Last Saturday’s South Carolina primary sent the Republican presidential nominating contest into strange and possibly uncharted territory. Front-runner and “Establishment” favorite, Mitt Romney, turned in a dismal performance, while twice-left-for-dead Newt Gingrich not only swept the state but quickly seized the lead in both national GOP polls and in Florida, where voters go to the polls on January 31.

Newt’s Florida “bump” was especially impressive, since the Sunshine State was supposedly Romney’s “firewall” that would maintain his momentum even if disaster struck in South Carolina. Moreover, Gingrich took the lead there even though Romney had enjoyed virtually uncontested control of the airwaves, having spent (via his own campaign and his Super-PAC) over $5 million in ads, mostly attacking the former Speaker on his Freddie Mac “historian” gig. Thanks to another $5 million check from Sheldon Adelson’s family, Newt’s fighting back with his Super-PAC recently buying $6 million in Florida air time.

Gingrich’s ace-in-the-hole throughout the campaign, namely his ability to rally conservatives to his side by attacking the news media, didn’t work as well for him in the first of two pre-primary debates in Tampa on January 23. Instead, Newt was largely on the defensive against attacks from Romney. The debate, however, ended more or less as a draw, with Mitt once again struggling over questions about his tax returns. For this reason, the final debate in Jacksonville tomorrow could prove decisive.

In terms of the second-tier candidates, Ron Paul is not seriously contesting Florida, preferring to focus on upcoming caucus states. But one real imponderable here is the trajectory of the struggling campaign of Rick Santorum; his collapse or withdrawal could give a crucial boost to Gingrich, given the strong evidence that Newt is his supporters’ overwhelming second choice. That being said, it remains unclear how much Gingrich’s South Carolina win was attributable to the late withdrawal of and endorsement from Rick Perry, since the Texan’s support-levels there were low and vanishing. Regardless, there are generally strong signs in national polling that Gingrich has now become the Tea Party’s adopted candidate, with Romney depending to a dangerous degree on self-identified moderates.

One fascinating aspect of the contest at present is the vast gulf between elite and rank-and-file views about the two leading candidates’ “electability.” The prevailing elite view is that Gingrich would likely be a disastrous general-election candidate, as is already suggested in general election polls, particularly given the low odds that he could continue to avoid scrutiny of his marital and financial background in the long slog to November. Contrary to such skepticism, however, exit polls in South Carolina showed Newt soundly defeating Mitt among voters most concerned about “electability”. It seems Gingrich’s claim that he can end-run media “protection” for the incumbent in debates clearly sounds compelling to a lot of conservatives who don’t spend much time perusing polls and probably don’t trust them anyway.

Of course, if Romney manages to win in Florida, the road ahead will likely become much easier for him. With a slew of caucuses that will reward his financial and Establishment advantages, followed by a February 28 primary in his native state of Michigan, Mitt would likely enter Super Tuesday (March 6) poised for victory. Gingrich’s failure to get on the ballot in Virginia would merely be icing on the cake.

But a Romney loss in Florida could cause a real crisis of confidence in him in the very Establishment circles he is counting on. There are already some signs of panic, with renewed talk (not terribly realistic, given the rapid passage of filing deadlines for primaries) of last-minute candidacies by an assortment of pols who chose not to run earlier in the cycle. Indeed, last night’s credible SOTU response by Gov. Mitch Daniels is certain to encourage some Republican pundits to cast goo-goo eyes in his direction.

Meanwhile, Democrats have been greatly encouraged by the rude interruption of Romney’s cakewalk to the nomination; by the weaknesses in his background Gingrich has exposed; and of course, by the tantalizing prospect that Republicans might actually nominate the man who became a useful punching bag for Bill Clinton when they shared power in the 1990s. Obama’s combative SOTU address indicated the incumbent has fully shifted into re-election mode. And his slowly improving approval ratings, along with fragile but encouraging economic news, provide a decent foundation for a strong campaign against an opposition party that continues to surprise virtually everyone including itself, however unpleasantly.

