Still, Santorum’s success shows the tectonic plates of the GOP are still in motion: social conservatives and the establishment aren’t completely fused, the establishment looks weaker than it has in 20 years (thanks to the lingering contamination of the Dubya debacle), and although all of this augurs ill for the party’s November prospects, it suggests there could be a reckoning before 2016 that will reshape the GOP’s identity. I’m not optimistic: Middle American militarism may once again prove the GOP’s lowest common denominator, but there are alternatives.

To see how this battle was fought, and lost, once before, be sure to check out “Buchanan’s Revolution” in the current TAC, as well as the book from which it comes, Timothy Stanley’s The Crusader: The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan .

Late last week, SBE Deputy Secretary Justin Riemer confirmed to The BRAD BLOG both the referral to the AG’s office as well as the fact that an investigation into the ballot petition fraud was officially being carried out by the AG.

“This issue has been referred to the State AG by the State Board of Elections, after learning of allegations of fraudulent signature gathering in that case, and a number of others,” Riemer told us by telephone. “My understanding is that an investigation is under way,” he said.

Regarding the dubious signatures, Gingrich has been quoted as saying, “we turned in 11,100 — we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud.”

Does Gingrich really expect people to believe “one guy” was responsible for all 1,500? That’s a huge number, and if it was, why why wouldn’t they just name him? Either way, it’s hardly the behavior of an anti-establishment candidate.

Ron Paul repeated his call to end the embargo against Cuba. Shocking to pundits, who thought it a suicidal move, but the audience cheered. (Cuban politics in Florida has been changing; there’s a segment of younger Cuban-Americans that has been waiting a long time to hear this message.) A question about healthcare from an unemployed woman was Paul’s most difficult of the night and illustrated one of his weaknesses: he gave a thoughtful, historical account of why healthcare costs are so high (largely due to federal involvement, particularly Medicare), but now that costs are astronomical, what are Americans — especially those out of work — to do?

One of the hardest challenges all libertarians face is how to sell the transition from a statist system to a freer one: we’ve seen plenty of examples worldwide, perhaps most appallingly in the former Soviet Union, where a botched transition has discredited anti-statist ideas and exacerbated human suffering. Congressman Paul and his staff have given this some thought — hence his repeated insistence that he won’t end welfare-state programs while people are dependent on them — but his presentation is still long on diagnosis and short on prescription.

Near the end of last night’s debate came a question about how each candidate’s religious beliefs would influence his administration. A trap for Mitt? He gave a bland answer about the importance of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Ron Paul again dared to say something that wouldn’t win him many votes: that his oath to uphold the Constitution would be more important than his religious beliefs.

Newt or Mitt — they were indistinguishably ecumenical — invoked the importance of praying to God for instruction. This brought to mind memories of George W. Bush saying that he didn’t get his father’s advice before invading Iraq, he consulted a higher Father instead. There’s a fine line here: it’s one thing to ask God for the wisdom to make the right decision; it’s another for a politician to believe that his policies are endorsed by the Almighty. Realistically, what leader is going to hear the voice of God telling him anything other than, “Go for it”? Could you imagine a circumstance in which Newt, or Bush, or Obama, hears a voice telling him to call off the war? Cool it with the tax cuts or government growth? Where God and the American president are concerned, the phrase that comes to my mind is the one about hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

Santorum took the occasion to emphasize the Declaration of Independence as the “why” of American government (in contrast to the mere “how” of the Constitution) and ascribed a rather bold theology to a document that, after all, was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, a man not renowned for his orthodox beliefs.

Political Christians today have a hard time understanding the religious configuration of the early United States. The difficulty is that the least conventionally religious Americans of the day were often political allies of people we would now identify as ancestors of the Religious Right. Deists and Baptists alike did not want to be taxed to support established Anglican or Congregationalist churches, and there was a strong strain of anti-clericalism and emphasis on individual judgment among both the philosophers and the extreme Protestants. Total disestablishment and liberty of conscience were policies that appealed to both types; each was absolutely confident that within a generation it would inherit the earth if the marketplace of religious ideas were left free.

Most Americans did not take as hard a line on church-state relations as Jefferson, Madison, and the devout among their allies did; the poles of opinion back then were those who saw establishment in anything less than a “wall of separation” and those who thought that a vague but public Christianity was an indispensable prop to civil order. Even those poles did not always attract the alliances you might expect; a doubting Unitarian like John Adams was quite firmly on the side of a civil — but certainly not established — Christianity.

