Notes From The Field

-It turns out that my assessment that the race woud be between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul proved to be inaccurate.

-Just a couple of days before Saturday's South Carolina Primary, the Iowa Republican Party announced that former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who had pulled a very strong second to Mitt Romney, losing by eight votes, had in fact won the Iowa Caucuses by thirty-four votes. The net effect of this was that Santorum saw another swing upward in the polls and the vindication of his intense campaign strategy of focusing heavily on the Hawkeye State.

-Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who served Congress from next-door neighbor Georgia, banked on familiarity and an unmistakably strong performance at the debates held in South Carolina over the past week to make his gambit against New Hampshire Primary winner and presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney. Well, on Saturday, the people of the Palmetto State spoke, and spoke resoundingly in Gingrich's favor.

-A twelve-point victory overall in South Carolina is Newt's big payoff. Romney was the only man who could win elsewhere Saturday night, and he took only three of South Carolina's counties, and never by more than eight percent. More surprising (to me, at least) was the fact that in several counties, Rick Santorum beat Romney for second place. Ron Paul managed to finish second in one county and third in two others, but finished fourth overall with thirteen percent of the votes. In many counties, however, the margin between Dr. Paul and the third-place candidate, whether it was Santorum or Romney, was razor-thin, which suggests that Dr. Paul still has plenty of fight left in his campaign.

-I was right about another thing, though. I stated last week that Rick Perry would be finished if he didn't get a strong showing in South Carolina. It turns out the Governor of Texas determined that the cards were on the table and that it was best to avoid another humiliation after Iowa and New Hampshire. Governor Perry suspended his campaign and endorsed Newt Gingrich, which narrows down the Republican race to four (there are a few other minor candidates who are running for the GOP nomination, but it goes without saying that they do not have any chance).

-If three is a crowd, as they say, then four is most definitely a race. For all the talk of how uninspiring and tepid the Republican field is (and, in honesty, a Marco Rubio, a Mitch Daniels, or a Chris Christie would have wrapped this up running away before the dust had even settled in New Hampshire), all of the sudden I see great potential for dynamic. Romney and Paul are being touted as being able to beat the President on Election Day. Gingrich can certainly add his name to that list-if the former House Speaker can safe his campaign from what seemed like certain doom-twice-he can pull off an electoral win over Barack Obama (in the words of one Republican strategist, talking to CNN about the Gingrich campaign, "Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin."). And while I don't have that same level of confidence regarding Election Day with Rick Santorum, I'd definitely say he has a solid chance at the nomination. Three different contests, three different winners. Personally speaking, I find the competition (we haven't seen results like this since 1980) healthy. It will make the candidates earn their votes.

-I started my morning off in an unusual fashion by looking into Randall Terry's campaign. Terry, if you don't know, is running against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. Terry is also an outspoken anti-abortion activist. And the centerpiece of his campaign is a graphic advertisement that will run in select markets on during the Super Bowl. I'll say this much about the ad: it is not for the weak of stomach, and it reminds me why I am pro-life.

-The reason I saw the ad at all was because of a story on CNN.com about a blogger out in Portland who received death threats. Why? she-perhaps half in-jest, I couldn't quite tell-suggested that people donate ten dollars to pro-abortion causes for every Tim Tebow touchdown.

-Now Tim, as we all know, is a devout Christian who has maintained his virginity, done missionary work in the summers during his years at the University of Florida, and is a self-described pro-life individual. Now, while I will give the Portland blogger the benefit of the doubt that receiving death threats and extremely hateful mail is hot-headed on the part of the sender to say the very least, her comment was still insulting and in poor taste. And another thing comes to mind-the way politicians and politically active individuals associate their causes with public figures. When some washed-up, pain-in-the-ass rock musician complains to a Republican presidential candidate about his using their music (Bruce Springsteen in 1984 and, to a lesser extent, John Mellencamp in 2008), the press jumps all over the offending politico and mocks them for using the works of a public figure in a way said public figure does not approve of. But when people suggest that an evangelical quarterback's on-field success should be used to generate money for what is essentially a lethal form of surgical contraception (or, for that matter, that said quarterback should be targeted by a campaign to strip him of his virginity before he's ready to rid himself of it) and the press (and a good portion of the public) stays silent about it, it suggests that something in this country is seriously jacked up.

-One last observation: should, someday, I ever decide to submit my writing to National Review to see if they would grace me with employment as a columnist, I cannot help but wonder if Jay Nordlinger, Jonah Goldberg, and Mark Steyn will raise their voices in protest over the fact that my writing seems to emulate their styles so heavily. Well, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all...