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With the South Carolina primary on tap this Saturday, Mitt Romney is breathtakingly close to a victory that would likely all but clinch the presidential nomination. He’s been ahead in every public poll taken in South Carolina since his win in New Hampshire. His conservative opposition remains divided. And the one candidate who did drop out after New Hampshire, Jon Huntsman, promptly endorsed Romney after months of badmouthing him.

But a strong debate performance by Newt Gingrich on Monday, and the $3.4 million his Super-PAC invested in attack ads on Romney that have generated a lot of even more powerful “earned media,” have placed the outcome in South Carolina in some doubt. A final debate on Thursday, along with the decision—or indecision—of conservative opinion-leaders to consolidate support behind a single candidate, could make a difference.

Romney and his own Super-PAC have clearly concluded Gingrich is the main, and perhaps the only, real threat, and have resumed the intense fire on the former Speaker (heavily utilizing former House colleagues) that cut him down to size in the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses.

Meanwhile, the candidate who came out of Iowa with a strong claim to have finally become the “true conservative alternative” to Romney, Rick Santorum, is struggling a bit, though still, along with Ron Paul, showing up in the mid-teens in South Carolina polls. Santorum appeared to have obtained a real breakthrough last Saturday, when a sizable group of conservative religious leaders convened in Texas by Christian Right warhorse Tony Perkins announced it had reached a “consensus” to back the Pennsylvanian. But almost immediately, backers of Newt Gingrich who attended Perkins’ conclave contested this interpretation of events, and suggested the group was evenly divided between Gingrich and Santorum, with the vote to endorse Santorum only occurring after a big percentage of attendees had already left. In Monday’s debate, Santorum didn’t exactly shine, and found himself on the defensive for voting against a national “right-to-work” bill in the Senate (not a popular position among union-hating South Carolina Republicans).

Lost in the shuffle has been Texas governor Rick Perry, who hasn’t registered double-digit support in Palmetto State in any poll since October. Though he’s campaigning heavily around the state, the main publicity coming out of his campaign this week was the request made by one of his earliest and most prominent South Carolina supporters, state senator Larry Grooms, that he withdraw from the race and enable someone else to beat Romney. South Carolina looks to be Perry’s last stand, and it isn’t going well.

If Gingrich does somehow catch up with Romney, or perhaps even if Romney narrowly wins but Perry and Santorum do poorly enough that they are forced to drop out (no one expects Ron Paul to withdraw until the Convention itself), the next question will be whether Gingrich’s latest rise from the political grave will inspire a national renaissance of his campaign, or at least make him competitive in Florida, which votes on January 31. Until today, polls in Florida and nationally were showing Romney building huge leads over the field. But a Rasmussen survey released today, the first taken since Monday’s debate, shows Gingrich suddenly within three points of Romney nationally.

One note of encouragement for Gingrich might have gained a lot more attention earlier in the year: Sarah Palin told Fox viewers that were she voting in South Carolina, she’d vote for Newt. This was, however, the most indirect endorsement yet from Palin, famous for sometimes phoning in endorsements: she said she wishes Newt well so that the campaign can continue, and the winner can receive a more thorough vetting. Well, there’s no question she is an expert on the need for candidate vetting.

Assuming Romney survives South Carolina and other early tests to become the nominee, it’s worth wondering how much general-election damage he’s suffered from attacks on him by Gingrich and others. Aside from the Bain Capital issues raised so visibly by Gingrich’s Super-PAC (complicated most recently by allegations that one Bain beneficiary was a company that disposed of “biomedical wastes” from abortion clinics), his reluctance to release his tax records is turning heads, and each day he has to spend precious general election capital reassuring conservatives that he’ll be sufficiently loyal to their priorities in office. And in general, the nomination campaign continues to shine light on the gap between GOP “base” preoccupations and more mainstream sentiments, as illustrated by Monday’s debate. Democrats couldn’t have been happier with the spectacle of wealthy Republican candidates spending the Martin Luther King holiday lecturing poor and unemployed people on how to develop a work ethic while the audience howled for blood like Romans.

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Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Republican nomination is unfolding like a well-crafted business plan. He hit his numbers in New Hampshire last night, saw his most dangerous rivals tumble, and reinforced the aura of inevitability that surrounds his candidacy.