It’s fair to say that Ron Paul is very much in line with Madison and Jefferson. (Indeed, one suspects a President Paul, like Madison, would have reservations even about declaring a day of thanksgiving and prayer — where does the Constitution say the president should do that?) It would be interesting to see a politician who could articulate the civil Christian point of view in anything other than a rote manner. Alas, instead we have Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum.

Python came to mind when I read the Mitt Romney tax story today, $6.2 million paid in tax on $42 million in income over the past two years.  I cannot even imagine what $42 million in income, not assets, must look like and it is hard for me to imagine what Romney has in common with most Americans. Does he really understand what has happened to the economy and to the middle and working classes over the past five years?

I have followed the debate over Bain with some attention and do understand how a company in trouble sometimes has to be taken over, reorganized and restored to health, or dissolved if it is beyond saving.  But is that really what Romney did?  How often was a company taken over only because its assets exceeded the takeover price, meaning that the company was then stripped of assets and allowed to go out of business, resulting in the loss of jobs and livelihoods as “collateral damage.”  Was this some kind of benign intervention or predatory capitalism at its worst?  Clearly, whatever it actually was resulted in a vast fortune for Romney which I have seen estimated to be in the $250 million range.  Romney’s father George was also a rich man but at least he built cars to make his fortune.  What has Mitt built?  And why would we want a man whose life as a “businessman” has revolved around such an enterprise to be our president?

Mitt Romney drew some blood from Newt last night, but I would say Newt came out ahead. Mitt was long on reasons not to trust the former Speaker, short on reasons to support the millionaire from Massachusetts instead. If you were a Florida Republican, you might have more reservations now about Newt’s lobbying and the dismal end of his days in the House. But between the top two he still seems like the one with all the brains and personality. Romney seemed to shrink back to the stature he possessed in 2008. This looked a lot like the Mitt who was on pace to fall behind Huckabee in the delegate count when he dropped out early that February.

Newt’s surge has Michael Steele and other Republican insiders raising the possibility of a brokered convention. (Steele puts the odds, rather implausibly, at 50 percent.) Could the Republican convention be thrown open and nominate… Mitch Daniels? Jeb Bush? Chris Christie? Nate Silver doesn’t rule it out:

Late-entry candidates and brokered conventions have not occurred in the recent past. But there has also not been a case in the recent past in which a candidate like Mr. Gingrich, so vehemently opposed by party elites, was surging ahead in key national and state polls at this stage of the nomination process.

I have my doubts: I wonder whether the GOP establishment wouldn’t rather see Newt go down in flames than waste political capital on a last-minute bid to nominate someone new. What would voters think of being stuck with a candidate for whom none of them had cast their ballots? Mitch Daniels doesn’t have the name recognition or grassroots appeal to match his media hype, and if he declined to run on his own terms, why would he consent to be drafted in a salvage situation?  Another Bush would bring back memories of he-who-must-not-be-mentioned-in-GOP-debates. Christie is more colorful and better known than Daniels — almost certainly too colorful for the party elites and general election voters.

But if Romney loses Florida, the GOP will be rushing headlong into uncharted territory. Note, by the way, the enormous role that SuperPACs have played in undercutting Romney’s fundraising advantage. I could see the GOP letting Newt go down in his blaze in infamy this November, then setting to work rejiggering the campaign-finance laws to make sure it never happens again.

(Here, by the way, is 1980s Newt owning up to having been a Nelson Rockefeller supporter. Last night he talked about attending a Goldwater organizing meeting in ’64 — not an explicit contradiction, but not exactly honest, either.)

For his 12-point victory ensures the fight for the GOP nomination will not end soon and will get nastier. Indeed, it already has. Whether Newt or Mitt Romney emerges victorious, the candidate who comes out of the Republican convention will be bruised and bloodied.

Consider, first, Newt.

According to a Fox News poll, 56 percent of the American people have an unfavorable opinion of the former speaker. Only 27 percent hold a favorable opinion. By two to one, the nation has a negative view of Newt. And as Newt has been a national figure for two decades, to reverse the impression he has left on the country would require an immense volume of positive media, free and bought.

