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Thursday, January 19, 2012

2012 Is South Carolina Really a Toss-Up?

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 12:41 PM

Nate Silver is saying that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney each have about a fifty percent chance of winning South Carolina. Bear in mind that this is based on pre-Swingrich polls, but it's also unclear how much Republican voters actually care about Gingrich's sad, failed attempts at an "open marriage." If Romney wins this one, he's got it all sewn up. But if Gingrich wins, or if Gingrich can give the appearance of a win, the race is still on. (Bear in mind that barring some kind of freak accident, Romney is still going to win the Republican nomination—he's' got the organization, the money, and the party machinery behind him—but Gingrich could easily levy a South Carolina win into a challenge in Florida. After that, Romney will squash him like a bug, but a little extra competition among the Republicans is a good thing for Democrats.)

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Indeed, the longer the competition runs, the worse it is in the general. Remember how long the battle lasted between the Democratic contenders last time? That Barack Obama and HIllary Clinton battled it out all the way to the convention, and were so damaged that President McCain had an easy time mopping up the wounded and winning the presidency.

If only Clinton had thrown in the towel earlier, the Democrats would have had a real shot at ending 8 years of Republican dominance.

Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn on January 19, 2012 at 1:01 PM

Even with the attempted dirty tricks on Newt, yes, SC is really a tossup.

The MSM still don't get how things work there, so expect lots of "surprise" stories about what really happened, and shocked stories about the dirty tricks used.

Posted by Will in Seattle