Everything seemed to fall Romney’s way. After his dizzying ascent in Iowa, Rick Santorum fell back to earth with a fifth-place finish. Newt Gingrich, who went snarling across New Hampshire like a wounded beast, flamed out. Ron Paul came in second, which suits Romney just fine. Paul’s libertarian purism inspires cult-like fervor among his young followers, but it will never command majorities in GOP primaries.

Yes, it was a good night for John Huntsman, but probably the best he’ll have this year. He did well among independents, moderates and voters who don’t like the Tea Party, a not-so-representative sample of the GOP electorate. He has nowhere to go, and it seems unlikely Romney would put another Mormon on his ticket.

Now it’s on to South Carolina, where Romney already leads, and where Paul’s useful presence will inhibit last-ditch attempts by conservatives to form an “anybody but Mitt” coalition. If he wins in the South, the race is effectively over.

What are the implications for progressives of Romney’s emergence as President Obama’s likely opponent in November? Let me offer four:

First, don’t underestimate Romney. It’s hard not to be impressed by Romney’s methodical, disciplined march to the nomination, even if, like me, you are appalled by his willingness to change positions that get in his way.

On the other hand, Romney has a big structural advantage that is usually decisive in Republican nominating battles. No, it’s not money, it’s the fact that he’s the establishment candidate. Romney ran second to John McCain in 2008, paying his dues and learning lessons that have helped him avoid mistakes this time around. Now he’s the GOP heirarchy’s presumptive choice, even if most conservatives don’t much like or trust him.

Romney may have tepid support from the GOP base, he may be pathetically unable to connect with ordinary Americans, but he is a competent, calculating machine who knows how to map and adapt to challenging political terrain, whether it’s very liberal Massachusetts or the radically conservative Iowa caucuses.

Second, electability is trumping ideology. Nearly 60 percent of New Hampshire voters said their top priority was a candidate who could defeat President Obama. Only 14 percent said they were looking for a “true conservative.”

This of course is bad news for President Obama, who would have loved to face a Tea Party favorite like Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, or even Newt Gingrich. Then the fall campaign would have been about GOP extremism rather than the economy. That the Tea Party’s least favorite candidate appears headed toward nomination is a tacit admission that the party has veered dangerously from the political mainstream.

Third, an Obama-Romney match-up will be a fight for the political center. Newt Gingrich is right: Romney began his career as a “Massachusetts moderate.” That means he will have more “crossover appeal” to swing voters than his GOP rivals, which he’ll need to offset minimal enthusiasm from conservatives. Given his now legendary “flexibility,” it shouldn’t be hard for Romney to pivot back to the center. He might even warm to Romneycare again, to demonstrate his pragmatic acceptance of government’s role in health care, and of his willingness to work across the aisle to get things done.

In any case, neither candidate can rely on a mobilizing their base to win election. That means Obama will have to work harder to win back independent and moderate voters who deserted his party in 2010.

Fourth, the economy is the issue. Much of Romney’s “electability” stems from his cred as a successful businessman and manager who knows how the real economy works. As he made clear in his victory remarks last night, Romney intends to make the 2012 election another referendum on Obama’s economic performance.

Democrats hope to turn Romney’s success as a corporate turnaround artist against him, echoing Gingrich’s claims Bain Capital “looted” firms and cost workers their jobs. But Obama should be leery of hitting the “vulture capitalism” theme too hard.

The swing voters who will decide the election want action to fix the economy, not scapegoating. Rather than allow himself to be lured into a debate over what’s he done to fix it, Obama needs to frame the race prospectively, as a choice between competing paths to economic renewal. His top priority must be to develop a bolder, more compelling plan for reviving jobs, spurring economic innovation, and restoring U.S. competitiveness.

