I’m here in lovely Charleston, South Carolina for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference meeting and, aside from passing a nasty wreck on I-26 that closed the road, and a now-favorably resolved tussle with CNN over my media credentials (giving me access to their “spin room” after the presidential debate), all seems to be going quite well.
Except everything we thought we knew about the GOP contest so far seems to be wrong.
First up, it appears as though it was Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, who won the Iowa caucuses earlier this month. So the narrative that Mitt had done something exceptional — winning both Iowa and New Hampshire — is out the window.
And in a polling twist, the latest Insider Advantage survey of South Carolina Republicans shows that Newt Gingrich now has a three point lead over Mitt Romney — a big swing from just a few days ago, when the same organization showed Romney with a double digit lead. Support for Paul and Santorum if falling off, while Rick Perry is now inside the margin of error. Could this poll be an outlier? Of course. Or it could also be the canary in the coal mine.
This means the debate here might actually be pivotal. If Gingrich does win South Carolina, then we not only have a race on our hands, but a potential slug fest.
There’s nothing quite like waking up in a different city and finding the narrative has changed so profoundly…
