Gingrich wins SC, moving one step closer to Throne of Destiny

Newton Leroy Gingrich wipes away tears of vengeance.

Today is a particularly hectic day around the Combat! blog offices—it turns out many of the interns have been contracting freelance work when they were supposed to be cleaning the octopus tank—but it’s probably for the best, since it will give us all more time to think about this. Newt Gingrich didn’t just win the South Carolina primary; he exploded the entire GOP nominating contest, leaving America’s registered Republicans to stand numbly as smoldering flakes of Romney drift down from the sky around them. Or he spent five million dollars of casino money to convince America’s third least literate state that he hates the last 30 years, too. We probably won’t know until the convention, which is what makes election season so fun. Please god, please make Newton Leroy Gingrich the 2012 Republican nominee for President. Also please let the interns find my octopus by nightfall.

Understand the entire 2012 GOP in one Hill article

Jon Huntsman lost momentum after the Republican base realized that was just his last name.

Combat! blog endorsee and suicidally reasonable Republican Jon Huntsman has ended his campaign for the presidency, shocking no one. Okay, maybe he shocked the editorial board of the The State, the South Carolina newspaper that just endorsed him for the nomination. Everyone else was cool. Rick Perry is statistically more likely to find himself alone with Santorum and Paul, and the rapidity with which the whole field can order Chinese food will be compromised. Otherwise, it’s like hearing Foghat broke up. Huntsman wasn’t exactly a force. As the Hill puts it:

Although he came into the race with a fair amount of hype, his campaign failed to gain traction from the start. He struggled to gain momentum in the polls and fundraising. And he failed to shake off his association with the White House, given that he served as Obama’s ambassador to China.

Only in the Republican Party of 2012 would an association with the White House be considered an obstacle to the presidency. In fact, that Hill article might be a microcosm of the whole race.

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The curious case of Alvin Greene

Perhaps you’ve heard of him—the 32 year-old unemployed Air Force and Army veteran who lives with his father, doesn’t own a cell phone or a computer, and is now the South Carolina Democratic Party nominee for the US Senate. In the primary, he beat Vic Rawl—a former state representative who had the support of the SC Democratic apparatus—despite having no website, holding no fundraisers, running no ads and hiring no staff. The next day, the Associated Press revealed that he was facing felony obscenity charges. Green allegedly showed pornography to a female student in a University of South Carolina computer lab, then said “Let’s go to your room now.” Vic Rawl, understandably surprised to have lost by 20 points to such a tactician, called for an investigation into voting irregularities. The South Carolina Democrats upheld the results, while simultaneously asking Greene to withdraw. But Alvin Greene has not withdrawn, and in November he will face Jim DeMint in the general election.

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