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Former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt made the statement over the weekend that were Newt Gingrich to win the Florida primary after winning South Carolina, we might see a bit of a civil war within the Republican Party ensue. Well, I think we got a taste of some of the opening salvos of that during this interview from Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN.

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin was not at all happy with CNN debate moderator John King for the question he asked Newt Gingrich to open up their South Carolina debate earlier in the week, but not for the same reason the audience was displeased. It's not often I agree with Rubin on much of anything, but she's right here that King lobbed Gingrich a complete softball in the way he framed the question and should have known better that Gingrich was going to go after him and attack him for it.

Rachel Maddow actually made a very similar point in her coverage shortly after the debate, noting that there were about a dozen different ways that question could have been framed for Gingrich so he would have had to answer for the hypocrisy of one, being from the party that claims to run on family values when you've got a history of cheating on your spouses. And two, the utter hypocrisy of Gingrich cheating on his wife at the same time he was trying to have President Clinton impeached for similar behavior.

Howard Kurtz did point out that Rubin is a supporter of Mitt Romney during the segment. What he failed to note is that she wrote an op-ed the previous day, basically begging a number of people in the Republican Party leadership to come together and "collectively get behind a not-Gingrich candidate." Schmidt talked about the panic that was coming if it looked like Newt Gingrich might actually have a chance to win the Republican nomination. Well, as BooMan put it in his post on Rubin's op-ed -- I Got Your Panic, Right Here.

The other thing missing from this discussion is one of the reasons for the audience at the debate being so completely hostile to John King, or to Juan Williams earlier in the week as well, and that's how many of them are potentially Fox News viewers or listen to right wing radio and have been completely propagandized to believe that you can't trust the "liberal media" and that conservatives are somehow under assault from those evil lefties that are just out to get them? We've got large swaths of this country who have been trained to believe that Fox is the only place they can trust to get their information from and as much as CNN tries to go after those viewers by catering to the AstroTurf "tea party" or with their fake balance and host of "conservative" pundits who come on the air and lie to their viewers as well, they're still going to be part of that "liberal cabal" that they've been taught to hate.

As has already been noted here, Fox viewers are less informed than those who watch no news at all. I imagine a good deal of them were in those audiences cheering for Gingrich's attack on John King and booing Juan Williams for daring to point out that Gingrich has been playing the race card. I don't expect Kurtz and his guests to be pointing that out since CNN is about one notch above Fox in the misinformation game, if not on a par with them.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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From this Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary coverage on MSNBC, former McCain adviser Steve Schmidt was asked what would happen were Newt Gingrich to win the next primary race in Florida as well and it didn't bode well for the Republican Party and the potential for a bit of a civil war among their ranks.

SCHMIDT: Look, I think, not only are we not moving towards a coalescing of support by the Republican establishment for Newt Gingrich, we're probably moving toward the declaration of war on Newt Gingrich by the Republican establishment. And if Newt Gingrich is able to win the Florida primary, you will see a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language.

People will go crazy and you will have this five week period until the Super Tuesday states which is going to be as unpredictable, tumultuous as any period in modern American politics. It will be a remarkable thing to watch should that happen in Florida.

As Schmidt pointed out Gingrich's negatives are so high with one hundred percent name recognition establishment Republicans are terrified he's not only going to lose them the presidential election should he win their primary race, but he'd potentially cost them the House and the Senate as well. If Schmidt's predictions are true, look for things to get very ugly over the next month or so.

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Despite the fact as was noted yesterday on Chris Hayes' Saturday show on MSNBC, that Newt Gingrich's national favorability ratings nationwide are absolutely terrible, that didn't stop Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Haley Barbour from trying to put their best positive spin on his win in the South Carolina Republican primary race.

Gingrich may be winning over Republican primary voters with the race baiting and a repeat of Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy, but that doesn't necessarily translate well to a national election. I'm sure Graham and Barbour are well aware of that, but that didn't stop them from trying to paint South Carolina Republican primary voters as being typical of the mainstream of the rest of the country.

Transcript via CBS.

SCHIEFFER: All right, if you can help me and call Governor Romney, I think we can make this work. Senator Graham, what happened down there? Did-- is-- is South Carolina just too conservative for Mitt Romney or is there a problem here that goes deeper than that with his campaign?

