Sex or money: which is more disgusting? Money, was the surprising answer last weekend in South Carolina's primary, when Mitt "Mr Potter" Romney's $250m fortune and 15% tax rate proved more distasteful to voters than Newt "angry Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" Gingrich's habit of ditching ill wives for younger and healthier versions thereof and his second wife's claim, denied by Gingrich, that this supporter of "traditional family values" had asked her for an "open marriage". Boo, rich man! Did I mention this was a Republican primary?

This cannot be dismissed as just another fluke, as Gingrich is currently ahead of Romney by nine points in Florida, where the next primary will be held. The most popular ways of explaining all this, in a particularly confused Republican presidential race, are as follows:

1 These aren't votes for Gingrich, they're votes against Romney, the establishment choice.

2 These aren't votes for Gingrich, they're confirmations of how split the party is, with the three primaries so far being won by three different candidates.

3 These aren't votes for Gingrich, they're reflections of the Republican party's shift from being the party of the rich to the party of the disaffected.

4 These aren't votes for Gingrich, this is just South Carolina being South Carolina.

5 These aren't votes for Gingrich, this is a curse from a vengeful God, forcing us all to think about Gingrich's sex life.

Yes, there is a common denominator to these theories: no one is able to countenance the idea that anyone would actually vote for Gingrich, even if they demonstrably did. Even Gingrich seems to find this hard to believe and, as Rick Santorum rightly said in last Thursday's debate, "Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich." Yet Gingrich has insisted repeatedly that a vote for him is a vote against "the national establishment" because heaven knows there's no better way to convey a rebellious spirit than to vote for a middle-aged white guy who has been harrumphing about in DC for as long as I have been alive.

Similarly, the New York Times insisted voters in South Carolina "let themselves be manipulated", which "speaks poorly" of them. Truly, nothing puts southern Republicans in a better mood than being snootily reprimanded by the New York media.

Yet all this overlooks the real source of Gingrich's appeal, as distasteful as it is to write "Gingrich" and "appeal" in such close proximity. He's not a man, he's not even a Marshmallow Man – he's the perfect embodiment of the Republican party, distilled down to its essence; namely hypocrisy, shamelessness, arrogance and Sarah Palin.

If you've been wondering where Palin has disappeared to, I can reveal the truth: Gingrich has eaten her. And by eating her, he has absorbed her shtick of blaming his own failings on the mainstream media. Thus, in Thursday's debate, when CNN's John King asked Gingrich to respond to the "open marriage" allegations, Gingrich railed against "the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media" and added that asking about "personal pain" is "as close to despicable as anything I can imagine". Gingrich was not always so sensitive about personal matters, having once tried to impeach Bill Clinton over "personal pain", AKA lying about having an affair with a woman 22 years younger than him. But considering Gingrich himself was having an affair with a woman 22 years his junior at exactly the same time, "hypocrisy" has for him always been an elastic concept.

Perhaps Gingrich shouldn't be so coy. While one could point out the inherent ridiculousness in his thinking that legalising gay marriage threatens the "sanctity of the institution" far more than, say, a man who has ditched two ailing wives for healthier ones, others take a different tack. A "Dr Keith Ablow" writes on Fox News's website that Gingrich's marital history proves his desirability: "I worry," says Ablow, "whether we'll be clamouring for a third Gingrich term." Newt wants to marry America! But what if he then ran off with a younger, hotter country? Back off, Croatia, you hussy!

Another Palin particle that Gingrich has absorbed is his insistence that he is an outsider – even though he has been a lobbyist and Speaker of the House – while at the same time, somewhat contradictorily, making frequent references to his time with Ronald Reagan. Similarly, Gingrich claims a Tea Party-esque affinity with "the grass roots" and "the real people", though it would be interesting to know how many of these "real people" would shut down the federal government out of pique at being told by the president to sit in the back of Air Force One, as Gingrich intimated he did in 1995.

Finally, his breathtaking condescension when he lectured Juan Williams, a black journalist, on Martin Luther King Day, about what black Americans should and shouldn't find insulting when he talks about them, seems similarly hard to square with "real"-ness.

But then, in a campaign that has long since had a closer affinity to reality TV than actual reality, Gingrich seems, in many ways, like the most real Republican of all.