The SC Republican Primary: Eyes Wide Shut

“It’s not that I’m a good debater,” Gingrich said in his victory speech on Saturday, “it’s that I articulate the deepest felt values of the American people.” He just doesn’t see any need to live them. In September 2010, ex wife No. 2 (Marianne) told John Richardson of Esquire  that Gingrich told her, “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.” Richardson this week added a postscript to the Marianne Gingrich interview, insisting that the focus on Gingrich’s infidelity misses the real problem: “the ferocious and manic drive that … collapsed in a breakdown so severe his own Republican peers had to force him out of power.” That, and her conclusion about his financial ethics and heavy lobbying since leaving Congress — that he chose corruption.

In the end, none of that mattered in the place where “values matter.” In a state where 65 percent of Republican primary voters self-identify as evangelicals or born-again Christians, voters abandoned their standard bearer, Rick Santorum, and overwhelmingly chose to dance with the devil who speaks in dulcet tones — because he looks more like a winner.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

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