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So voters finally got into the act in the Republican presidential nominating contest, and the results from Iowa were about what anyone reading the late polls might have expected. With Ron Paul apparently taking a bit of a hit from bad publicity about his extremist past and attacks on his current foreign policy views by other candidates, he fell just short of Romney and Santorum, who almost literally tied. In many respects, the caucuses were a re-run of 2008: turnout was very much the same despite all the talk about a super-psyched GOP base; the composition of caucus-goers was very similar; and Mitt Romney got about the same number of votes. The main difference is that Romney spent much less time in Iowa than in 2008, and more crucially, the non-Romney vote was more divided. It’s also significant as a sign of politics to come that Mitt didn’t have to spend nearly as much of his own money in 2012, because a “Super PAC” supporting him did the dirty work of destroying Newt Gingrich’s credibility with Iowa conservatives (with some help from Ron Paul’s campaign).

The free-falling Gingrich campaign did have enough energy left to beat Rick Perry in Iowa (Newt got 13 percent of the vote, Perry 10 percent), dealing a huge blow to the candidate still generally thought to be the only enduring threat to a Romney nomination (Perry considered dropping out of the race Tuesday night, but reconsidered, probably after taking a good long look at the poor positioning of the rest of the field in South Carolina and Florida). Michele Bachmann, the winner of the Iowa GOP straw poll back in August, which croaked Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy, had the wheels fall off in the final week before the caucuses and finished a poor sixth, subsequently folding what was left of her campaign.

So technically, at least, Rick Santorum, who benefitted mightily from a last-minute consolidation of social conservative support, is the unlikely winner of the conservative-alternative-to-Romney sweepstakes that Iowa hosted for so many months. I qualify his victory because there are many doubts about his post-Iowa viability, and aside from Paul, who will be in the race to the bitter end, there remains a slim possibility that Perry or Gingrich can rise from the dead to attempt one more comeback when the calendar turns to the South after New Hampshire. Indeed, one of the grand ironies of this entire contest is that perceptions of Romney’s weakness have kept candidates in the field who are mainly keeping each other from consolidating non-Romney support.

Santorum has spent little time outside Iowa, and does not have deep pockets. More importantly, he’s a career politician with a domestic policy record that troubles some conservatives (notably pundit Erick Erickson, who has taken to attacking Santorum regularly and savagely). As a conservative Catholic, he has ties to evangelical activists via the anti-abortion movement (in which he is heavily involved, taking positions that won’t wear well with more moderate voters), but does not have the kind of natural connections to southern political culture that 2008 winner Mike Huckabee enjoyed.

Given Romney’s big lead in New Hampshire, it’s unlikely Santorum will take the time and money to seriously challenge him there, though Newt Gingrich is promising to launch a vengeful attack on Mitt in the Granite State. But the next critical (and perhaps final) phase of the campaign could well be played out behind the scenes, as conservative opinion-leaders decide whether or not to get behind Romney and end the contest before it gets truly ugly and expensive. South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, for example, could send a very big signal that the battle to deny Romney the nomination has become too dangerous for the conservative movement to sustain. A Romney win in the Palmetto State would pretty much wrap things up unless Mitt does or says something uncharacteristically stupid, though rivals (obviously Paul, probably Gingrich, and perhaps even Huntsman if he chooses to spend his family fortune) may stick around in case that happens.

It bears repeating at this point that there are few signs of a general-election “conservative revolt” against a Romney-led ticket, beyond a smattering of evangelicals who really don’t like Mormons. The best way to describe the wingnut mood about this contest is that a Romney nomination would deny them their ideal aspiration of a Goldwater-style candidacy (one, of course, that won this time) aimed at repealing the entire Great Society/New Deal legacy. But that would be considered a tactical setback other than an intolerable defeat, simply delaying the great-gittin’-up-morning they are convinced is on the horizon once those vote-buying socialists in the Democratic Party are driven from power. An early Romney nomination victory, on the other hand, might save the candidate a lot of heartburn by giving conservative activists time to heal their wounds and get used to him as the nominee, while limiting the gestures he will have to make to earn their enthusiastic support, if not their trust or affection.

