Frailty and timidity are not the qualities that come to mind when one thinks of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Or House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. Or Mitt Romney. These are tough guys, veterans of the political wars, and more than capable of defending themselves.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush's endorsement of Mitt Romney on Tuesday, which sent the message that it's time for Republicans to rally behind their likely nominee, also raised a question: Who's next?

Speculation immediately centered on South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, one of the most popular leaders in the conservative movement, when word leaked Wednesday that he was meeting with Romney on Capitol Hill.

"I hope something comes of it. We need to get this show on the road,'' said Republican consultant Warren Tompkins, who has advised DeMint, echoing a widely shared sentiment in the Republican establishment. "Jeb's endorsement was a big step forward, and maybe it will be what breaks the dam.''

Alas, National Journal staff writer Dan Friedman reports an endorsement is not forthcoming. However, DeMint offered praise and said that Romney's rivals should do "what's good for the country'' so that the party can focus on beating President Obama.

Among the other big "gets" still on the sidelines in the GOP primary: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who resisted pleadings to get into the race himself; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who backed Rick Perry before he quit; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a likely vice presidential shortlister; and former Missisippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who said he voted for Newt Gingrich in his home state's primary last week.

But would nods from any of these guys really make a difference? Romney has had most of the Republican establishment locked up for some time, but his rivals are undeterred. Discontent in the conservative grassroots is what is fueling the campaigns of Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

"The establishment is not where the naysayers are. The base is missing, and that's not going to change with another endorsement,'' said Republican strategist Kim Alfano, who has advised Daniels. "The big get is getting one of these candidates who are still standing to throw their support to Romney.''

Rick Santorum's aides and surrogates hit the news-talk circuit on Wednesday like Rush Limbaugh set loose on a buffet table. They were noisy and everywhere, almost clamoring in unison about the need for Newt Gingrich to get out the contest for the Republican nomination in order to let Santorum have a head-to-head contest with Mitt Romney in upcoming primaries. Conservative flame-keeper Richard Viguerie lent some dignity to the proceedings by weighing in with a calm analysis on his website calling on Gingrich to stand down and let Santorum carry the right's torch into battle with Romney.

It was a daylong exercise in futility of course. Given Gingrich's "gargantuan ego" as former Clintonite Dee Dee Myers put it on MSNBC, he is highly unlikely to end his presidential campaign now. Plus, the former House speaker just clocked a huge victory in Georgia, the most populous Southern state outside of Florida. Even though it was the only state in his win column on Super Tuesday - an achievement further discounted by it being his home state -- a big victory nevertheless hardly puts a candidate in a giving-up sort of mood.

But there's another reason for Gingrich not to hang up his cleats just yet.

The Michigan primary will test one of the most common- but as yet unproven - assumptions in the Republican presidential race: the expectation that Rick Santorum will be a strong candidate for blue-collar voters.

From the moment Santorum emerged as a serious contender in Iowa, many analysts (present company included) have assumed he would run well among the growing ranks of non-college white voters in the Republican electorate. On a policy level, Santorum stresses his determination to rebuild the nation's manufacturing capacity and laments the decline of upward mobility for working-class Americans in language rare among Republicans. On a personal level, Santorum highlights his years growing up in Western Pennsylvania steel country, and his grandfather's experience as a miner; he also projects a regular-guy aura that contrasts with rival Mitt Romney's vast wealth.

Rick Santorum is quickly learning the ropes of being a serious contender for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. First you win a significant primary or four, then you attack front-runner Mitt Romney as insufficiently conservative and then you deny any knowledge of the organization raising millions of dollars in your behalf.

The former U.S. senator managed to accomplish all of that since his three-state sweep of Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado this week. On the trail in Oklahoma City today, Santorum decried Romney's "gotcha politics," and complained that Romney is not focusing on the issues - a nearly verbatim reprisal of Newt Gingrich's lament when he threatened the former Massachusetts governor's preeminence in South Carolina.

Mixing it up with reporters at his campaign event, Santorum was asked a question that by now has become a 2012 campaign standard:  "Senator, who is Foster Friess and how dependent are you on his donations?"

Not to rain on Rick Santorum's parade, but the man needs help from Wall Street or Big Gambling and he needs it quick. The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and perennial underdog managed to win not one but three states holding caucuses and a primary last night. But clear away the confetti and it's an unhappy fact for the would-be threat to front-runner Mitt Romney that he is just about broke.

Santorum's campaign had just $279,000 left in the bank at the beginning of the year, a paltry sum by presidential campaign standards and light years less than conservative rival Newt Gingrich ($2.1 million) or libertarian rival Ron Paul ($1.9 million). It was multiple light years less than Romney's $20 million. Even the hapless Jon Huntsman was able to put a few more pennies together. He raised nearly $6 million by December 2011, to Santorum's $2.2 million. 

