The Economist
Iowa, Rick Perry and Marianne Gingrich
Reversal of fortune
SOUTH CAROLINA was always going to be hard going for Mitt Romney. He is a northerner, a Mormon and previously held socially liberal views, all of which count as hurdles for South Carolina's evangelical, socially conservative voters. But he came in with the wind at his back: he was the first Republican to win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Except, it appears, he wasn't: with data from eight precincts missing and unlikely to be recovered or certified, Rick Santorum finished 34 votes ahead. The executive director of Iowa's Republican Party called it "a split decision". How much will this matter? Hard to say. Mr Romney already received the benefits of victory: media attention, a hopeful narrative, fund-raising. No delegates were officially at stake, and by the time Iowa awards its delegates in June the election will almost certainly be in the bag.
Of more import will likely be Rick Perry's departure. Dave Weigel writes that this will help Newt Gingrich, and not just because Mr Perry has formally endorsed Mr Gingrich, either. Often Mr Gingrich and Rick Santorum are seen as drawing from similar voter banks, and to a certain extent they are. But Mr Santorum's mien and his version of populism are rather more serious than Messrs Gingrich's and Perry's. He talks about important, unsexy things like manufacturing and rural poverty, and when he discusses moral issues, he comes across as firm and earnest in his convictions, batty and repugnant though they may be. Mr Gingrich, by contrast, is pure id, like Mr Perry. Not for nothing did Doonesbury depict him as a lit bomb. Another way of saying this is that Mr Santorum is a more serious candidate, politician and person than either Mr Gingrich or Mr Perry, and in this primary that seems to count as a handicap.
And Mr Gingrich could use the help today. ABC News plans to air an interview with Marianne, the second of Mr Gingrich's ex-wives, tonight, in which she says Mr Gingrich wanted to remain married to her while carrying on an affair with Callista Bisek, now the third Mrs Gingrich. If that is all the interview reveals, it is old news: the former Mrs Gingrich gave an interview to Esquire in 2010 that covered much the same ground. Besides, we knew Mr Gingrich had a messy marital history already. We even know the pattern: twice he had marriage-ending affairs; twice he married his former mistress. And an ex-wife speaking poorly of a husband who cheated on her and left her for a younger woman does not exactly strike me as unusual. But if she has more to say than this? Of course, there is a difference between reading an article about Mrs Gingrich and watching her tell her story, in her own words, on network television, two days before a primary election. The conventional wisdom is that Mr Gingrich is already inoculated against the effects of damaging revelations about his personal life. He had better hope that wisdom holds.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/01/iowa-rick-perry-and-marianne-gingrich
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