Up until now, the right-wing conquest of the Republican Party that reached critical mass immediately after Barack Obama’s election in 2008 has not involved a lot of soul-searching questions about the relative value of ideology and “electability.” Indeed, it’s been an article of faith on the right—for some dating all the way back to Phyllis Schlafly’s 1964 book A Choice Not An Echo—that insufficient ideological rigor was precisely the reason for the GOP’s electoral problems. And nothing much has happened since the beginning of 2009, when the GOP made the unusual decision to move away from the political center after two straight electoral debacles, to disabuse them of the idea that they would be rewarded at the ballot box for fully indulging their ideological appetites and thrilling the conservative activist base.

That may be about to change. The House Republicans’ rejection of a two-month stopgap agreement to preserve a payroll tax cut and extend unemployment benefits has finally earned the Tea Party Movement full blame for gridlock and dysfunction in Congress (an institution whose approval rating dropped to 11 percent last week according to Gallup). Opinion surveys indicate that the deeply satisfying sabotage game (i.e., deliberately screwing up the operations of the federal government and then benefitting from public disgruntlement with the competence of said federal government) conservatives have been playing may be coming to an end as Republicans become more firmly identified with unpopular positions on spending, taxes, and the willingness to cooperate across party lines. Even the president’s approval ratings are looking better by comparison.

In other words, Republicans are at long last having to choose between ideology and popularity—or to put it another way, between the “base” and the general electorate—and the current behavior of House Republicans indicates it’s no real contest: ideology comes first.

Many non-conservative political observers think the same choice is at the heart of the turbulent presidential nominating contest, and wonder if and when Republicans will finally “settle” on Mitt Romney as the obvious candidate with the best chance of winning in November. But polling on “electability” indicates that most actual rank-and-file Republicans think whatever candidate they happen to prefer is also the most electable (conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson is hardly alone in arguing that regardless of the polls, Romney is actually the least electable of the viable candidates), and a steady majority appear to consider electability less important than ideology, values or “character.”

Yet less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Romney’s prospects are indeed on the rise, but for reasons distinct from the ideology/electability choice. To put it simply, the long conservative search for a clear alternative to Romney seems to be terminally failing.

It’s now well-documented that the latest non-Romney to enjoy a surge in the polls, Newt Gingrich, is in deep trouble in Iowa. This is not necessarily a function of a national decline in support for the former Speaker—he continues to run ahead of or even with Romney among Republicans nationally–or (to cite one common CW theory) of some decision by the “Republican Establishment” to deep-six Gingrich on electability grounds. More prosaically, Newt is being savaged in Iowa by heavy negative advertising by Ron Paul and by a “super-PAC” supporting Romney, and he has neither the money nor the organization in the state to fight back. And far from focusing on electability, the anti-Gingrich ads aim at Gingrich’s conservative support by depicting him as an unprincipled flip-flopper and conventional Washington pol.

At the same time, Iowa conservatives appear incapable of uniting around any other candidate. Rick Perry is investing heavily in Iowa in time and money, but is showing relatively little movement in the polls. Both Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are moving up a bit in Iowa polls, but are aiming at largely the same evangelical conservative constituency. Two of the most prominent Iowa Christian Right leaders, Bob Vander Plaats and Chuck Hurley, have just endorsed Santorum, but could not convince the board of their own organization, FAMiLY Leader, to make an endorsement, reflecting deep ambivalence in their ranks.

At the moment, the odds are probably better than even that either Romney or Ron Paul will win Iowa. With Romney maintaining a big lead in New Hampshire polls, and also beginning to break the apparent 25 percent cap on his national support, an Iowa win, particularly if Paul finishes second and no other candidate appears to be consolidating conservative support, could give him unstoppable momentum. A Paul victory with Romney second could be nearly as good for Mitt, given Paul’s unpopularity with both rank-and-file conservatives and elites and the vast ammunition his record and radical utterances will provide for future negative ads.

A rebound by Gingrich in Iowa, or a last-minute surge by Perry or Santorum, could upset this scenario, but the fact that all three of these candidates have some grounds for optimism illustrates the problem facing conservatives determined to stop Romney.

If Romney wins, in other words, it won’t be because conservatives worried about November have chosen to elevate electability over ideology, but because the large field of candidates available to them has serially imploded, and time has run out for anything other than a desperate anybody-but-Romney rearguard action. At the same time, Romney himself has made just enough concessions to the rightward drift of his party to remain acceptable to all but bitter-enders and Mormon-haters.