Newt Gingrich's woman problem may be finally catching up with him, just like his ex-wives ultimately seem to.

Exit polls of Florida's Republican primary voters exposed a distinct gender gap between reinvigorated front-runner Mitt Romney and Gingrich. Although Romney beat Gingrich among most demographic groups, Romney's yawning lead among women, especially married women, was noteworthy. Romney beat Gingrich with men, 41 percent to 36 percent, but he beat him with women, 52 percent to 28 percent.

The gender gap was even more pronounced among married couples. Married men split about evenly between the two, giving Romney 37 percent and Gingrich 36 percent. But married women preferred Romney, 51 percent to 28 percent.

It took less than a minute into the latest Republican presidential debate for longtime front-runner Mitt Romney to show what lesson he took from his surprisingly big defeat in South Carolina: Bare the teeth and go for the jugular of the man who beat him so solidly.

The attacks on former House speaker Newt Gingrich were almost non-stop. Before most viewers had a chance to settle in to watch NBC's broadcast, Romney had lashed Gingrich as a Washington "influence peddler," a disgraced speaker forced out of office, a failed political leader, a lobbyist and a traitor to the conservative cause.

Asked by moderator Brian Williams how he squared those attacks with his lament last week that he wanted to avoid personal criticisms of other Republicans, Romney adopted a tight smile and recalled his Saturday shellacking. "I learned something from that last contest in South Carolina," said Romney. "And that was I had incoming from all directions, was overwhelmed with a lot of the attacks. And I'm not going to sit back and get attacked day in and day out and without returning fire."

Gingrich was not bashful about fighting back, though he refused to get dragged into many of the specifics. He seemed more saddened than angry at the barrage from Romney. "He just went on and on and on," he said of Romney, adding that "he may have been a good financier. He's a terrible historian." Yet Gingrich, who really is a historian, offered up some questionable history himself.

In South Carolina it appears the two tribes of the Republican Party have settled on their champions for a contest that could divide the party along clear, sharp lines of class, ideology and religious devotion.

Newt Gingrich won his commanding South Carolina victory partly by cutting into Mitt Romney's support among the groups that had favored him in earlier states, exit polls posted on CNN showed. But mostly Gingrich triumphed by consolidating the groups resistant to Romney to a greater extent than anyone had done previously.

If Gingrich can muster the organizational and financial resources to capitalize on his breakthrough, that pattern raises the possibility of an extended race with Romney in which each man mobilizes divergent but roughly equally sized coalitions.
 

No doubt there were champagne corks popping at the White House when Newt Gingrich was declared the winner of the South Carolina primary on Saturday night. But the state's Republicans also have a sobering message for President Obama: It's not just the economy, stupid. By November, it might be only the economy.

In spite of more personal baggage than a jumbo jet, Gingrich beat endangered front-runner Mitt Romney because most Republicans in South Carolina think he can beat Obama and because the economy outweighed, by far, any other issue on the table, according to exit polls.

Six in 10 primary voters identified the economy as the most important issue to them, and of those, 40 percent voted for Gingrich, more than any other candidate in the four-man contest. Romney got 32 percent of the votes from Republicans who think the economy is the No. 1 issue. Nearly a third of South Carolina's GOP voters said someone in their household has been laid off in the last three years.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished an astonishing comeback Saturday night to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina, plunging the Republican Party into a wrenching and potentially lengthy period of soul-searching: Can either of these jokers beat President Obama?

Humiliated and humbled, Romney remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination and, by all conventional measures, is best equipped to push Obama from office. But he has now lost two of three races and leaves South Carolina as a tarnished brand: Equivocations over his tax filings and tone-deaf comments about his wealth and status played into Democratic plans to portray Romney as a cold-hearted, flip-flopping, fat cat who would say or do anything to get elected.

Gingrich is an unabashed egoist ("I think grandiose thoughts") who likes to compare himself to historic figures including Abraham Lincoln, Charles deGaulle, the Duke of Wellington, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. He might soon add Jesus Christ to that list because Gingrich has had more political resurrections this past year than the son of God.

Abandoned by his staff  last spring and written off by the GOP establishment in Iowa, Gingrich's record is a testament both to his resilience and volatility. Republicans who worked the closest with Gingrich while he was House Speaker -- a tenure marked by extraordinary success and failure -- call him brilliant thinker but an insufferably mercurial leader. Many of them oppose his presidential candidacy.

Rick Santorum, who considers Gingrich a political mentor, nonetheless put his finger on why most members of the GOP establishment believe the former House speaker would be a poor general election candidate. And a worse president.

"Newt's a friend, I love him," Santorum said at Thursday's debate. "But at times you just sort of have that worrisome moment that something's going to pop. And we can't afford that in a nominee."

Something's going to pop. Is it any wonder that Republican leaders in Washington and across the country are starting to consider once-unthinkable scenarios?