And Newt is getting neither.

Now, in Florida, Romney has decided to tear the scab off, and 24 hours after his South Carolina defeat, he is busy at it.

Newt, said Mitt, “was a leader for four years as speaker of the House. … And at the end of four years … he was a failed leader, and he had to resign in disgrace. … He was investigated (by) an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that, and then … 88 percent of his (fellow) Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich.”

“What’s (Newt) been doing for 15 years?” Mitt asked. “He’s been working as a lobbyist … and selling influence around Washington.”

Mitt did not bring up Newt’s three wives and the tawdry tale told by second wife Marianne to ABC. Yet the super PACs of the Democratic Party will make sure the women of America know how Newt treated his first two wives, should he become the nominee.

Yet Mitt has his own problems, after his worst week in South Carolina.

By going negative on Newt, he will drive Newt’s negatives higher. But attack politics polarizes a party and drives up the negatives of the attacker, as well. The Eagle Scout image of Mitt will suffer — both from what Newt is doing to him and from what he feels he must do to Newt.

Rep. Dick Gephardt decided he had to take down Howard Dean, who was riding high in Iowa in 2004. Gephardt ended up taking both of them down. John Kerry evaded the bloodletting, won the caucuses and cruised to the nomination.

Mitt has suffered, too, from the malicious portrayal of his days at Bain Capital by Gingrich and Rick Perry, who portrayed Bain as a vulture sitting on a tree limb, looking for sick companies to swoop down on, pick the carcass clean and leave a skeleton.

Romney’s revelations last week that he pays only 15 percent of his income in federal taxes, that he has investments in the Caymans, that the $375,000 he earned in speaking fees did not amount to much and that he enjoys firing people — even if it was insurance companies — all feed into the caricature of a country-club Republican with nothing in common with people who live from paycheck to paycheck.

Wealth is not necessarily an impediment to political success. FDR, a Hudson Valley aristocrat, and JFK were men of wealth who did less to earn their money than Mitt did to earn his. But they carried it more easily.

When JFK was being attacked because his father, who amassed his pile in stocks and liquor, had poured huge sums into the West Virginia primary on his son’s behalf, Sen. Kennedy joked about it, telling the Gridiron Club that his father had sent him a telegram just before the primary: “Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.”

It is hard to recall a primary season that got this ugly this early. Words like dishonest, liar and corrupt, and phrases like serial hypocrite have come not just from independent and unaccountable super PACs but from the paid media of the campaigns and the candidates themselves.

The primary season that much resembles this one is 1964. Then, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, icon of the Eastern liberal establishment that had imposed nominees Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey (twice)  and Dwight Eisenhower on the party, lost the California primary and the nomination to Barry Goldwater.

Speaking to that divided convention, Rockefeller was booed and jeered from the balconies when he called on the delegates to condemn the John Birch Society equally with the Ku Klux Klan and Communist Party.

The party never came together that fall. Goldwater suffered a defeat unequaled since Alf Landon carried two states in 1936. The ideological divide between Romney and Newt is not nearly so great as that between Goldwater and Rockefeller, but the personal animosity is certainly approaching that.

With the Tea Party recoiling from Romney and rallying to Newt, and regular Republicans coalescing around Mitt, with dozens of primaries and caucuses ahead, Tampa just might end up looking like the Cow Palace in ’64.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Copyright 2012 Creators.com.

Romney suffers from many of the same issues as Rockefeller; he can’t shake his reputation as an unrelatable rich guy, despite – or more likely because of – his perfectly choreographed campaign events and speeches that feel canned and insincere. Explaining South Carolina’s results, Byron York writes, “after all the talk of ground game and debate war, there’s a simpler reason Gingrich won: On the stump, in town hall after town hall, across South Carolina, Gingrich has been a markedly better campaigner than Romney.” In other words, based on the superior organization and fundraising of the Romney campaign and the predilections of South Carolinians Gingrich shouldn’t have won, but he did because Romney really is that bad at connecting with voters.

But the analogy has limits. Foremost, Gingrich’s personal record is far closer to Nelson Rockefeller’s than Goldwater’s, except with double the ex-wives and the added heartlessness of dumping each of them when they had cancer and multiple sclerosis respectively. Also, the dichotomy of secular progressive elite versus pious rabble that Gingrich’s campaign has been so keen on emphasizing, doesn’t exist anymore. That isn’t to say berating John King and vilifying beltway Brahmins isn’t a good primary strategy, just that the secular media is more aligned with the working class than most conservatives would have you believe, which is why Gingrich, like Goldwater, would lose spectacularly in a general election.

