The Republican race – it ain’t going to be pretty

It was only a few days ago that Mitt Romney was being dubbed the luckiest man in politics. He’d enjoyed great headlines – and some crucial momentum – out of what looked like two consecutive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Never mind that, as we now discover, it was his rival Rick Santorum who actually won the Iowa caucus.

Then another gift appeared to fall in his lap, right before the crucial South Carolina vote: Newt Gingrich‘s second wife, went on TV to castigate him for demanding an open marriage, among other things. You’d think those God-fearing, straight-up Republicans down in the Palmetto state, many of them still wavering over who to support, would have flocked eagerly to Romney’s side. Except they didn’t.

Instead, Newt Gingrich defied all the predictions to blow the Republican race for the presidential nomination wide open: storming home in South Carolina by a margin of 13 per cent. He even polled better than Romney among women, and married voters – as well as those who want a candidate who can beat Barack Obama in November. And all this, in the state whose winner has become the eventual Republican nominee in every contested race since 1980.

So much for Mitt having the whole thing sewn up by the end of this month. “Our party can’t be led to victory by someone who has never run a business, and never run a state”, he complained after polls closed last night.

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“That’s a mistake for our party, for our nation.”

But conservative activists, many of them at least, chose Gingrich for precisely that reason, as the non-establishment candidate untainted by the trappings of high office or vast personal wealth. Quite how he managed to get away with that image is another story.

It seems voters worried about the economy have shied away from Romney, the successful business tycoon: put off, perhaps, by that barrage of attacks over his work with Bain Capital, or by his continued failure to handle questions over his reluctance to release his full personal tax returns.

It seems the messy personal life, a la Gingrich, proved less unpalatable than a propensity to lay off thousands of workers and pay a far lower tax rate than many Americans, despite his multi-billion dollar fortune.

So onwards to a highly contentious battle in the Sunshine State – to mirror the deep schisms within the Republican party.

Predictions, at this stage, might be a little reckless: after all, there hasn’t been a different winner in each of the first three GOP contests in the history of modern primaries.

But Florida is an expensive place to campaign: and it’s here, where Romney still has the advantage. His wealthy backers have already spent some $7m on political advertising in the state, and his vast organisation on the ground has been working flat out for absentee ballots: almost 200,000 have already been cast.

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Can he do it?

On the other hand, Gingrich has pulled off one astonishing political comeback, generating plenty of free publicity: and he’s got all fired up with enough anger and passion to propel him into Florida and perhaps further.

Spitting venom at the “liberal media” certainly succeeded in neutralising the whole “open marriage” allegation by his second wife, and even won him thunderous applause: now he’s spitting daggers about Obama being “truly a danger to the country”. There’s nothing like a bit of hyperbole to get ’em cheering from the rafters.

What he needs now, is to use all the momentum and excitement he’s just generated to attract serious money, and build some kind of national operation to carry him well beyond the next electoral hurdle.

Of course Gingrich is a highly polarising figure – almost as many people can’t stand him, as support him. That kind of divisiveness did for Hillary Clinton when she challenged Barack Obama back in 2008.

But Mitt Romney? He’s certainly no Barack Obama. He might be the sensible choice. And his campaign is certainly built for the long term. Yet he just can’t generate the necessary enthusiasm among the GOP grassroots. Can he do it? Well, yes, he still could. But be sure of one thing: it ain’t going to be pretty.

Felicity Spector is the US politics expert for Channel 4 News. Follow her on Twitter @felicityspector