The first is that South Carolina pushes Santorum from the race and marginalizes Rep. Ron Paul, making the GOP contest a two-man race between Romney and Gingrich. It could go one of two ways: Mercifully short, essentially ending in Florida if Romney thumps Gingrich in that Jan. 31 primary, or arduously long if Gingrich wins or narrowly loses Florida.

Either way, Romney wins. Most Republican strategists put the odds of Romney claiming the nomination at 80 percent or so.

The second, albeit remote, scenario: Gingrich seizes the GOP nomination after an insurgent campaign that defies virtually every political convention. Keep this in mind: The Republican Party and U.S. politics in general have rarely been as convention-bending as they are now. If Herman Cain can transform a book tour into a front-running presidential campaign ... if Donald Trump can take a turn atop GOP polls ... if Sarah Palin must be taken seriously ... how can we write off Gingrich, an insatiably ambitious man of many talents who was once the third in line to the presidency?

The third, even less probable set of scenarios involve a nominee other than Romney or Gingrich. It's likely too late for a "savior" to enter the primary-and-caucus fight, but Republicans leaders are starting to talk informally about a brokered convention that could give rise to the nomination of Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels or any of the other GOP heavyweights who passed up the campaign.

But don't bet the farm. Several GOP leaders surveyed about the prospects of a brokered convention this week put the odds at about 10 percent, even as they spoke longingly of one.

In 1992, Democrats wasted weeks in sweaty hand-wringing as Bill Clinton struggled to survive controversies over an extramarital affair and his efforts to evade the Vietnam War draft. There were whispers of late entries by Al Gore, Bill Bradley and other Democratic stars who had sat out the campaign. And, yes, journalists churned out stories that charted paths to a brokered convention.

Looking through history's rose-colored glasses, Clinton's nomination looks inevitable. It wasn't. Before he was the "Comeback Kid," he was a "fatally flawed candidate."

The difference between Clinton in 1992 and Gingrich today is that nobody who worked with Clinton worried about his suitability for office.

Still, Gingrich's comeback is a remarkable one. It began Monday at a Fox News Channel debate. He drew a standing ovation by defending his description of Obama as a "food stamp president" and attacking moderator Juan Williams, who asked if the remark might offend blacks.

On Thursday, Gingrich embraced a controversy that runs counter to the GOP "family values" theme and could turn off women voters in a general election campaign: His admitted infidelity in two marriages. His second wife told ABC News this week that he asked her for an "open marriage" so he could have a wife and mistress.

"I'm appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that," Gingrich told CNN debate anchor John King. "I'm tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking the GOP."

The audience roared with approval. In hindsight, perhaps Gingrich had been preparing for the moment for months by leading the attack against the media at nearly every debate. Partisan audiences, especially Republican crowds, generally believe the media are slanted against them. Journalists are easy targets.

A week ago, Gingrich was virtually an after-thought as Romney turned victories in Iowa and New Hampshire into a double-digit lead in South Carolina polls. But then the wheels came off: A recount gave Iowa to Rick Santorum; Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed Gingrich; and Romney call more than $300,000 in speaking fees "not much money" as reports surfaced that he had millions of dollars in Cayman Island accounts.

Rather than being the first non-incumbent Republican to sweep Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Romney is suddenly 1-for-3. Gingrich's victory means that for the first time, three different GOP candidates have one the first three contests.

The race now moves to Florida, whose primary is Jan. 31 and where Romney has instituted a sophisticated plan to encourage early voting by supporters. The size and diversity of the state favors Romney in many ways.

As my colleague Reid Wilson reported, the GOP calendar continues to favor Romney after Florida and the former Massachusetts governor is in far better position than Gingrich to collect the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination. 

Romney can do to Gingrich in February what Obama did to Hillary Clinton in 2008. Caucuses in Nevada, Colorado and Minnesota favor the highly organized campaigns of Romney and Paul. The only two February primaries take place on Romney-friendly turf: A sizable number of fellow Mormans live in Arizona and Michigan is his home state.

The flood of debates that fueled Gingrich's insurgent campaign slow to a dribble in February and early March, when Super Tuesday puts 407 delegates in 10 states up for grabs. Gingrich won't have the time, the platform or the money to build a national organization to rival Romney's. Gingrich isn't even eligible for Virginia's 46 delegates because his nascent campaign failed to submit enough valid signatures to get on the ballot.

Beyond delegate math, Romney's fundamental advantage is that his CEO background contrasts with the public's view that Obama has poorly handled the economy. His message strikes squarely at Obama's vulnerability: "The president's a nice guy, and I know he's trying," Romney likes to say, "but he doesn't understand how the economy works."

Unlike Gingrich, Romney has executive experience and has a record of moderation and moderate success in the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts. Bottom line: Obama's team considers Romney a mortal threat and considers this a best-case scenario: Republican Presidential Nominee Newt Gingrich.