But without the populist narrative of retaking ground from the elites, Gingrich’s desire to be the “arouser of those who form civilization” and the one to embark upon the task of “recivilizing all Americans” would have a far more elitist ring. Based on Charles Murray’s findings a President Gingrich would have his work cut out for him as far as “recivilizing” efforts are concerned. Barry Goldwater would probably just say that’s not the president’s job.

So Rick Perry colorfully characterized the private equity firm Bain Capital, once run by Mitt Romney.

How did Bain prosper? Says Perry:

“These companies … come in and loot the people’s jobs, loot their pensions (and) loot their ability to take care of their families.”

Behind this depiction is a 28-minute documentary, “King of Bain,” being aired in South Carolina by a super political action committee that supports Newt Gingrich and is financed by Vegas-Macau casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

The truth, however, turns out to be less colorful, as The Washington Post has awarded the documentary four Pinocchios for “manipulative interviews” and a “highly misleading portrayal of Romney’s years at Bain Capital.”

Seems that two of the companies Bain allegedly looted were not acquired until after Mitt left the firm, and the closure of a third plant in Gaffney, S.C., was no communal disaster.

No one in Gaffney, writes The New York Times, seems to recall the company, and the local paper did not even report its demise.

“King of Bain” is a hit piece, a malicious libel full of so many errors and lies that even Newt said it must be corrected or pulled down.

Yet if Romney is nominated, we will see this avenue of attack pursued by the Democrats. For populist assaults on capitalists and capitalism, dating back to William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, have a long and venerable history.

Moreover, the hysteria of Beltway Republicans and their Chamber of Commerce allies over the Newt-Perry attacks on Mitt “the predator” and Mitt “the vulture capitalist” testifies to the power of the narrative and Republicans’ fear of it. And they would do well to be fearful.

To many Americans, the period from the Civil War to World War I, when U.S. production grew from half of what Britain produced to twice what Britain produced, was a legendary era of growth and prosperity.

To others, however, this was the Gilded Age of Jim Fisk and James Gould, of robber barons and the Pullman strike, of the Haymarket Massacre and the Homestead strike at Carnegie Steel, where armed Pinkertons came up the river in barges to break the strike, only to be shot, disarmed and beaten by strikers and their families.

In 1904, Ida Tarbell wrote “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” painting oil magnate John D. Rockefeller as a capitalist without conscience, a “money-mad … hypocrite.” “Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises.”

In 1906, Upton Sinclair penned “The Jungle,” a novel depicting the horrors of the stockyards and meat-packing plants of Chicago.

Teddy Roosevelt said of these reformers, “The men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.”

Yet T.R. himself took up the role of trustbuster. When J.P. Morgan wrote to him to protest Justice Department moves against one of his trusts — “Just send your man to my man and we can fix it up” — T.R.’s man at Justice retorted, “We don’t want to fix it up; we want to stop it.”

Teddy Roosevelt savaged the “malefactors of great wealth,” and his cousin Franklin would echo him on taking office, denouncing “the money changers … in the temple of our civilization.”

They hate me, exulted FDR, “and I welcome their hatred!” He went on to crush and almost wipe out the Republican Party in 1936.

At the end of the Reagan era, which the left had decried, “Barbarians at the Gate” was published, portraying the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts as a manifestation of colossal greed.

Michael Lewis — author of “Liar’s Poker,” about the fall of Salomon Brothers, and “The Big Short” — has built a successful career describing the amorality at the apex of corporate America.

Today, President Barack Obama, with his Osawatomie, Kan., attack on “breathtaking greed,” channeling T.R., seeks to insert himself in that populist tradition.

Undeniably, Americans cherish their economic freedom and respect the men who helped make America great, inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison and industrialists such as Henry Ford.

But they do not revere the men who make millions and billions at the big casinos of capitalism. They do not admire a George Soros for winning his billion-dollar bet shorting the British pound.

They believe that a man’s professional, as well as private, life should be guided by a conscience. And because they recoil from the teachings of Karl Marx does not mean they embrace the values of Ayn Rand.

