How Newt is winning

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So just how did Newt win South Carolina? More broadly, just how has he come back from seeming oblivion, after his initial surge pre-Iowa, to be a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination, as the only credible anti-Romney conservative alternative there is left?

I looked at this in my South Carolina primary live-blogging post the other day, as well as in various previous posts on the race, but I think Steve Benen hits the nail on the head:

[T]he top three most important factors in South Carolina were the debates, the debates, and the debates. By the time he’d received his second standing ovation in Thursday night's debate, it was hard to not think, "You know, maybe Newt is going to win this primary after all." Back in October, the Romney campaign adopted a strategy predicated on the belief that the debates really do matter. They were right.

Gingrich used these forums to play to the worst instincts of his party's right-wing base, aiming right at the Republican id — presenting himself and his party as victims, condemning the media, and adding some not-so-subtle racial politics to connect with South Carolina Republicans on a gut level. As I mentioned the other day, Gingrich's debate performances are like dopamine for the right-wing soul.

His next challenge: duplicating the efficacy of this strategy elsewhere.

It's not clear that he can, and, indeed, the odds are against him, what with Romney holding an enormous financial and organization edge not just in Florida but everywhere.

But Newt has some advantages of his own. Romney's various weaknesses (his moderate past, his seeming phoniness / artificiality, his inability to connect with the base, his douchebaggery) are certainly helping (a strong Romney would be well ahead by now), but Republicans aren't just voting against Romney, they're voting for Newt. And what they're voting for is not so much Newt but what they see as his ability to voice their anger, channel their frustrations, and go on the attack against their enemies, specifically liberals, the media, minorities, and, of course, President Obama.

Try as he might, Romney just doesn't seem genuine when he goes on the attack. Newt does. And obviously many Republicans love him for it, even if they don't exactly love him.

So what now? Well, the establishment will now try even harder to knock Newt off, but politics aren't what they used to be, not with the ability now of national figures like Newt to connect directly with voters both through the media and even by circumventing the old media with the help of the new. Gone are the days of back-room brokering, when elites could hand power to the chosen -- well, not entirely, but it's much more difficult now. The establishment may succeed, and Romney is still the likely nominee, but Newt is on the rise precisely because the elites can't contain him. And they certainly can't contain him when he's crushing Romney in the debates, which many Republican primary voters are obviously using as a test to see which of the candidates has what it takes to fight their fight this year. As I've written before, Republicans (40% of them in South Carolina) aren't voting for Newt because they think he's a saint, which is most certainly is not, but because they think he'll punch Obama in the face.

How else to explain the popularity of someone so deeply unpopular?