The polls early in the week showed Romney leading, but with a lot of undecided voters. The later polls showed the shift to Gingrich, which was reflected in the results of actual votes. Partly this reflects the nature of the election — it is early and a lot of people aren’t willing to commit until they have to vote, and South Carolina is not California with 30% of the votes being absentee (or mail-in, or early) votes which have fewer late changes.
But the real problem is with both Romney and Gingrich — they are totally clueless about the nature of the problems with the US economy. Romney promotes his business experience, but the truth is that business experience is not a benefit for President (or Governor). It may be useful for chief-of-staff, but the President is a very different job than CEO. Gingrich has government experience, but that is a lot like saying Nixon had experience. It is more important that we look at our experience when Gingrich was in Congress. Government shutdown, investigations, and finally clear violations of trust by Gingrich — and his resignation. (Hence the Nixon comparison is apt.)
Neither Romney nor Gingrich seem able to add 1 and 1 together to get 2 — they don’t bother to add up their proposals for defense (increase spending, without a clear idea of what defense is for) and compare that to taxes. Maybe if they actually looked at facts they would then notice that the choice is to cut defense and eliminate everything else, or to raise taxes. Only if we can expand the economy and add jobs will we have anything near a balanced budget. And, as seen in Greece, cutting spending is not the route to increasing jobs.