Let-the-devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism, economic Darwinism, is neither conservatism nor Americanism.

Should Mitt Romney be nominated, he will need to make a national address defending his career at Bain Capital with the same conviction and passion with which he defended his faith in the campaign of 2008.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” Copyright 2012 Creators.com.

Of polled Republicans, 20% identified themselves as “Very conservative,” 51% as “Conservative,” and 23% as “Moderate.” Amongst independents, 36% identified themselves as “Very conservative” or “Conservative.” A few years ago, findings like these would have been very welcome to the GOP. Conservatism is the dominant political ideology, the incumbent liberal President’s popularity has not topped 47% in the last six months, and the economy is struggling. It sounds like a great recipe for conservative success. Yet somehow conservatives have ended up with a moderate as the front runner.

It is no secret that many Republicans are disappointed with Romney as front runner. Conservative voters in 2012 seem to be sacrificing conservative principles for electability in order to beat Obama, a confusing ranking of priorities considering the similarities between Romney and the President. If we assume that Romney does win the nomination, he is too moderate for some very important parts of the Republican party, such as libertarians and the evangelical right, and will struggle in a general election contest. In order to appeal to those who describe themselves as “Very conservative” or even those who describe themselves as “Conservative,” Romney will need to begin appealing to those more likely to vote for the likes of Santorum or Paul. But it is too late for that.

“Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different,” said an astonished Journal, “it’s shockingly different.”

Twenty-one percent of his $2.4 to $5.5 million was in real estate, 14 percent in cash. He owns no bonds. Only 0.1 percent is invested in stocks, and Paul bought these “short,” betting the price will plunge. Every other nickel is sunk into gold and silver mining companies.

Bernstein “had never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe,” said the Journal.

“This portfolio,” said Bernstein, “is a half step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and 9-millimeter rounds.”

“You can say this for Ron Paul,” conceded the Journal. “In investing as in politics, (Paul) has the courage of his convictions.”

Indeed, he does. Paul’s investments mirror his belief that the empire of debt is coming down and Western governments will never repay — in dollars of the same value — what they have borrowed.

And here we come to the reason Paul ran a strong third in Iowa and a clear second in New Hampshire. He is a conviction politician and, like Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, the candidate of a cause.

Aware it is unlikely he will ever be president, the 76-year-old soldiers on in the belief that this cause will one day triumph in a party where he was, not long ago, seen as an odd duck, but a party where today he speaks for a national constituency.

It is easy to understand why the young are attracted to him. There is a consistency here no other candidate can match.

Republicans may deplore the GOP Great Society of Bush 43. Paul stood almost alone in voting against every Bush measure. By two-to-one, Americans now believe the Iraq War was a mistake. Paul, alone among the candidates, opposed the war.

And because his campaign is about a cause larger than himself, it is a safe bet he will not quit this race until the last caucuses have met and the last primary has been held.

Prediction: Paul will go into the Tampa, Fla., convention with more delegates than any other candidate save the nominee of the party.

There is a gnawing fear in the GOP that Paul will quit the party when the primaries are over and run as a third-party candidate on the Libertarian or some other line in the November election.

Not going to happen. Such a decision would sunder the movement Paul has pulled together, bring about his own and his party’s certain defeat in November, and re-elect Barack Obama.

Paul would become a pariah in his party, while his son, Sen. Rand Paul, who would be forced to endorse his father over the GOP nominee, would be ruined as a future Republican leader.

Why would Dr. Paul do this, when the future inside the GOP looks bright not only for him but for his son?

The course Ron Paul will likely take, then, is this.

Commit to this nomination battle all the way to Tampa, contest every primary and caucus, amass a maximum of delegates.

If Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich lose in South Carolina, they will lose in Florida, and begin to peel off and drop out, for none is a cause candidate and each will soon come to realize that his presidential aspirations are done for now if not for good.

Their departure will leave the Republican contest a Romney-Paul race, giving Paul half a year on the campaign trail to increase his visibility, enlarge his following, grow his mailing lists and broaden his donor base.

In return for a commitment to campaign for the ticket, Paul should demand a prime-time speaking slot at the convention and use the speech to emulate Barry Goldwater in 1960 when he admonished conservatives at the convention to “grow up,” so that “we can take this party back.”