The highly verbal and media-loving (when he's not hating) Newt Gingrich, who has held court with reporters nearly every day he's been on the campaign trail, canceled his first two appearances in South Carolina today and avoided journalists like a flu germ.

There were a number of excuses offered by the campaign and Gingrich surrogates: probable low attendance (Huh? He's been packing venues across the state) and this trusty, oblique standby: "scheduling conflicts."

More likely, Gingrich, an admitted serial cheater, is ducking further questions about his second wife's explosive interview Thursday with ABC News in which Marianne Gingrich claimed he asked her for an open marriage so he would not have to give up his mistress. The night before, Gingrich took the question head on from CNN moderator John King during a candidates' debate, and as he has with other thorny problems, blamed the media for asking impertinent questions about his personal life.

This post has been updated  with more contributions from readers and to change the ranking format.

Make no mistake: Despite a two-week span of unforced errors and growing doubts about his ability to defeat President Obama, Mitt Romney is still the heavy favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination.

He has the money, the organization, the economic background, and the message ("The president's a nice guy, and I know he's trying, but he doesn't understand how the economy works") for the long haul. But his poor performance since Iowa's caucuses has coincided with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's surge -- a dynamic underscored in Thursday night's debate -- to make some unlikely alternative scenarios a bit more likely.

Thank you for your help re-ordering and ranking the list. Rankings for each scenario are ranked by percentage of probability. Zero percent means there is absolutely no way of it happening and "100 percent" means virtual certitude. The rankings are subjective.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. -- In their final debate showdown before the critical South Carolina primary, the remaining gang of four Republican candidates went out with a bang -- a spirited, engaging and even emotional encounter that left plenty of dramatic moments competing for a spot in our top five takeaways. But only five can make the cut:

Newt's mistress fared better than Mitt's money. In the last debate before South Carolina Republicans determine the course of the GOP presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deflected his failed marriages better than Mitt Romney defended his success in businesses.

Rep. Ron Paul almost always can be counted on for statements few other politicians would dare to offer. But even for Paul, his answer one hour into Thursday night's South Carolina debate was one for the books. While his rival candidates barely can restrain themselves from attacking China and lamenting the outsourcing of American jobs to China, the Texas congressman basically told everybody to just relax and stop worrying about those jobs.

As Rick Perry ignominiously departs the presidential race and sheepishly returns to Texas, his oh-so-short campaign should serve as a humbling reminder to those who prognosticate about politics. For when Perry burst on the scene with an Aug. 13^th announcement in South Carolina that overshadowed the Iowa Straw Poll, no one foresaw that he would crash and burn only 159 days later, not even making it to the South Carolina primary.

The experts inside the Republican Party, political analysts and journalists were aware of potential pitfalls for Perry when he announced. But they were all more impressed by his executive experience in Austin, his ability to raise money, his influential backers and a jobs record he could highlight in an election that all expected would be dominated by the economy. Fueled by the high expectations and advance reviews, everything seemed to be falling into place. Only ten days after his announcement, Gallup reported "Perry Zooms to the Front of the Pack for 2012 GOP Nomination." He was beating second-place Mitt Romney by 12 points, 29 to 17 percent.

But the collapse was almost as quick and agonizingly inexorable. Accusing the head of the Federal Reserve of treason; calling Social Security "a Ponzi scheme"; aligning himself with the already-discredited birthers. And all that long before that "oops" moment or any of his other missteps in the many debates.

CNN: Speaker Gingrich. You've discussed values in this election saying that they're essential to leadership. But your ex wife, Marianne, has given an interview in which she says that you slept with another woman in your marital bed and that you even tried to persuade her to have an open marriage. My question is whether those are the kind of values the American people should trust. 

Forget about potentially losing the evangelical vote in South Carolina. Marianne Gingrich's interview on ABC News tonight puts her ex-husband's presidential campaign in jeopardy with a much bigger segment of the electorate in South Carolina -- women. Be they evangelical, Catholic or agnostic, women are going to see in Marianne Gingrich a highly sympathetic version of that American classic -- the middle-aged woman abandoned by her ambition-addled husband for a younger version of herself. The fact that he heaped insult onto injury by asking her for an open marriage, so that he could keep both his marriage and his young mistress, makes it highly unlikely that women will be willing to overlook Newt Gingrich's character and vote for him on the economy.

Although most of what Marianne Gingrich has to say about her ex was reported in 2010 in a long interview with Esquire, her decision to say it on television, just two days before the South Carolina primary, is potential dynamite. One has to wonder whether she waited for precisely this moment to drop the bomb, when in all probability she had multiple interview requests over the several months that Gingrich has been in the race for the Republican nomination for president. If revenge is a dish best served cold, she made sure she reached into the fridge at just the right moment.

