Santorum's newfound victory in Iowa is propelling him forward. South Carolina: 9 takeaways

In the end, South Carolina wasn’t even close.

Newt Gingrich’s commanding victory over Mitt Romney in the first-in-the-South primary shook up the GOP nomination battle as the race heads to Florida — and ensures an epic Sunshine State showdown.


Below are POLITICO’s nine takeaways from the results:

1) Romney may not realize he’s having a near-death experience

Maybe that will change by the time Romney hits the Sunday morning shows. But his concession speech in Columbia bore few hallmarks of a candidate in the midst of a moment of self-awareness after a humiliating defeat in a state with a perfect track record of picking the eventual GOP nominee.

Without naming him, Romney slammed Newt Gingrich for using “weapons of the left” to attack him in the primary, and said those “weapons” will be used against the eventual nominee in the general election.

He overlooked a few things.

Over the course of the last several days, Romney’s hurdles have been largely of his own making — thanks to his halting and muddled responses, stretched out over two debates, over whether he would release his tax returns and then over how many years’ worth he’d put out.

It’s an issue that Romney needs to resolve quickly with a simple answer, one that he sticks to repeatedly. And it’s hard to see how he now can afford to wait until April to put the returns out.

There’s another serious issue at hand: South Carolina conservatives dealt Romney a serious blow by overwhelmingly voting for Gingrich. Romney’s share of the vote, about 27 percent, is near the polling level at which he was stuck throughout much of the year. His inevitability argument has taken a major hit. His Mormonism may have played some role, but it doesn’t likely account for his margin of defeat.

Gingrich has experienced at least two near-death experiences this cycle and kept going. It’s hard to kill someone twice, and even harder to do it a third time. Gingrich is also proving to have the qualities Romney has lacked — passion and anger, and an ability to pivot quickly.

Romney, of course, is forced to contend with a year in which the party’s base is energized against the establishment — and he is the establishment candidate.

Strong candidates have often gone through near-death experiences — John McCain circa 2007 comes to mind. There’s no reason Romney can’t do the same: He is still the favorite to be the nominee, and his campaign is built for a long haul.

But he needs to have standout performances in the two Florida debates this week, and he needs to turn the page on difficult questions about his wealth. He also needs to be able to take a real fight to Gingrich, and carry out the attack without faltering — and in his own words. He is no longer, after his defeat, able to retreat behind surrogates.

2) Newt needs to hold it together

Newt Gingrich had a knockout win in South Carolina, with a roughly 12-point victory. He cleared 40 percent, which was, in a word, huge, and won with basically every demographic group.

Gingrich will no doubt have no shortage of words to describe his victory in the coming days, and he used a bunch of them during a victory speech that ran too long and which was more lecture than victory lap — although he threw plenty of red meat to his supporters as he kicked the “elite media.”

But it remains to be seen whether Gingrich can keep the often-described “Bad Newt” in check long enough to drive a message, and whether he can use his momentum to make a play for more money, a strong organization and a focused effort in Florida, a state that favors Mitt Romney but is not a lock for him. He’ll also need to try to organize for the states beyond Florida, in order to deny Romney a series of victories should he win there.

Fortunately, as Gingrich himself put it in the Thursday night debate, “I have grandiose thoughts.”

Still, he will need to temper those in the coming days.

It’s hard to overstate the amount of free media Gingrich is about to soak up on the cable news networks and in the Sunshine State. His blowout win sends him into Florida with a head of steam and a narrative that he’s made yet another in a string of death-defying comebacks.

That said, Florida is not South Carolina. The primary electorate in Florida is more conservative than people tend to realize but the metrics and rhythms of the race will be different there, and so will the electorate. He’s also presumably starting behind, since Romney has an absentee ballot program, and nearly 200,000 absentee ballots have been cast. While Gingrich has proved that money is not everything in this race, in Florida it’s awfully important.

3) Paging Sheldon Adelson

The major question for Gingrich right now, aside from his own ability to hold things together, is whether he can compete in resources. The easy answer is that he can’t — unless his friend, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, plays deus ex machina for a second time.

Adelson’s $5 million infusion of cash to Gingrich’s super PAC allowed the fourth-place finisher in Iowa and the fifth place finisher in New Hampshire to remain competitive in South Carolina. The money to Winning Our Future was spent on ads cut from a movie deriding Romney’s company, Bain Capital.

