South Carolina

Saturday’s South Carolina primary featured a number of firsts:

Courtesy of one friend, an old pro, three perhaps overlooked points in the sea of analysis of South Carolina and beyond:

Mitt Romney needs a big idea. And it’s not the one he cited at the beginning of his speech after his humiliating loss to Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary Saturday. Executive experience matters, Romney said. He has it and Gingrich, like President Obama, doesn’t.

Here's video of Newt Gingrich's victory speech, delivered this evening in South Carolina: 

Newt Gingrich has not yet delivered his victory speech tonight in South Carolina, but he has delivered a strong message to his rivals via Twitter. "Thank you South Carolina! Help me deliver the knockout punch in Florida," Gingrich tweeted. "Join our Moneybomb and donate now."

Orangeburg, S.C.
Speaking with reporters after a town hall event, Newt Gingrich scoffed at a request from Mitt Romney's campaign to release the “complete record” of the House ethics investigation of Gingrich when he was speaker.

In an interview with radio host Laura Ingraham this morning, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney acknowledged that Newt Gingrich is likely going to win a few states over the course of the primary process.

It's notoriously hard to judge the political consequences of candidate debates. The media and political elites tend to opine as either drama critics judging performance art or as professors judging intellectual arguments. Doing well on one or another of these criteria can matter for a candidate. But usually not much.

North Charleston, S.C.
The debate here began with the most salacious news of the day: the claim by Marianne Gingrich that her ex-husband wanted an open marriage. And, in a sense, it ended there, too.

In a pinch, Newt Gingrich resorts to his specialty: attacking the media. He did it again Thursday night in the Republican presidential debate in North Charleston, South Carolina. And the audience responded enthusiastically to his angry denunciation of CNN moderator John King for making his former wife’s charge that he wanted an “open” marriage the first issue in the debate.

Beaufort, S.C.
Newt Gingrich was a few minutes late to his appearance this morning at Waterfront Park in historic downtown Beaufort. The large, excited crowd waited patiently as Gingrich sat in his campaign bus to finish watching Rick Perry’s concession speech. When he finally emerged and took to the stage, he opened with an announcement.

This morning, the Republican leadership on the Hill announced that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would deliver the GOP response Tuesday night to President Obama’s State of the Union Address.