Assuming the nominee is Mitt Romney, should he win in the fall and Paul has campaigned for him, Paul will not only have a friend in the White House, but be a respected figure in the party with a constituency all his own.

Most important to Paul are the issues he has campaigned on: a new transparency and accountability for the Federal Reserve, a downsizing of the American empire, and an end to U.S. interventions in foreign quarrels and wars that are none of our business.

Whether Paul goes home to Texas when his last term in Congress is over in January 2013, or whether he remains in Washington in a policy institute to advance the causes he believes in, his views will be sought out by the major media on all the issues he cares about.

Moreover, his fears of a coming collapse, manifest in his portfolio, could come to pass, making of Ron Paul a prophet in his own time.

Copyright 2012 Creators.com

The problem with Mitt Romney is that most conservatives do not believe him to be an authentic conservative. An exit poll of this week’s New Hampshire primary showed that those who voted think that Romney is the most likely to beat Obama, but not the most conservative. Of those who voted for Romney, the quality that mattered most was “Can defeat Barack Obama”(63%), with the quality that mattered least being “Is a true conservative” (13%).  After years of the Tea Party movement, many conservatives are disappointed that the frontrunner for the Republican nomination is a moderate big government advocate, who as one recent debated showed, is unclear on the basics of constitutional law.

Mitt Romney will be incapable of standing as a conservative as the Republican nominee. His support of economic stimulus and the uncanny similarities between RomneyCare and ObamaCare make any serious opposition to two of the most contentious issues of Obama’s presidency open to charges of hypocrisy and incoherence. Even on foreign policy, an area where Romney has accused Obama of “appeasement”, he cannot take a conservative stand against Obama. The fact is that Obama already has good neoconservative credentials, having increased troop numbers in Afghanistan, taken military action in Libya, and assassinated Osama Bin Laden. The only conservative who would have any credibility debating Obama on foreign policy is Ron Paul, whose support in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary seem to indicate that the Republican party is not as interventionist and neoconservative as it once was. Yet Mitt Romney is too far along in the nomination process to undergo a serious foreign policy re-think.

Although I, like Sen. DeMint, would like the eventual Republican nominee to take Ron Paul’s ideas more seriously, the unfortunate reality is that Mitt Romney is too moderate for any of Ron Paul’s policy recommendations. It is unlikely that Mitt Romney will begin to talk more about the Federal Reserve, seriously reforming welfare, slashing subsidies and protectionist tariffs, and seriously cutting government spending.

If Mitt Romney does become the GOP’s nominee, it will have nothing to do with his conservative credentials, but his electability. After years in which conservatives have fought and spoken out against intrusive government it is a shame that the seemingly inevitable Republican nominee will deliver only more of the same.

And despite a solid win in New Hampshire, there’s reason to believe he’ll need it. A Super PAC associated with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Super PAC has made a number of large ad buys in the state as Newt aims to build momentum after two disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. Jon Huntsman has vowed to continue his campaign in South Carolina and though his polling numbers are low – behind Stephen Colbert in one poll. We’ll see if Huntsman is able to peel off a few moderate Romney supporters once the first post-NH South Carolina polls start coming in, but don’t bet on it.

Of all the early primary states, South Carolina is best positioned to anoint an elusive conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. But Gingrich and Santorum have split the vote, leaving Romney about ten points ahead of either of them. It’s tough to pick which one of them would step aside anyway; though Santorum nearly beat out Romney in Iowa, Gingrich was leading in South Carolina from early November to around Christmas time. Santorum also lacks the charisma and early victories to make a Huckabee-esque case to social conservatives. Expect some sniping as they both make appeals to conservatives.

This should be good news for Ron Paul, whose campaign called for the other not-Romney candidates to drop out and unite behind him after his second-place finish Tuesday night. However, the fact that both Gingrich and Santorum are polling around ten points ahead of Paul in South Carolina takes a lot of wind out of his case. Paul’s base has almost tripled since 2008, but it’s hard to imagine him gaining any more ground for the time being.

