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This definitely spells trouble for Romney in the south. Being a Pennsylvanian, I feel he is going to run at least as bad in the industrial states. These states have Reagan Democrats who have a populist, pro-union, anti-rich sentiment, and Romney looks like their stereotypical image of the type of Republican they hate. What I know about Romney from the Weekly Standard’s article “Overestimating Romney” is how they demonstrated that Romney fails in most of his campaigns because people like him less the longer the campaign goes on. He seems to be the classic hare who runs strong out of the gate and then totally loses steam. He LOOKS like a good candidate, but doesn’t have the mojo to back it up. I really think he’s coached, focus-grouped and doesn’t speak from the heart at all. It reminds me of the way he is said to have sweet-talked companies into letting themselves get bought out by Bain, and then proceeded to work against their interests and drive them into debt while running away with their assets. Even his superiors at Bain remarked that he rose up the ranks in large part due to his looks and superficial charm.

I do believe that what’s been carrying Romney this far is so much of the conservative media backing him, while other sections of the conservative media chose to remain neutral. Some of the boost we got here was surely due to the Palins and perhaps an increasing number of lower profile endorsements.

To me it’s still pretty shocking how Newt pulled so far ahead of Santorum here. I don’t know if that story has been told yet. The results do tell me something about what I always thought Newt’s strength was. He is the real “Goldilocks” conservative that’s not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Santorum is real strong on social issues, but has no claim to fame on fiscal conservatism. Romney, of course, has been successfully selling the line that he’s good on the economy, but hasn’t convinced anyone he’s a social conservative. Newt, however, has credibility on balancing the budget and creating an environment for job growth and he also is clearly a pro-life, pro-traditional marriage conservative. In terms of military credibility, they’re probably all tied, since none have direct experience, but Newt might even have the edge there due to being a well-versed military historian and seeming like the guy who would be the toughest and “scariest” to our enemies. The economy was less of an issue in IA and NH because their unemployment was unusually low. Those races were decided by people picking the most socially conservative candidate in IA and the most socially liberal candidate in NH. I expect this race will be decided on social issues if the economy gets a lot better, and that already may be true in some states. Right now, national security issues are relatively muted. In SC, Newt seemed to emerge as the candidate people trusted most on the economy, which is kind of a shocker. Meanwhile he didn’t turn voters off on any other fronts.

I personally believe the Bain Capital attacks hurt Romney on his economic bonafides, even though some of the arcane financial details weren’t articulated as well by Newt and Perry as they could have been. I find it hard to see how Romney continues to be beaten if no effort is made to attack him at his strongest point, which is his claim that he is a great businessman who understands the economy and can create jobs. The exit polls apparently said something like only 30% of the voters considered Romney’s business experience a negative but almost ALL of that group voted against him. The attacks didn’t need to convince everybody, but by turning a substantial minority of voters away from him, that seems to have contributed to this victory. 30% of Republicans mistrusting a businessman like Romney seems like a significant number that can’t be explained away by anti-capitalist sentiment. The specifics about Bain must have had an effect.

I think it seems clear Mitt is going to stage a counterattack and claim Newt is anti-capitalist, and I don’t think Newt can run away 180 degrees from his previous statements about Bain. So I hope Newt, while not bringing it up as a frequent issue, but if he is asked about it, gets more specific in his rebuttals and points to specific companies where Bain managed them poorly, such as by taking a lot of fees and dividends out of companies that then went way into debt and failed because they couldn’t pay their bills.