Gingrich, South Carolina give Romney a good ol’ fashion Southern spanking. (Or what the heck happened?)

Back in the old days, before the hand-wringers took over our society, if a boy acted up in the South, he got spanked . . . hard.

Mitt Romney and his supporters got a good dose of that on Saturday. I told you his electability is overrated. Outside of Yankeeland, the man cannot get more than 30%. He is, no, was the weakest frontrunner in history.

Hot Air has posted a number of links to cogent analysis of what the heck happened. But a piece from the obscure C. Edmund Wright stands out to me. He states that the reason Gingrich surged is that he proven himself the man willing to fight back and stick it to the liberals. He points to the big South Carolina debate:

And where did the crowd roar? They roared when some premise of liberalism or some particular liberal was taken apart. No Republican on Republican crime was rewarded. Even Mitt, no favorite of the red meat crowd, got his loudest moments when he finally decided to support capitalism with some fervor.

. . . what the voters are craving in the debates and on the stump is someone who can look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them why we are right and they are wrong. The American conservative base has had to put up with being called stupid, racist, greedy and unfair for decades by not only the Democrats but the vast majority of the media. The pent up frustration of these decades is magnified by the fact that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain would not or perhaps could not confront this.

In fact, rare is the Republican candidate at any level who refuses to put up with this and fights back. When they do, they become sensations. Even Chris Christie and Donald Trump -- neither one a real conservative -- earned the love of the Republican base by simply deigning to fight back.

. . .

The roar is passion. The roar is intensity. The roar is pent up frustration. The roar, put another way, is the national mood of conservatives. It is a roar that will demand a fighter. It will demand that those who want our votes must not cower in the face of the liberal template. If fact, it is a roar that demands that we do not accept any liberal templates.

That's why Newt has gotten all the roars, and why he has vaulted into serious contention only days after being written off. Anyone else who wants the roar should heed the lesson. The roar comes only at the expense of liberals and liberalism. You won't get the roar attacking others on the stage. Tell your consultants to take a hike if they tell you otherwise.

That roar was an easy predictor of what would happen Saturday night in South Carolina. I knew it and everyone I know knew it late Thursday night. And it was. Seems like no one inside the beltway got it. Until Saturday evening.


Exactly. And in my eyes, Gingrich went yard when he took on anti-Christian bigotry. I, too, want a candidate with the guts to do that.

And on a more practical level, the Obama campaign will be a dirty lying $1 billion affair. The Republican nominee had dang well better be able to take it and fight back . . . hard. Gingrich is doing a much better job than Romney of proving able and willing to do that.

And now Gingrich is suddenly ahead in polls in Florida where we’ve been told again and again that it was just inevitable Romney would win.

Don’t wet your pants, establishment RINOs.