Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary, opening the GOP to a protracted race for the presidential candidate campaign.
In a clean sweep to victory, Gingrich trounced his nearest rival and former front-runner Mitt Romney, gaining 40 percent of the votes to Romney’s 28 percent.
Gingrich, who mounted a concerted attack on Romney during debates in the lead up to the primary, was notably restrained in his victory speech in Columbia, commending his rivals and focusing instead on the theme of American exceptionalism that will underlie his presidential campaign.
In an indication that he would continue to take the fight to Mitt Romney, however, he made a swipe at Romney’s success as former CEO of private equity company Bain Capital, a strategy that has contributed to his resurgence in the polls after slumping to fourth place in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“We don’t have the kind of money that at least one of the candidates has,” Gingrich said referring to Romney. “But we do have ideas, and we do have people and we proved here in South Carolina that people power with the right ideas beats big money.”
The South Carolina primary is the first of the more conservative Southern states to go to the polls in U.S. elections and has successfully picked the Republican nominee every election since the 1980s.