GRAHAM: John McCain won, Bob Dole won. Not the most conservative people in the world but good-- good Americans who impressed South Carolina in sobriety, Newt won. The debate Monday night in Myrtle Beach was probably the best explanation of conservatism in a bold fashion coming from Newt Gingrich I've heard in decades. And Newt not only won the debates. He convinced people that he could beat Barack Obama and electability was the issue before South Carolina primary, during the primary and on voting day. And Newt won. He's the guy that we saw forty percent of us, the best to go into the arena and beat Barack Obama. Governor Romney did fine. Rick Perry did very well. He had some stumbles by Romney. We had six hundred thousand people vote. The largest Republican primary in history occurred yesterday. And people were energized. They were looking close and they picked Newt. This was Newt winning more than anybody else losing.

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As we've discussed and posted on here repeatedly, Newt Gingrich's use of racist "code words" or what some would call "dog whistles" have really been more of a siren because there's nothing veiled about them. There's nothing subtle about putting "Juan Williams in his place" or calling President Obama "the food stamp president" and equating being on food stamps to the black community, when in reality most of those using the program are white.

But regardless of the fact that the game Gingrich is playing is as obvious as the nose on his face, CNN's Candy Crowley plays coy here in this interview with Rep. James Clyburn and pretends she doesn't see it and isn't aware of what Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy was. I find it pretty pathetic that she forced Clyburn to have to explain it to her as though she's oblivious to the race baiting.

I also wonder what it's going to take for any of these so-called "journalists" and I use that term lightly, to recognize the fact that our economy was hemorrhaging jobs when George W. Bush left office and the job losses we've seen are not primarily the fault of the Obama administration when he's had to deal with a record amount of obstruction from the Republicans and Republican governors all across the country doing their best to sabotage the economy for the benefit of the wealthiest among us. Clyburn shouldn't have to be explaining to her why the Obama administration has had trouble turning the economy around either, but that's how he spent the latter part of the interview.

Full transcript below the fold.

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During his victory speech in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich went on another one of his rants, attacking President Obama as a Saul Alinsky-loving Socialist who doesn't care about American exceptionalism and the media elites that don't want us to be Americans (???) as well as rehashing an old attack of his against San Antonio Judge Fred Biery:

GINGRICH: One of the key issues is the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites and if you get a chance, if you go to newt.org, my campaign site, there's a fifty four page paper there on the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role and eliminating dictatorial religious bigots such as Judge Biery in San Antonio who issued a ruling that if the students, not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word benediction, the word invocation, the word god, asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail.

Now, we don't have speech dictatorship in America by anti-religious bigots, period.

Considering the number of dog whistle appeal to racists in South Carolina Gingrich has made in the last couple of weeks, there is no level of hubris too high for him to decry "bigots." Apparently Gingrich isn't too worried about appealing to middle of the road voters were he to make it to the general election and win the nomination after this twenty minute long screed that was full of nothing but red meat for the right.

Think Progress has more on Gingrich's dangerous attacks on that judge in their post from last October -- Gingrich’s Awful Speech Part IV: Legitimization Through Intimidation:

Despite his authoritarian claim that he is free to simply ignore court decisions he disagrees with if elected president, Gingrich’s speech also implicitly recognizes that it is helpful to have your values legitimated by a judicial decision. Unfortunately, however, Gingrich also sees nothing wrong with obtaining the illusion of legitimacy by simply intimidating judges into doing whatever you want them to do:

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While discussing how the Mitt Romney campaign is going to respond to Newt Gingrich winning the South Carolina Republican primary race and how it was he managed to win there, we got this bit of infinite wisdom shared with us by one of CNN's panelists, Republican “strategist” Alex Castellanos on how Mittens can play the “tough guy” just like Gingrich did during the debates leading into this third primary race.

CASTELLANOS: There's more to it than that you know. We don't know what a president will be faced with. You want somebody in that chair who can handle big things. Newt Gingrich got attacked. He demonstrated tremendous strength. Mitt Romney, next time somebody accuses him of closing down a steel mill should say “Yeah, I'm that guy and you know what? I'd do it again. I'd hate to do it... I'd hate to do it, it would hurt, but somebody needs to go to Washington and I think I can replace most of these buildings in here with like three good web sites.”

We've got to change this country dramatically . He's that kind of guy. He does transformational things.

I don't know about anyone else but the kind of “transformation” that Castellanos is talking about here is not exactly the kind most Americans think is good for our country. If shutting down steel mills, outsourcing jobs to China, raiding pension funds, slashing wages, busting unions and lining your pocket while doing it is something he thinks Romney ought to be bragging about, I just wonder what anyone is smoking that would ever hire this guy.

