They’re Playing Newt’s Song At The Last Dance In South Carolina

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COLUMBIA, SC — If there’s one reason to believe the conventional wisdom that Mitt Romney will win the South Carolina primary thanks to a split conservative vote may no longer be as reliable as it once was, it came from Romney’s own campaign Wednesday.

The Romney campaign rolled out a pair of former members of Congress to go hammer-and-tongs against Newt Gingrich with the days ticking down to the Jan. 21 primary vote. The last time the Romney campaign did something similar? When Gingrich was surging in Iowa.

The smart money is still that the conventional understanding of how things are going to go down in South Carolina is the right one. But the fact of the Romney call alone should give observers pause — as should the fact that Gingrich really could not have designed a better final push toward primary day if he tried.

The Romney campaign denies their new anti-Newt campaign should raise any alarms.

“I think the last time that we had done one of these conference calls and this time you can just chalk that up to us distinguishing ourselves and our candidate from that of Speaker Gingrich,” Romney communications director Gail Gitcho said on the conference call Wednesday.

But it would be understandable if Romney was worried. Everything’s coming up Gingrich in the past 48 hours, and the next 24 look to be right in his wheelhouse, too. On Tuesday, Gingrich literally brought a divided debate crowd to its feet when he shrugged off moderator Juan Williams’ suggestion that his rhetoric may be racially insensitive.

Debates have always been Gingrich’s time to shine, and right after Monday’s debate in Myrtle Beach comes Thursday’s town hall-style forum in Charleston — giving Gingrich another chance to score points before a fired-up South Carolina audience.

Meanwhile, Romney’s spent the last couple of days showing how vulnerable he can be. First, he sputtered though a walkback over his tax returns, which he first said he wouldn’t release. Then he announced that those returns will show his tax rate to be 15%, which plays directly into Gingrich’s attacks that Romney is essentially a corporate raider out for personal profit. Then came Romney’s contention that over $300,000 in speaking fees constitutes “not very much” money.

And on Wednesday morning, the polling backed it all up. Three separate surveys show Gingrich moving, one of which found him actually leading South Carolina. But the trend is clear — before the debate, Romney was running away with the contest with a double digit lead. After the debate, Gingrich moved quickly to within striking distance. NBC/Marist numbers provided direct evidence for this, polling the day before and after the Charleston debate, finding a fifteen point lead for Romney shrink to five.

The TPM Poll Average of the South Carolina GOP race now shows Romney with a small 4.1 percent lead.

These are all things that make the Obama campaign smile, but then again that’s Newt’s point: he’s said all along that Romney’s not the best man to take on the President in a general election, and now it seems Romney’s doing the best he can to prove his point.

Gingrich got a boost in his quest to consolidate the conservatives from Sarah Palin, who told Fox News viewers the other night she’d vote for Gingrich if she lived in South Carolina (if only to “see this thing continue,” she told Sean Hannity). Gingrich didn’t wait to jump on that, telling CNN Wednesday he’ll ask Palin to “play a major role” in his White House.

I spoke to a couple of political professionals here Tuesday; they both agreed that Gingrich’s only real Hail Mary comes from Rick Perry dropping out and endorsing him. And, despite some rumors to the contrary, the Perry campaign is shooting down any talk of that happening before Saturday’s vote.

So it’s true that a lot of things are coming together for Gingrich, including some polls that show things narrowing in South Carolina. But the fact that Rick Santorum remains in the race (and, to a far lesser extent, Perry) makes it hard to see how Gingrich wins it Saturday. But with another debate as his lead in, and a frontrunner stumbling as badly as Romney is, the stars maybe — just maybe — be aligning for a last-minute Gingrich surge.

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