Gingrich's victory in South Carolina..what we learned

Below is the guardian's list of "what we learned" points from the SC primary. Personally I think the overall winners were politico soap opera junkies who get another round of cliff hanger episodes, the media circus that gets to continue its carnival and avoid having to get back to real reporting, and of course Barack Obama, who can sit back and watch the the republicans pour their cash into taking chunks out of themselves and writing his own campaign ads for him. That comment that Gingrich is like a cross between Batman and Nixon seems quite apt...the self obsessed, ethically besmirched, vigilante against the powers of Romneykind rides on!

and my favourite quote of the night: "chortled Karl Rove, a man for whom the verb chortle might even have been invented"

From the guardian: (www.guardian.co.uk):
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10.30pm: Right. Here's what we've learned tonight:

A race we all thought would be neck-and-neck between Gingrich and Romney turned out to be a runaway romp for Gingrich. He won with a 14 percentage point margin that outstripped the final opinion polls.

A majority of Republicans in South Carolina think that Newt Gingrich is the party's most electable candidate versus Barack Obama. That's a charming idea in and of itself.

Mitt Romney's supposed advantage in terms of money, super pac support and campaign machinery all turned to ashes on the night. Given that much of the received assumption of Romney's inevitiability rested on those three points, where does that leave Romney's chances?

The Republican contest will now go on beyond the next primary in Florida at the end of this month. A tide of money is likely to flow into the Gingrich campaign. How quickly he can scale up his operation will have an impact on the course of this nomination.

Gingrich's new position as the frontrunner will bring a big bonus with it in terms of free media coverage. Combined with the two debates coming up – on Monday and Thursday – which play to his strengths, Gingrich can use free media to compensate for his organisational and financial weaknesses – but only up to a point.

Rick Santorum's relatively strong showing in third place, winning 17% of the vote, will probably be enough to sustain him in the race. But should Santorum make a decision to withdraw, that would almost certainly aid Gingrich.

Will Gingrich's victory cause a backlash from what's left of the Republican establishment? The next few days will show if there any panic in the ranks. Since Gingrich has been banging the Reagan drum as loudly as possible, look for former Reaganites to start rubbishing Gingrich in public.

With three different winners from the first three contests, looking for a national pattern among Republican voters is pointless. That makes national polls worthless. And the fluid nature of the earlier contests means that opinion polls taken more than two or three days before voting took place were also worthless.

Feel free to speculate endlessly about a deadlocked Republican National Convention and/or late entrants – Jeb Bush? Why not, everyone else will.

That will do for one primary. Next up: a debate in Florida on Monday, just 46.5 hours from now. No, we can't wait, either.