If he really believes it's good advice that Romney should be playing the tough guy when it comes to shutting down industries in America and putting people out of work during his time at Bain Capital, someone's overpaying him to manage their political campaign if he can actually find work other than being an overpaid right-wing hack at CNN (or sadly a guest on Meet the Gregory a.k.a. Karl Rove's dance partner as well) these days.

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Mitt Romney took a shot at his fellow Republican presidential contenders during his concession speech in South Carolina this Saturday evening for daring to go after his time at Bain Capital. Romney didn't mention Newt Gingrich by name but there wasn't any doubt as to who he was talking about.

Mitt Romney, the great defender of the American dream. I don't see how this resonates with anyone once the general election starts if Romney wins the nomination. The only people whose dream Romney is looking out for are his fellow one percenters. Telling the rest of us not to hate him because he's rich when he's gotten rich raiding pensions, outsourcing jobs and looting pension funds isn't going to go over that well when we've got so many Americans out of work and hurting right now.

Here's more from the LA Times -- Mitt Romney on S.C. loss: 'I will compete in every single state':

Romney congratulated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on his victory, but quickly pivoted to an argument that Republicans should not put up a nominee against Obama who has “never run a business and never run a state.” He also faulted Gingrich for joining Obama in the criticism of his private sector experience at a private equity firm – which he described as an attack on freedom and free enterprise.

“We cannot defeat (Obama) with a candidate who has joined that very assault on free enterprise,” he said. “When my opponents attack success and free enterprise, they‘re not only attacking me, they’re attacking every person who dreams of a better future,” he said. “I will support you. I will help you have a better future.”

Romney argued that the Republican Party “doesn’t demonize prosperity. We celebrate success.”

“Those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against us tomorrow,” he said.

In a nod to his vast and well-funded organization, Romney vowed to compete for every vote.

“I will compete in every single state. We are going to win this nomination and we are going to defeat President Obama in November,” he said. Read on...

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From this Saturday morning's Up With Chris Hayes from before the announcement that it's likely that Newt Gingrich is going to win the South Carolina Republican primary race, the panel of Gary Johnson, Melissa Harris-Perry, Ezra Klein and Michelle Goldberg discuss why the trouble Gingrich is going to have should be end up being the Republican presidential nominee.

The racist dog whistles and the anger and attacking the media might help him with Republican primary voters in South Carolina, but they're not going to do him a lot of good in the general election. And as Ezra Klein rightfully pointed out, his favorability ratings are absolutely terrible.

TPM has the latest poll up with Gingrich's numbers as of Jan. 16, 2012 and it ain't pretty.

56% Unfavorable to 26% Favorable

Stephen Colbert joined the set of Morning Joe live in South Carolina to discuss his "exploratory committee to run president of the United States of South Carolina" and his former Super PAC which is now being run by Jon Stewart which is urging Republicans to vote for Herman Cain, since it's too late for Colbert to have a place on the ballot in the primary.

Stephen actually made watching Morning Joe enjoyable for the close to twenty minutes he was on there, something I had previously thought was next to impossible.

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What was touted as ABC's big blockbuster interview with Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne Gingrich, turned out to be more of a fizzle since the main headline to come out of it, that Gingrich had asked Marianne to have an open marriage while he was cheating on her with Callista, was already leaked well ahead of the interview airing.

I don't think Marianne Gingrich came off all that well during the interview since she basically just laughed off allegations that she might have participated in trying to solicit bribes from an arms dealer in the late nineties and strangely ABC did not push her in any way about whether there was any truth to them. I'm not quite sure why they bothered to bring up the scandal at all if they weren't going to probe into it a bit more deeply.

The one portion of the interview which I posted above that I found rather humorous was Marianne Gingrich's reaction to Newt telling her that his current wife, Callista, was going to help him become president.

ROSS: Newt Gingrich lost his power as Speaker of the House and resigned from Congress in 1998. A year later he asked for a divorce and says Marianne, began to plan his campaign to run for president with Callista by his side who is probably best known in this campaign for the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry Gingrich bought for her at Tiffany's.

GINGRICH: He did tell me once that she was going to help him become president.

ROSS: What was your reaction to that?

GINGRICH: Didn't look like help to me.

I don't think the ABC report is going to have much of an effect on the GOP South Carolina primary race but if by some miracle Gingrich would actually become their nominee, I would imagine it would do some real damage in a general election. After the audience's reaction to Gingrich attacking John King during the CNN debate, it doesn't appear those "values voters" in the South really care about infidelity one bit. They're more concerned about whether a nasty piece of work like Gingrich might be able to put that "food stamp president" Barack Obama in his place should Gingrich win the primary race and have an opportunity to debate him in the general election.