Gingrich Wins South Carolina Primary By Significant Margin

Newt Gingrich is the projected winner of the South Carolina primary, based on exit polling by NBC News, and CNN, which put the margin at 38-29. Romney came in second, and will have to buck 32 years of history, in which since 1980, the winner of the South Carolina primary has also won the GOP nomination.

READ: South Carolina: Home Of Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Racism, And Hypocrisy

South Carolina expressed its hypocrisy, racial, and religious bigotry tonight, giving the win to a highly-controversial and polarizing figure, a failed politician forced to resign the seat two heartbeats away from the presidency amid ethics problems, a thrice-married and twice-divorced serial adulterer, and a flip-flopping attack dog.

Gingrich does not have the cash or the campaign structure to beat Romney, but given the Citizens United decision, millions of dollars in cash will transform traditional assumptions.

Gingrich’s unfavorables are twice his favorables, and he is “one of the most massively unpopular political figures,” according to MSNBC analyst and former McCain/Palin campaign manager tonight.

Gingrich, who spent his time in South Carolina race-baiting, won the religious right vote, the Tea Party vote, and the social conservative vote, in a highly-conservative, highly-religious, racially-divided state that elected as governor — twice in a row — executives who (reportedly) were having extra-marital affairs.

Gingrich himself this week suffered revelations from his second ex-wife, who told ABC News that he had asked her for an “open marriage,” before divorcing her just after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a similar event to when he asked his cancer-striken first wife for a divorce. During both marriages, Gingrich, a serial adulterer, was having extra-marital affairs. Gingrich’s current wife, Callista, was his mistress when he asked Marianne Gingrich for a divorce.

In 2010, his second ex-wife, Marianne, told Esquire,

“He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don’t like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new … you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way,” she told Esquire. “He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected,” she says. “If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president.”