Her claim that Gingrich requested an open marriage is believable, given the candidate's reputation for grandiosity and for, well, his ability to dream up novel approaches to problems. When Gingrich admitted his six-year affair with Callista, while he was the House speaker and she was a congressional aide, Marianne Gingrich said she pleaded with her husband that they had been married for 18 years.

Having covered the 1992 campaign, I'm struck by some of the parallels between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. In both cases, their sexual histories were at first considered old news. People knew about them and discounted them. Then everything changed. Gennifer Flowers described an affair with Clinton. Other women came forward. The combination of that and his efforts to avoid the draft in Vietnam, which didn't come to full public view until the presidential campaign, led to his campaign nearly being sunk. 

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Mitt Romney is still waiting for his victory lap. Three different national surveys released Wednesday showed his overall support among Republicans at 33 percent or less -- hardly a stirring number after his feat of becoming the first Republican other than a sitting president to win both Iowa (at least until final results are announced Thursday) and New Hampshire under the modern primary calendar.

This morning's front-page headline in the State, one of South Carolina's leading papers, offers the bookend to National Journal's report on the movement toward Mitt Romney among business-oriented managerial Republicans. The headline reads: "S.C. Evangelicals Split, Frustrated."

Though evangelical Christians constituted a solid 60 percent majority of GOP primary voters in 2008, they "are divided among the faith-and-values trinity of the 2012 S.C. GOP primary, supporting Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum," writes reporter Adam Beam. Beam quotes Oran Smith, the executive director of the Palmetto Family Council, a leading local social conservative group: "I do sense frustration that there is not a single candidate that is being put up against Romney."

The Monmouth University survey released Tuesday - which showed Romney holding a double-digit advantage overall in South Carolina - quantifies the reason for Smith's frustration. It showed Romney attracting 29 percent among self-identified evangelicals - much better than his 11 percent with them in 2008, but not much more than the 27 percent John McCain won among them that year while amassing a narrow plurality win in the state. 

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- In the crowd milling outside the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce's annual "Business Speaks" conference at a downtown hotel here on Tuesday, there were not many effusive declarations of support for Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney.

But from the perspective of the candidates chasing Romney -- most of whom addressed the meeting -- the chatter in the hallways conveyed something even more ominous: a sense of acceptance about the likelihood of his nomination, and little inclination to extend the race by denying him a victory in Saturday's pivotal South Carolina primary.

The latest debate among the Republican presidential contenders Monday night unfolded like most of its predecessors, with the (dwindling) cast chasing Mitt Romney once again mostly flubbing the opportunity to make a coherent and disciplined case against him. Though the debate was lively, it was oddly unfocused -- especially given the stakes.

Fox News Channel moderator Bret Baier made a fuss at the debate's opening over the network's decision not to deploy a bell or buzzer to enforce the time limit on candidate answers; by the evening's end, it seemed Fox should have brought an alarm clock to wake up a field that appeared to be sleep-walking toward a potential Romney win in South Carolina that would put him on a clear course to the nomination.

Even if the candidates dozed, we stayed awake long enough to produce the top five takeaways from the debate, which begins with, by far, the most important development -- yet another dog that didn't bark. (The Republican debates this year have produced an entire kennel of them.)

Mitt Romney's four remaining rivals are running out of time to stall his glide path to the Republican nomination. And after Monday night's Fox News debate in front of a feisty Myrtle Beach crowd, Romney solidified his standing, demonstrating his economic fluency and assertiveness on a strong American foreign policy. Outside of inside-baseball tweaks about his position on felon voting rights and campaign finance law, he was barely nicked by his rivals.

Romney's challengers all performed well, but none stood out - and, more importantly, none established themselves as the clear conservative alternative to the Republican front-runner.  Santorum failed to capitalize on the endorsement from evangelical leaders by making his case as the social conservative. Gingrich failed to capitalize on his argument against Romney's record at Bain Capital, pulling his punches when offered the opportunity at the debate's outset. Perry failed to capitalize by contrasting his executive record with the legislative backgrounds of Gingrich and Santorum.

And no one took on Romney over his health care plan in Massachusetts, a consistent vulnerability of his that hasn't been exploited.  

The top nine analyses from the night's debate:

Republican front-runner Mitt Romney said Monday he might release his tax returns -- but not before South Carolina's primary on Saturday.

Romney, who has said previously he had no intention of releasing tax returns, said if he becomes the nominee he may release them in mid-April. Romney said he would follow the tradition established by former President George W. Bush when he ran for office in 2000 and Arizona Sen. John McCain when he became the nominee in 2008.

Rick Perry and South Carolina, perfect together?

The Texas governor didn't mention secession, but he sounded like he would have fit right in at Fort Sumter in 1861."I'm saying the state of Texas is under assault by the federal government. I'm saying also that South Carolina is at war with this federal government and with this administration," Perry said to boisterous applause during the Fox News debate in Myrtle Beach.

