CHARLESTON, S.C.—Thursday night’s four-top GOP debate made it official: The South Carolina primary has become a referendum on Newt Gingrich. Just 10 days after he was left in a dustbin labeled “Yesterday’s Man” after dismal finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich has confounded the experts yet again. The oft-derided and consistently under-estimated House speaker has now bested Jesus in his sheer number of resurrections —an association that can only help as the South Carolina primary vote looms .

Indeed, with the South Carolina demolition derby moving too fast for pollsters to keep up, there is only one certainty before Saturday’s primary—virtually every GOP voter will have seen Gingrich’s confrontation with CNN moderator John King live or in TV clips. It made for the kind of epic television reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 “I paid for this microphone” line. Challenged by King in the debate’s opening minutes over his ex-wife Marianne charges that he asked for an “open marriage,” Newt went nuclear again his interrogator. He piled on words like “destructive,” “vicious,” “appalled” and “despicable” before unloading with his sucker-punch-line, “I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate.” Gingrich’s debate opening was a direct homage to the Democratic Party’s leading unfaithful husband: namely, the screams of “tabloid trash” by Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992 in response to accusations from Gennifer Flowers.

And so, the conventional wisdom about the GOP race has shifted with the unapologetic abruptness of changes in the Communist Party line during the 1930s. Ten days ago, Mitt Romney was the presumptive GOP nominee after winning 20 delegates in Iowa and New Hampshire. So what if victory actually requires 1,144 votes at the Tampa Convention— Mitt had the Big Mo. Then it all disintegrated. Suddenly, the campaign narrative belatedly captured Romney’s vulnerabilities as perhaps the most unloved GOP front-runner since Richard Nixon in 1968—who incidentally was running against Romney’s father.

Why have the media hordes been so consistently off-base in handicapping the GOP horserace? Virtually everyone from blonde midday cable TV anchors to polling gurus like Nate Silver (his January 16 blog post was headlined, “National Polls Suggest Romney Is Overwhelming Favorite for G.O.P. Nomination”) bought into the Mitt-placed confidence in Romney’s inevitability. Let me caveat that last point (hat tip: Al Haig): Romney remains the favorite for the nomination, but it is not likely to be the quickee January coronation that was forecast just a few days ago.