Sometime tomorrow, we will know who won the Florida Republican primary — and by how much.
Primaries are voluntary stateheld contests, in which party members can vote for their preferred presidential candidate. In Florida, with third and fourth runners Rick Santorum and Ron Paul standing aside, it is a two-man battle.
A Newt Gingrich Republican candidacy for president is still possible. Six days ago — after Gingrich's unexpected but decisive primary victory over Mitt Romney in small, poor, redneck South Carolina — a credible CNN poll showed them neck to neck in Florida. Latest polls claim Romney has pulled ahead, 42 per cent to 31 per cent.
But it's still an open contest: in a highly volatile and emotive climate, no one really knows who will cast votes, or where the floating pro-Santorum and pro-Paul votes might go.
Populous, politically and ethnically diverse Florida really matters in the Republican primary process. Florida is a litmus test of the American electorate; and 50 Republican primary votes. If Romney wins in Florida but not by much, Gingrich will stay in the race, and Santorum and Paul will face important choices running up to Super Tuesday, 6 March, when 24 states hold simultaneous primaries.
If Gingrich pulls off an against-the-current-odds win in Florida, it is probably the end for Romney.
The real danger of a Gingrich candidacy has thrown both 'old' (East Coast moderates) and 'new' (Midwestern and Western new money, post-Bush) conservatives into action. The Republican party machine now sees that Gingrich could be their party's presidential candidate. A welter of conservative criticism has thus descended on him.
Gingrich is an authentic wild card populist politician: clever, experienced, quick-thinking, charismatic but erratic. Some former colleagues warn that he cannot be trusted to lead the party or the country. A few days ago, an anonymous admirer who has negotiated with him in Congress commented: 'Newt's absolutely brilliant ... He has 100 ideas; 97 are real good, the other three will blow up the world.'
A top deputy to Gingrich during the Republican revolution of the mid-1990s, Tom DeLay said:
'What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because ... conservative Republicans wouldn't vote for him again as speaker ... because he's not really a conservative ... he'll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability ... to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.'
By contrast, Romney is Machine Man Republican: safe, rich, dour, cautious — and utterly uninspiring. I doubt he could ever beat Obama under any circumstances.
Just conceivably if the economy tanks or in response to some destabilising foreign policy crisis, Gingrich could beat Obama. He is a mercurial, quick-on-his-feet public debater. As a sample of his political potency, watch how brilliantly he handled the marital infidelity minetrap laid for him in the final South Carolina candidate debate — and the wild audience support for him.
If Gingrich were to get Republican money and right-wing media power behind him — as he would, if he became their primaries-elected chosen candidate — he could be a formidable opponent.
I see the United States as it now is, not as it was 20 years ago. This is a nervous nation in military decline and socio-economic crisis, whose mass politics are febrile and unpredictable. The old small town verities and values can no longer be taken for granted in this apprehensive, entertainment-distracted, celebrity-drugged culture.
Huge numbers of ordinary people who a few years ago thought they were safely lodged in the middle class now realise to their horror that they are a deeply vulnerable white-collar proletariat who must live with economic anxiety every day, as a rich three per cent and its retainers enjoy dividend wealth from exporting American jobs offshore.
These stresses are bearing heavily on America's formerly sound collective judgement. Such circumstances breed political extremism. Fortunately, the Republican contest has not thrown up such a candidate. Both Gingrich and Romney are career-driven opportunists without much baggage in the way of principle or ideology.
Romney and Gingrich will now be hard at work courting support from the significant Santorum and Paul constituencies.
Former 'Tea Party' frontrunners Sarah Palin and Herman Cain now back Gingrich. Populist 'anti-elites' sentiment could start to flow his way. In a recent comment on Facebook, Palin wrote 'Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater would be ashamed of us [Republicans] in this primary ... What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalinesque rewriting of history.'
Cain praised Gingrich as 'a patriot ... who is not afraid of bold ideas ... and who is going through the sausage machine now'.
Romney is in many ways a throwback to the traditional kind of centrist presidential candidate, back in the days when the two parties were ideologically almost indistinguishable. But now, ideology is back.
If Gingrich wins the Republican nomination, the election will be a contest of two flavours of populism: 'socialist' and 'nationalist'. Both Obama (genuinely) and Gingrich (opportunistically) now stand against the power of big money and big right-wing media. Romney represents those forces. If he wins, the election will be a straightforward ideologically defined battle, which Obama should win.
But if Gingrich wins the candidacy, those forces will be with him. The election itself is an unequal contest in which voting geography (the electoral college system) and the advertising power of big money and big media favour the Republican candidate, whoever he is.
What a fascinating — and important for the world — drama this Republican primary contest has become.
Tony Kevin is an author and former ambassador to Cambodia and Poland.