Moving right along, he decried the "war against organized religion" ("going after churches" on their hiring practices) and the war against work ("they come into a right to work state and tell the state of South Carolina we aren't going to let a private company come in here").

"When I'm the president of the United States, the states are going to have substantially more rights to take care of their business," he said.

So far, South Carolina Republicans have resisted Perry. Will the Rick's Wars pitch resonate with them? Maybe on an emotional level. But if history is any guide, they'll be pragmatists at the polls.

The partisan audience in the debate hall was definitely on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's side when he was challenged about racially charged comments he's made on the campaign trail. Since this is television, it's noteworthy that the question came from a black moderator, Juan Williams of FOX News.

Williams: "Speaker Gingrich, you said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can't you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?"

Gingrich: "No.''

The former House Speaker loves the snippy, one-word retort. He went on to say that his adult daughter learned about the value of work and money when she did "janitorial work" at her church when she was 13 years old. Of his proposed child janitors, he said, "They would be getting money, which is a good thing if you're poor. Only the elites despise earning money.''

Williams wouldn't let it go and made it personal, telling Gingrich that he had been "inundated'' with complaints from people of all races about his remarks. The audience booed Williams and cheered heartily for Gingrich, who scoffed, "I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.''

Takeaway: In a GOP primary, Gingrich is on much more solid footing in taking on the elites and the politically correct than he is taking on Mitt Romney's capitalist record at Bain Capital.

Mitt Romney was never likely to capture the endorsement of the Christian conservatives who met in Texas this weekend and belatedly crowned Rick Santorum their favorite in the Republican nomination race. But two new media moves under a "Shares Our Values" banner underscore Romney's determination -- and need -- to win at least some votes from that group in South Carolina.

Somewhere, Lee Atwater is looking down on his home state in disbelief. This can't be what the father of the modern political attack had in mind: a Republican using the modern version of his diabolical invention against another Republican in South Carolina.

King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town, the newly-released destroy-the-front-runner vehicle from the super PAC run by rival Newt Gingrich's political operatives, blames Mitt Romney for everything from endlessly high unemployment, to the demise of American manufacturing to the destruction of the modern marriage. Visually, it's a montage of smoke-filled rooms, suitcases filled with cash and glinting corporate headquarters juxtaposed with images of cracked sidewalks in broken small towns and the haggard faces of former factory workers.

Over the top? Sure. A gross violation of Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment to Republicans to speak no ill of fellow Republicans? Hands down it is. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul condemned the film as full of "blatant falsehoods and fabrications."

But the most important point about Gingrich's movie is that it works. And if it is unleashed full force on South Carolina voters as promised, it has the potential to do serious damage to Romney's lead in the state's Jan. 21 primary. That's how powerful it is.

Next up: The Bain Primary.

After Mitt Romney's historic sweep of Iowa and New Hampshire, the GOP presidential contest now centers on this question: Will establishment Republicans and Romney backers convince his rivals to stop criticizing the former Massachusetts governor's work at Bain Capital?

The idea that South Carolina provides fertile ground for conservative insurgents in Republlican presidential primaries simply isn't borne out by the facts.

It must be a Texas thing. Barring a big rebound in South Carolina, Gov. Rick Perry is at risk of joining two other Texans in the political hall of fame for most dollars spent for the least results. The reigning champion is former Gov. John Connally, who famously spent almost $12 million for a single delegate in the1980 presidential campaign, Ada Mills of Arkansas.

Then, along came Sen. Phil Gramm in 1996. He started his campaign raising more than $4 million at a single dinner and boasting that "ready money is the mother's milk of politics." Gramm had lots of ready money. But things dried up for him pretty quickly. His campaign was dead even before he got to Iowa when he was defeated in the Louisiana caucuses by Patrick Buchanan. After finishing fifth in Iowa, he dropped out after having spent more than $21 million for ten delegates.

Now, it's Perry's turn. And he seems to be following in the Texas tradition of Connally, Gramm and former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (who flamed out in 1976, though without the excess spending of the others). Perry spent more than $6 million in Iowa, but finished a weak fifth with only 10.3 percent of the vote. Lots of money, but no delegates since the caucuses only send people to a county convention. Actual national convention delegates will not be apportioned until the state party convention June 16.

That took Perry into New Hampshire. Sort of. His name was on the ballot. But he was there only for debates, preferring to make his stand in South Carolina. The result was not pretty for Perry. While Romney drew 97,000 votes, Perry could not crack 2,000, getting less than one percent of the vote. And no delegates -- making South Carolina possibly his last chance to get that first delegate and avoid breaking Connally's record.

Call it a victory Mitt-igated. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney easily won New Hampshire's primary Tuesday night, stepping to the brink of the GOP  nomination with a historic sweep of the first two presidential contests. But this past week exposed his existential vulnerability: Romney is easily cast as a cold-hearted phony

Mitt Romney's strong showing in Friday's CNN/Time/ORC South Carolina poll shows how narrow a window his opponents may have to derail him.

