NEWT Gingrich, massive in a blue suit and red tie pulled himself to his full height and roared: ''This is the most dangerous decision an American president has ever made.'' The crowd roared back: ''Newt, Newt, Newt.'' It was Martin Luther King day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with a week to go until today's crucial primary election, and the bullish Republican candidate was getting out the conservative vote.

A day earlier, the Obama administration and Israel had cancelled a scheduled joint war games, so as not to inflame tensions in the region, in a week when Iran had threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz. Maybe the cancellation was conservative prudence, maybe a tad too hesitant in realpolitik terms, but a line call in either case.

"Andrew Jackson...had one way of dealing with our enemies: kill them." - Newt Gingrich Credit:ERIC THAYER

Not for Newt, nor for his audience. ''This is exactly why Barack Obama should not be president,'' he roared, as the crowd roared back. ''This is surrender''. The cheering filled the venue, a faux Brazilian steakhouse, in a sparse retail park, on the edge of this seaside town. To one side, an identikit three-star hotel slapped together in concrete. To the other, a shuttered nightclub and a UFO-shaped Planet Hollywood, faded pictures of Arnie, Sly and Bruce Willis on the side, as if the whole craft was an emissary from the '80s, from better times.

Inside, Newt told his audience over and again how special they were, the greatest, strongest country the world has ever known, endowed by their creator and the constitution with a unique destiny. Outside, everything suggested the opposite - that the US was in the same predicament as much of the rest of the world, puffed up on debt and cheap growth, and now deflating rapidly.