South Carolina Primary Wrap-Up

The New York Times sums up the ugly nicely:

"Newt Gingrich won the primary by a decisive margin of more than 13 percentage points, and there is no mystery about how he did it. Two-thirds of voters interviewed in exit polls said they made their decision on the basis of the two South Carolina debates, where Mr. Gingrich exploited racial resentment and hatred of the news media to connect with furious voters.

...

"Mr. Romney’s foam-rubber ideology was not built for an electorate this rigid. Mr. Santorum’s profound social conservatism might normally have played well, particularly because two-thirds of primary voters said they were evangelical or born-again Christians, but he appealed only to Republican minds, not hearts.

"It was Mr. Gingrich who pulled the race into the gutter, where he found considerable support. He repeatedly called Mr. Obama 'the greatest food-stamp president in American history,' and lectured a black questioner at Monday’s debate about the amount of federal handouts to blacks, suggesting their work ethic was questionable."

Newt "The Swinger" has a national unfavorability rating of nearly 60%. That doesn't win elections, except in the angry, mouth-breather precincts of South Carolina, where race-baiting and media-bashing make the yahoos forget what a deeply unpopular shitsack they're voting for.

Primary Day in South Carolina

Today is primary day in South Carolina, ancestral home of treasonous secession and unreconstructed racism (Rick Perry and John C. Calhoun, why hast thou forsaken us?). In the course of a week, Willard "What Tax Returns?" Romney's lead has dwindled into, depending on the poll, a dead heat or a solid lead for Newt "The Swinger" Gingrich. One, Public Policy Polling, has The Swinger up by 37%-28% over Millionaire Mitt.

One reason for The Swinger's Up-Schwing (gag) may be that the teabaggers are going for him overwhelmingly: 52%-18% in that same PPP poll. Here's what one numbnut, Karen Martin of the Spartanburg (S.C.) Tea Party, had to say:

"Then our conversation turned to Mitt Romney, and Martin’s sunny countenance darkened. 'I don’t know a single Tea Party person,' she said, slowly drawing out her words, 'who does not despise Mitt Romney to the very core of their being.' I searched her face for levity or compassion, but found neither."

Back in 2008, Oxycontin Rush Limpballs was urging his knuckle-dragging listeners in Texas and Ohio to vote for Hillary Clinton in their open primaries in order to prolong the Democratic race, calling it "too good a soap opera." Now that we have a similar soap opera (or better, a comedy of errors) unfolding in the Rethuglican race, we can only hope it goes on as long as possible, right Rush?

(Image: Tea baggers to the reskew!)