The poll offers a powerful reminder of how much each caucus and primary resets the dynamic in the states that follow -- the same way each shot in billiards reshapes the table. Compared to the most recent CNN/Time South Carolina survey in December, Romney posted gains across the board. Most important, the new poll shows him significantly advancing among the overlapping circles of evangelical Christians and tea party supporters who have resisted him in surveys all year -- and who reaffirmed that resistance in the Iowa caucuses, according to entrance polls.

Rick Santorum was propelled to his strong finish in Iowa by the votes of evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics. But what now?

SALEM, N.H. -- Mitt Romney's rise in Iowa and his huge lead in New Hampshire polls are causing some commentators to wonder whether the Granite State still matters. The answer is yes. Definitely, yes, especially if the former Massachusetts governor squeezes out a victory in Iowa's caucuses Tuesday night.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Two questions loom over the traveling political carnival that has encamped here awaiting the verdict of Iowa Republicans in their Tuesday caucuses. The first is obvious: Who will win the first-in-the nation contest? The second is attracting less attention but is ultimately more significant: Will the result change the overall dynamic of the GOP race?

For all of the sound and fury in Iowa this weekend, the very uncertainty surrounding the first question adds to the suspicion that the answer to the second could be: not much.

Iowa's impact is open to question this year not mostly because it is uniquely quirky -- though its quirks are part of the story -- but because it accurately reflects the basic trend that has governed the GOP race over the past year. Here, as nationally, Mitt Romney is performing solidly, if not spectacularly, with the party's most pragmatic and secular elements. None of his rivals, meanwhile, is convincingly consolidating the more ideological and religiously conservative components of the party most resistant to him.

A second poll underscores the opportunity that division on the right is creating for Mitt Romney in Iowa. In the NBC/Marist College Iowa survey released Friday, Romney continues to draw only modest support overall - but remains positioned to capture the state because the groups most skeptical of him are fragmenting.

Overall, the poll showed Romney leading with 23 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 21 percent, and then Rick Santorum (15 percent), Rick Perry (14 percent) and Newt Gingrich (13) all bunched closely together. That largely tracks the findings of the CNN/Time/ORC Iowa survey released earlier this week.

In the NBC/Marist poll, like the CNN/Time survey, Romney continues to draw meager support among the party's most ardent elements. The new survey shows him capture just 13 percent among both evangelical Christians and voters who describe themselves as strong tea party supporters.

The new CNN/Time/ORC polls out today for the first four states on the Republican calendar underscore the breadth of Newt Gingrich's rise - and the extent of the threat confronting the erstwhile front-runner Mitt Romney.

In each of the states except New Hampshire, Gingrich is consolidating the voters that have long been the most skeptical of Romney, while dividing those that had been most open to the former Massachusetts governor. That's a formula for success - if the former speaker can maintain it, admittedly a big question.

(RELATED: Gingrich Leads in Three of Four New Early-State Polls)

Gingrich is now succeeding among both sides of the party - dominating among the vanguard half that identifies with the tea party movement, and holding his own with the less ideological half that does not. What's more, the evidence from these polls suggests that along each track, the voters most skeptical of Romney are moving to unite behind Gingrich, at least for now. In particular, among the groups most dubious of Romney, Gingrich is now attracting much larger shares of the vote than any single candidate did in surveys earlier this fall.

In all four states, Gingrich now leads Romney among GOP primary voters who identify with the tea party movement. Gingrich's share of the vote among tea party supporters has increased as if launched from a rocket: since the last round of CNN/Time/ORC polls in late October he's up from 13 percent with them in Iowa to 40; in New Hampshire he's jumped from 6 to 37; in South Carolina from 11 to 53; and in Florida from 14 all the way to 62.

Larger version

What's the scariest news for Mitt Romney in the nearly mirror-image polls out today showing Newt Gingrich rocketing into the lead in Iowa, South Carolina and nationally?

The short answer: the breadth of Gingrich's support. In all three surveys, Gingrich is not only lapping Romney among the ideologically conservative and religiously devout voters who have resisted the former Massachusetts governor throughout the race; Gingrich is also running step for step (or ahead) with Romney among the less ideological, more secular, voters who have been Romney's base.

All of this is a big and ominous change for Romney. Earlier he had the luxury of watching the rivals to his right divide conservative voters while he made steady progress at consolidating the party's more managerial, less ideological wing. For a brief period in late summer, Texas Gov. Rick Perry threatened to reach across the divide - but his poor debate performances quickly deflated his standing with both groups. Now Gingrich, a much steadier (if still volatile) contender than Perry, is not only consolidating conservatives, but loosening Romney's hold on the more pragmatic and managerial components of the GOP coalition.