Dave Weigel wonders if we haven’t seen this all before:

The social conservative (wins/almost wins, depending on what math you believe) Iowa. Flush with victory, eager to prove himself in all battlegrounds, he spends most of the next week in New Hampshire. But the surge can only take him from the margin of error to (13/9) percent of the vote. The old dream candidate, now a national laughingstock only known for a debate moment (“I’m not doing any hand shows”/”Oops”) has already moved on to South Carolina. He flies to New Hampshire just to participate in a debate, deeply annoying the supporters of (Ron Paul/Buddy Roemer), whose candidate had worked harder there. He polls a pathetic 1 percent, but stays in the race. The field is crowded enough that a horrified base sees how the front-runner, who’s won the endorsement of (Lindsey Graham/Nikki Haley), can win South Carolina with a plurality of the vote.

Of course, in 2008 Rudy Giuliani, the Gingrich of the analogy, was more or less out of the running by the South Carolina primary, Gingrich is still very much in it. Daniel McCarthy rightly noted the “establishmentarian” political culture of South Carolina, which goes a long way toward explaining his strength in the state McCain carried in 2008, Bush carried in 2000 and Bob Dole carried in 1996.

Why did Perry fall so short? His world-historic debate gaffes — “Oops,” “I would send troops back into Iraq” — finished him off, but the Texas governor got on the express elevator to the electoral basement even before that. This was the three-term governor of the GOP’s biggest state, a point I bring up not because it makes him look good on paper but because it ought to suggest he has some real political skills. Whatever magic he had in the Lone Star State evaporated not long after he took the national stage.

I’m surprised he has done as badly as he has, but there were always clear reasons why he would come up short against Romney. Perry, like Thompson, was a man without a base — Republicans who put electability above all else always prefer the front-runner, which is why the party consistently nominates familiar names from previous cycles. (That this often is not a very good real measure of electability is irrelevant; the perception is what counts.) Perry and Thompson both faced fields that included more plausible champions of the Religious Right. Neither politician excited libertarians or economic conservatives — as, say, Steve Forbes did in 1996 and 2000. Who was the Rick Perry or Fred Thompson voter supposed to be?

There was never a case that either of these candidates should have been the first pick of any sizable slice of the GOP electorate. But politicians are vain and their advisers are greedy, so they run anyway. And then they wind up like this:

Gingrich and Santorum don’t have the money to go all the way, and Huntsman may not be around long after tonight. Romney looks unstoppable, but what will happen if — as one can expect — Paul continues to challenge Romney in a two-man race? You could see some interesting rebellions in unlikely places. Romney and the GOP establishment will put a lot of pressure on Paul, and perhaps his senator son, to get him to drop out. Or they might have to make a concession: a convention speech on the Federal Reserve, perhaps? (They won’t concede on war, unfortunately, but they’ll have a hard time scripting Paul if they do give him a slot.)

I asked Jessica Bernier of nearby Sheffield, who wielded a Ron Paul placard, if she felt the Paul campaign and Occupy were fueled by similar anti-institutional energy. “Yeah, I definitely do,” she said. “Because what I’m seeing, with my friends — I’m a Ron Paul supporter. Most of my friends are actually progressives, and are extremely supportive of Occupy. And I have been too, because it’s actually a welling up of the people. It’s an organic thing,” she said.

“We’re sick and tired of being trampled on,” Bernier continued. “One of my big issues is food freedom, and I see a lot of overlap with that — we don’t even have the right to choose the kinds of foods that we eat. Monsanto owns the FDA. They’re all over the place. So in our rejection of these monster corporations that are controlling people, I very much see an overlap.”

At this point in our conversation, a full-fledged Occupier and former Dennis Kucinich campaigner, Roger Hughes of Jefferson, interjected. “Do you think public education should be killed?” he asked Bernier.

“I’ll tell you what,” she replied. “I have three boys. Two of ‘em are in public school right now. I don’t have a problem with public education.”

Hughes seemed slightly reassured. “There are some things I like about Ron Paul,” he told me. “I’ve been an anti-war protester all my life. But I also know he can’t do so much about that anyway. He’s one man and as president, he can’t do so much about that,” Hughes contended.

He said his wife serves as chair of Progressive Democrats of Northern New Hampshire; they’d just received a call from the Obama reelection campaign requesting the organization’s support. The couple declined, opting instead to focus their efforts on Occupy-related activism. Hughes said the Obama staffer seemed understanding of this.

“So you know, with Ron Paul, for me it’s a mixed bag,” he concluded. “Whereas with most of the other candidates, there’s nothing. There’s nothing to admire.”