HICKS COLUMN: Obama comes out a winner

And now, a message from President Barack Obama:

Thank you, South Carolina.

By giving former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich the win Saturday, the state has introduced additional chaos into the Republican presidential primary. Which most people thought was impossible.

After three states have voted, the GOP has three different winners, ensuring a long, nasty fight to Super Tuesday -- and perhaps beyond. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Gingrich will continue their exercise in mutual political destruction, which the Democrats will not only relish, they will use.

And if Gingrich takes his momentum from South Carolina all the way to the convention, well, Obama will thank South Carolina again.

Funny how things work. The tea party could have just given President Obama a much-needed assist.

Unelectable?

In defense of primary voters, there really weren't a lot of choices.

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum lost his re-election bid in Pennsylvania -- a big swing state -- a few years ago by one of the most crushing margins in Republican Senate history. Until he inexplicably got popular in Iowa, the guy couldn't get arrested.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney devised Romneycare, the father of Obamacare, and his opponents raised big questions about his pro-life credentials. And the guy shows no conviction for anything besides not releasing his income tax returns.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, whose libertarian ways should be wildly popular in South Carolina, just never caught on. Most people shied away from him because they feared he was unelectable.

Which makes it real strange they would go so strongly for Gingrich. As one attack ad this week correctly noted, Newt has more baggage than the airlines. He has been convicted of ethics violations by the House of Representatives, he is a serial adulterer (and a hypocrite) and he lobbied for Freddie Mac, which many on the right blame for the burst housing bubble.

And as Santorum correctly notes, you never know what he might say.

South Carolina Republicans had better hope this primary breaks its string of correctly picking the eventual Republican nominee.

A battle won ...

Before this week, the narrative here was going to be "The Empire Strikes Back," meaning the old guard establishment GOP was going to force the tea party in line with their candidate, Romney. Instead we got "Revenge of the Sith."

The tea party was divided among Gingrich, Santorum and Rick Perry (well, after Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Herman Cain) for most of the time. That changed when Newt did a shameful bit of race-baiting in the Myrtle Beach debate, mentioning "food stamps" and "Obama" in the same sentence, which he repeated in his victory speech. Never mind the fact that there are more whites than blacks on food stamps, and that the Republicans are at least equally culpable for the economic climate that forced those people onto welfare.

It doesn't say good things about the state that Gingrich's rise coincided with such a nefarious Southern strategy.

By adopting an all-or-nothing stance, tea party voters embraced a politician who personifies everything they protest. They may have won the battle, but it might have just cost them the war.

Follow Brian Hicks on Twitter at @BriHicks_PandC.