Presidential candidates usually lay low the day of a debate, but Newt Gingrich spent a lot of time today in the public eye, tailgating at Furman University and opening a campaign office. And why not? Who knows how long this moment will last.

The Gingrich surge has finally arrived, predicted repeatedly and most arduously by Gingrich himself. Two national polls now show him in the top tier. Today he opened his campaign headquarters in South Carolina with nine staffers, the biggest team in the state. And tonight this loquacious, self described "student of history'' and man of the world heads into a debate on foreign policy. Is there anywhere else he'd rather be on a Saturday night?

So when he opened his campaign office in Greenville this afternoon and said he had time for "one or two more (questions), I don't want to keep people here forever,'' anyone who has followed his campaign's trajectory knows he would like to do exactly that. "Any reporter have anything they want to ask?'' asked the man who usually relishes putting the news media in its place.  It was Gingrich's turn to hold court, and if the boom follows the pattern we've seen in this campaign, it will be shortlived.

While Gingrich is peaking, Rick Perry is tanking. Still reeling from his horrible "oops'' moment in Wednesday's debate, the Texas governor now has to walk into another debate. On foreign policy, a topic in which he has little experience. His tweet earlier today of him going running by himself  suggested a "what me, worry?'' attitude, but it also shows him going it alone at a time when Gingrich is finally getting the attention he has craved.

SPARTANBURG -- Bob Jones III said he hasn't endorsed Mitt Romney as he did in the last presidential campaign partly because he doesn't think Christian voters will rule the Mormon candidate out this time.

"Number one, he hasn't asked for it,'' said Jones, chancellor of the fundamentalist Christian university named after his family. "I had a reason for doing it the first time. I don't have that same reason this time.''

In a wide-ranging interview Friday afternoon in his stately office replete with mounted game, a bear rug, dark wood furniture and stained glass windows, Jones recalled why he backed Romney in 2007.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - Mitt Romney is trying to have it both ways on Pentagon spending.

The top-tier Republican presidential candidate pledged Friday to cut wasteful spending from the Defense Department and use the savings to support U.S. troops and veterans.

"I will not look for the military as a place to balance our budget," Romney told veterans who chatted with him over lunch at a local barbeque restaurant.

Romney's frame on the issue allows him to position himself as both a deficit hawk and military hawk. But his position takes billions of dollars off the table as Washington struggles to tame mounting debt.

SPARTANBURG -- One day after Sharon Bialek put a name and a face to the allegations of sexual harassment that have loomed over presidential candidate Herman Cain for more than a week, many voters are still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Interviews with voters on Tuesday in this heavily Republican corner of the state that has chosen the Republican nominee since 1980 found a mostly a positive view of Cain. National Journal and CBS News are sponsoring a debate at Wofford College here on Saturday.

Cain has denied harassing Bialek, as well as two other women who worked for him at the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s and received settlements after they complained about his behavior.

"It's very unfortunate that these ladies are coming up with these accusations,'' said Shelby Clark, 79.

"Either it didn't happen or they want the publicity or they are trying to discredit him. It's a smear campaign,'' said Annie Hargrove, 53.

One exception was Mary Willis, 83. She said, "I thought it was media hype but when I saw that woman's picture in the paper today and heard what she said, I believed her.''

The latest statewide polls -- taken before the allegations surfaced -- show Cain in the lead or trailing Mitt Romney. The story has changed so rapidly since the news first broke last Sunday that it's hard to predict how voters here and elsewhere will react in the days ahead.

Two weeks after Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's staff in New Hampshire up and quit, she is announcing a seven-member team in South Carolina headed by Ron Thomas, a former political director of the state party.

Former Bachmann advisors like Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas have urged Bachmann to focus exclusively on Iowa, where she won the state party's straw poll in August and subsequently dropped to the bottom of the polls. Iowa's Jan. 3 caucus is the first nominating contest, and political strategists are skeptical she can continue her campaign if she doesn't place at the top.

But her campaign manager, Keith Nahigian, said at Monday's National Journal 2012 Election Preview that the campaign was not "one-state only.''

"We're positioned in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida,'' he said. "It's kind of an odd question we get more than others.''

One reason the Republican presidential contest has been so unusually volatile is that it's become two races running along parallel but very distinct tracks. One of those races seems to be settling down, steadily if slowly. The other still appears perched on an earthquake fault. If that dynamic persists,  former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will remain the favorite for the nomination- even though a significant proportion of the party remains resistant to choosing him.

The evolution of the GOP contest into two distinct races becomes apparent when looking at the long trend in public opinion polling. In the twelve national CNN/ORC surveys about the race conducted since January four different candidates have held or shared the national lead: ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and businessman Donald Trump (neither of whom actually entered the race), Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Other national polls this year have recorded leads for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and more recently businessman Herman Cain.