Crazy things have been known to happen in Iowa in the last days before the caucuses, although the intercession of the Christmas holidays makes big changes in support levels unlikely. In any event, the invisible primary is finally coming to an end, and with it will expire the hopes of all but a very few candidates.

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Congress is mired this week in a complex struggle over an omnibus appropriations bill (with the total amount dictated by the earlier deficit reduction agreement) linked to a continuation of unemployment benefits and payroll tax relief. It’s almost entirely a matter of partisan Kabuki theater at this point, and neither a collapse of negotiations (followed, presumably, by another short-term continuing resolution on appropriations) nor an agreement (within the current parameters of the fight) would produce a major wingnut meltdown. Republicans generally are trying to secure a measure forcing the administration, among other indignities, to build the controversial Keystone KL pipeline, but again, this is more of a partisan that a purely ideological concern.

But conservative activists are reaching a failsafe point in the presidential nomination contest, with less than three weeks to go (or less in actual campaign time, given the limitations in attention-span and tolerance for “comparative” messages imposed by Christmas) before the Iowa caucuses.

With Herman Cain having finally suspended his campaign, conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere are struggling to decide whether to get behind the current frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, as an alternative to the chronically disfavored Mitt Romney, or to find some way to unite behind other, previously failed candidacies like those of Perry or Bachmann (while very much a viable candidate in Iowa, Ron Paul is generally considered unacceptable as an actual nominee because of his foreign policy views, and Rick Santorum would need an Iowa miracle to become viable). Perry and Paul are spending extensively on campaign ads in Iowa, and Paul, in particular, has been pounding Gingrich for his many flip-flops, his ideological heresies, and his Washington ties. Iowa polls all show Gingrich in the lead at present, though at least one, from PPP, shows Gingrich losing ground with steadily eroding favorable/unfavorable ratios.

There’s one more Iowa debate on tap (tomorrow, sponsored by Fox), and some key endorsements still likely to come (notably from wingnut leaders Bob Vander Plaats of the Iowa FAMiLY Leader and Rep. Steve King; both could go for about anyone other than Romney). It’s anybody’s guess what will happen; Gingrich, Paul and Romney are all in a decent position to win a close split decision, though the bulk of polls still favor Gingrich, who is particularly strong among self-identified Republicans. Meanwhile, Gingrich has been gaining on Romney in New Hampshire, and has built huge leads in South Carolina and Florida. A Gingrich win in Iowa would probably mean the end for Perry, Bachmann and Santorum, and put Romney on the ropes; a Paul win would be nearly as good for Romney as a win himself, particularly if Gingrich fades notably, which could indicate that the other candidates’ attacks are having and will continue to have an effect.

At this point it’s worth noting that the nomination schedule features both an early January blitz, and then something of a lull, meaning that unless someone scores the early knockout with wins in all or nearly all the January states, then money, organization, and sheer endurance could become very large factors and the contest could extend at least to Super Tuesday in March, and perhaps into the post-April 1 period when states can award delegates on a statewide winner-take-all basis if they so choose. There’s already talk that if Gingrich wins big in January, Republican Establishment figures (alarmed by Gingrich’s very poor standing in the general electorate) could either mount a major push to force conservatives to accept Romney, or even get behind a very late candidacy for someone more acceptable than either Romney or Gingrich among Tea Party supporters, but who has less glaring weaknesses than those in the existing field.

With all these variables in play, the overriding reality is that going on three years after the outbreak of the Tea Party Movement, conservatives can’t agree on much in the GOP presidential campaign other than a general disdain for Mitt Romney. Reading major conservative opinion outlets like National Review you can find both warm reassessments of and vicious attacks on Gingrich, who is far and away the current national front-runner among conservative voters at the moment. There’s a lot of regret about how poorly Rick Perry has performed, amidst very occasional expressions of hope that the Texan’s campaign could be resurrected by a late surge in Iowa. It’s all, frankly, a mess, and the possibility of an outcome that will please Wingnut World from either an ideological or an electability point of view continues to decline as actual voting grows near.

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