Whoa – the last 18 hours have created an astounding experience for political junkies.
The day started with a stunning admission from the Iowa Republican Party that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum — not Mitt Romney — had actually won their state’s Jan. 3 caucuses. Numerous vote-counting screw-ups were uncovered and Romney’s exciting eight-vote victory – the closest in the history of the presidential nominating process – turned into a 34-vote edge for Santorum.
Historians will always wonder how a victory in Iowa for longshot Santorum – and the subsequent flurry of media coverage that would have followed – might have affected the 2012 GOP race.
The news out of Iowa was followed (perhaps by two hours) that Texas Gov. Rick Perry was about to drop out of the presidential race just two days before the consequential South Carolina primary.
Then came word that Perry, a Southern Republican Christian, was endorsing former Newt Gingrich. Though Perry had some run-ins with Gingrich along the campaign trail, he said he was siding with the former House speaker rather than Santorum, a fellow Religious Right Republican.
The next development was a new poll that showed a surging Gingrich grabbing a narrow lead over Romney in S.C., erasing the previous comfortable advantage enjoyed by the former Massachusetts governor.
A few hours later, word came that Gingrich’s second wife had granted an interview, and excerpts from ABC News revealed that she said the former congressman not only cheated on her but asked her for an “open marriage” in which he would supposedly share beds with his mistress (now his wife) and the second Mrs. Gingrich.
The day was capped by a nationally televised Republican debate, a crackling conversation from the opening moments, that seemed to shift repeatedly in terms of which candidate had the upper hand.
For South Carolina conservatives who place electability near the top of their candidate criteria, the debate was a see-saw contest between Santorum, Gingrich and Romney that probably injected more uncertainty into the Saturday contest than anything else during the prior week-and-a-half campaign.
Take a breath. This was, in the course of recent history, the ultimate political junkie’s dream.
