Newt Gingrich believes he is primarily engaged in a battle with Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. But he actually faces a more immediate enemy, one that could strike a severe blow against him this week: irrelevance.
When his post-South Carolina momentum fizzled in Florida last week, it became unlikely that Gingrich would be able to defeat Romney in any of the February contests. The playing fields in the states that hold primaries and caucuses this month generally tilt in the former Massachusetts governor's favor; to compete in them, Gingrich needed the potentially equalizing momentum of a Florida triumph.
When he failed to achieve that, his challenge for February became one of preservation; the month began with the political world treating him as Romney's chief opponent, and it would have to end that way too. This would make it at least theoretically possible for Gingrich to rebound in early March, when a handful of Southern states that are culturally and demographically suited to his anti-Romney message will vote. As Gingrich himself said in a "Meet the Press" interview on Sunday, "Our goal is to get to Super Tuesday, which is much more favorable territory."
But getting to March 6 may be easier said than done. Gingrich's feeble finish in Nevada over the weekend, which came on the heels of numerous stories about campaign disarray and as word broke that his top financial backer might be reassessing his commitment, fed a Newt-in-free-fall narrative that has shaped coverage of the GOP race for the past 10 days or so. Nor did the late-night press conference he convened on Saturday help; the idea was to downplay the significance of Nevada and the rest of the February contests and to focus the political world on a Newt/Mitt showdown in March, but the result was a consensus even among conservative pundits that Gingrich was behaving as a desperate and erratic sore loser.
Which brings us to what he's up against this week. On Tuesday, three more contests will be held: caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado and a beauty contest (read: no delegates) primary in Missouri. Gingrich is already guaranteed to lose Missouri, since he failed to qualify for its ballot, and in the other two states he faces the very real prospect of losing not just to Romney but also to Rick Santorum -- and maybe even Ron Paul. Not only that, but there's also a chance that Santorum might edge out Romney in Minnesota, and come close in Colorado.
In both states, the GOP caucus electorate figures to be composed of a disproportionate share of Christian conservative activists -- the sort of folks who rallied around Santorum late in the game in Iowa and lifted him to a narrow victory there. Like Iowa, Minnesota was one of the first primary season venues in which the Christian right flexed its muscle, with Pat Robertson claiming 30 percent of the vote there back in 1988 (20 points ahead of a sitting vice president, George H.W. Bush, and only 12 behind Bob Dole, who won the caucuses). And Colorado is home to James Dobson's Focus on the Family empire.
Polling in both states has been limited, but PPP released fresh data on Sunday that put Santorum 2 points ahead of Romney in Minnesota (29-27 percent) and showed him trailing Romney 40-26 percent in Colorado. Gingrich was running third in each state. According to PPP: "What both states have in common is that Gingrich has fallen precipitously since our last polls in them."
This could be a very serious problem for Gingrich. It will be bad enough if Tuesday's results reinforce the free-fall perception, but if they also introduce a second-Santorum-surge narrative, then Gingrich could end up being eclipsed as Romney's main opponent. Given how mightily Romney has struggled to win over the GOP's evangelical/Tea Party base, there remains a clear opening for one of his opponents to draw blood in the South in March. But the way February is going so far, it may be Santorum -- and not Gingrich -- who gets to take advantage of that opportunity.
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