Adelson was, according to news accounts, not aware of how the money would be used. And Adelson, sources have said, has no ill will at all toward Romney — but a lot of love for Gingrich, a friend of two decades and someone whose staunchly pro-Israel views the billionaire favors.

Adelson is mercurial and hard to predict. He also, as many sources familiar with his thinking say, operates to the beat of his own drum. Many Romney backers were upset with Adelson for donating money to the pro-Gingrich group, but that is unlikely to keep him from doing it again, if he is so inclined.

If he is, it could make a huge difference in Florida, where the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future has already spent nearly $7 million on paid media in a cycle in which the electorate is extremely volatile.

4) Rick Santorum has nothing to lose by going forward

Santorum is already facing calls from some conservatives to drop out of the race, after a third place showing just ahead of Ron Paul.

But realistically, there is little reason for him to heed it — at least, anytime soon.

Santorum had a strong debate on Thursday night, a reminder that he has real strengths as a candidate. He’s had a lot of trouble post-Iowa driving a national message or getting traction, but at least he can now legitimately lay claim to a Hawkeye State victory.

More important, three different people have now won the three early states — and Gingrich has a proven record of combustion. This alone gives Santorum a reason to keep marching onward to see if he can notch a victory somewhere else, even if he got no bounce out of the recent endorsement from a group of prominent social conservatives. It helps that he’s been able to run a viable shoe-string campaign, and he has a super PAC supporting him to help out with paid media.

5) Mitch Daniels isn’t doing Romney any favors

The Indiana governor is still seen as The One That Got Away for many Republican and conservative pundits and elites, after his decision to forgo a 2012 campaign.

But Daniels is the one who will give the Republican Party’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday — a platform often used by people to launch themselves nationally.

Daniels doesn’t need to do that. But, in light of Romney’s current problems, Daniels’ appearance in that format is almost certain to renew calls for him to enter the race, or whet appetites for someone else to jump in late.

The chances are slim that someone will, but not nil. And with some elites continuing to express dissatisfaction with Romney — and with his inability so far to lock it up early — the wishful thinking will likely continue, and publicly.

6) Nikki Haley suffered a big loss

The South Carolina governor was an early and active endorser of Romney. But Haley has seen her own numbers in the state take a dive and, in the end, she did little for the Romney cause.

The presidential hopeful will undoubtedly remember how hard she worked for him, but Haley now goes back to the governor’s office with a palpable loss of political clout.

It’s always a risk for a home-state governor to endorse in a presidential election. But there was no reward for Haley in this — Romney did not reflect the tastes of the tea party voters who propelled her to victory in the 2010 elections — and her political opponents will pounce.

7) Rick Perry’s backing mattered

Yes, Gingrich’s margin of victory was far bigger than what Perry was pulling in the polls.

But Perry’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse him gave Gingrich a momentum boost and the imprimatur of the person to galvanize conservatives. And it helped drown out media noise surrounding his second wife Marianne’s interview with ABC News.

Perry may have been a bad candidate, but he is known as a good surrogate. And his decision to get behind Gingrich with a full-throated endorsement, at the right moment, was key.

8) Gingrich fared surprisingly well with women

Despite the Marianne Gingrich interview and a history of polling poorly with women throughout his career, the exit polls revealed that the former House Speaker actually did not fare badly with women.

Gingrich was supported by 36 percent of female voters, compared to 30 percent for Romney, 19 percent for Santorum and 13 percent for Ron Paul.

His support from married voters was also large — 39 percent. Romney, in this category, got 29 percent.

This may be an anomaly, specific only to a conservative and evangelical electorate, but it also may mean Gingrich isn’t as toxic with women in other primary states as he’s assumed to be.

9) Romney is about to get all sorts of unsolicited public advice

It began with Chris Christie telling him he needed to release his taxes at the beginning of the week. It will not end there.

Romney has a long list of surrogates, many of whom have elections of their own to run in in the future — and who don’t want to be on record damaging their own brands by endorsing the way he’s handled the issue of his tax returns.

They will all be asked about his huge loss in South Carolina, and they are likely to be honest about their thoughts on what he needs to do going forward.

It will make for great TV, but perhaps not helpful moments for a campaign looking to reboot.