President” as insensitive toward African-Americans, Gingrich shot back hotly, and to great applause, with “No I don’t see that… the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct, you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.” Again, Gingrich refuses to even play on the field these debate moderators are setting for him – he refuses to accept their parameters.  Conservatives who are sick of having their positions belittled as racist and unprincipled really appreciate it.

What the new Gingrich surge does is punch holes in Romney’s greatest asset, his vaunted electability.  Let me give you an example.  Romney said earlier this week that he pays an “effective” tax rate of 15%.  Immediately the progressive press and those who are deeply concerned about income inequality began to moan about how unfair it was and how awful it was that super-rich Romney paid so little tax.  But it just isn’t so.  An effective tax rate means taxes after deductions, tax breaks, and so forth.  The average American household pays an effective tax rate of 8.2 percent, so Romney’s actually paying TWICE as much tax as the average American taxpayer.  Secondly, Romney pointed out that he was paying taxes on his income earned from dividends, which is called capital gains income.  That income is actually taxed twice; first by corporate taxes, which in the United States is 35% at its top end, and then by capital gains tax, which is 15%.  So Romney’s actually paying tax at a 50% rate.  Now, you can argue about whether that’s too little, but what you certainly can’t argue is that he’s paying tax at a lower rate than most Americans, because he certainly is not.

By the way, President Obama paid 32% of his income in taxes according to his 2009 returns.  Is 32% an appropriate amount to tax someone who’s made more than five and a half million dollars in one year, when the economic need of so many is so great?  In addition, if the top federal income tax bracket, into which someone who made 5 and a half million dollars in a year certainly falls is 35%, why is Obama only paying a 32% tax rate?  I suppose these are questions only his conscience can answer, because none of the people who supposedly are concerned about tax justice are asking him.

You can count on Gingrich to point that kind of thing out, but the Romney response to this has been, at best, anemic.  This is giving a lot of people who want to see Obama out of office a great deal of pause.  The Obama campaign machine is well funded and extremely organised, and they are going to throw every weapon in the arsenal, whether true or not true, to destroy his Republican challenger.  Republicans and conservatives are asking themselves – do they really want to nominate a guy who can’t explain to empty-headed talking points-spouting-bots that the American tax system taxes capital gains income twice?  You better believe that in this scenario, a take-no-prisoners guy like Newt Gingrich is going to be appealing.  And in this election, where social media buzz is beginning to take the place of traditional campaign organising, it doesn’t really matter that Gingrich is basically running his campaign on duct tape and prayer.  As long as he gets his zingers in against the media, conservatives can watch and share the videos, and dream of the debates in October.  They’re relishing the thought. 

Will Gingrich be the next President of the United States?  Maybe, but it’s tough to call. The main thing is that Romney’s still ahead in the delegate race.  The entire point of the primaries is to select delegates to vote for each candidate at the national convention; the winner of each state primary either gets all the delegates to vote for him, or the largest proportion of delegates if the state divides its delegates among the top finishers.  Romney is on top with 33 delegates, but Gingrich is close on his heels with 25 delegates.  You need 1,191 delegates to be the party’s presumptive nominee.  What we could see is an Obama-and-Hillary style bare-knuckle contest to get the most delegates, which means we could be in the primaries till late spring or even early summer.  Romney isn’t giving up without a fight, and Gingrich won’t either.  This could be a very long and very bitter primary season.