Gingrich Completes SC Tour Before a Packed House at Tommy's

GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich completed a three-day tour of South Carolina with a town hall before an overflow crowd at Tommy’s Country Ham House in Greenville on Wednesday morning.

Never one to lack confidence, Gingrich was brimming with energy, having engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent political history. In May, Gingrich’s campaign was declared all but dead. Now, show him with a double digit lead in South Carolina and neck and neck in the national polls against frontrunner Mitt Romney.

Now that he’s risen in the polls, Gingrich has gotten the attention of his GOP rivals. Yesterday, Romney blasted him as a career politician in an interview on Fox News. While at Tommy's Gingrich did not respond to Romney’s jab—he has criticized the media for trying to provoke his fellow contenders into fighting—and instead hammered away at President Obama during his responses to voters’ questions.

See new Ron Paul ad calling Gingrich a "counterfeit conservative" here.

Even when he was lagging in the polls, voters indicated that Gingrich’s intellect was his best asset. That expansive knowledge was on full display as he critiqued Obama’s economic policy and his approach to Israel. Gingrich also talked about China, repealing Obamacare, how government employees have become the “haves,” while taxpayers have become the “have-nots” and how he plans to run a general election campaign. In doing so, Gingrich invoked, variously, Federal Express, the Green Bay Packers sweep of the 1960s, the Boeing/NLRB dispute and Saul Alinsky.

Gingrich opened the town hall by reiterating his challenge for “Lincoln-Douglas” debates with Obama, an offer he presumed the Harvard-educated president couldn’t possibly refuse since Gingrich is merely a West Georgia College professor.

In previous presidential primaries the debates have been little more than political theatre, merely confirming the public’s perception of the candidates. But it’s clear, despite good-natured derision in some quarters, the debates have had an impact voters and that has been to Gingrich’s benefit. While Herman Cain and Rick Perry—especially Perry—have been gaffe-prone, Gingrich has stayed on message from the start. The debates have been the perfect forum for Gingrich to broadcast his ideas.

Few of the voters Patch spoke to at Tommy’s started out as Gingrich supporters. Hal Goss fits was one of them. He was a Herman Cain backer until recently. He was not deterred by the sexual harassment charges that have sprouted up recently. Rather, it was Cain’s command of the issues. “The more the campaign went on, the less (Cain) seemed to know what he was talking about,” Goss said.

Goss acknowledged that the race has been a roller coaster for more conservative voters. “For a while there it looked like we were getting desperate,” he said of the search to find the right candidate to appeal to the conservative base.

Peter Calogrides of Taylors understands that search. He’s looked closely at Cain, Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum. He felt neither Bachmann nor Santorum had a broad enough appeal to conservatives. For Calogrides electability is a factor, but not the only one. “We don’t want a RINO. We don’t want another John McCain,” he said.

Jonah Deurling, a recent North Greenville University graduate, has been with Gingrich from the start, and his reasoning is straightforward, “He can stand toe-to-toe with Obama during a debate and he’s fiscally conservative,” Deurling said.

Other candidates have risen and fallen since primary season began and Gingrich may prove to be peaking at the right time. But there are still seven weeks until South Carolina voters go to the polls. For the rest of this week, Gingrich will campaign in Iowa, which will have its caucuses on January 3.