About last night: Hell hath no fury

Where would Shakespeare beginith?

Going into the last debate before South Carolina's pivotal primary, I knewt that Gingrich would be asked about the revelations of his second wife, that Romney would be asked to release his tax returns, that Santorum would claim ideological purity, and Paul would sound zanier than ever.  Though I was not far off by the time the sparring match ended, I did not expect to see so much blood on the carpet.

Gingrich was delivered a gift by his former wife, Marianne, whose interview on ABC's Nightline was set to air later in the night.  But when CNN's John King made this ominous spectacle the opening topic, Newt swung at the curve ball and hit it out of the park, defining the moment as beneath the voters' expectations of dignity for a US presidential debate.  He handled it perfectly by both attacking the question and giving a full-throated denial of his ex-wife's principal allegation that he had asked her for an "open marriage."  That the rest of the debate was nevertheless generally undignified doesn't matter.

Least dignified was Rick Santorum's attack on his former mentor, Gingrich, who saw fit to accuse the Speaker of the House whom he served with, (and without whom Republicans like him would have been permanent back-benchers had it not been for Gingrich's campaign strategy in 1994), of being "grandiose."  Like the question about the scorned Marianne's interview, Gingrich swung back sharply and without a trace of condescension at his ungrateful protege.  Santorum did not retreat gracefully, but instead launched back into a bunch of inside baseball about Newt's seeming to go along with the House Post Office and House Bank scandals (not true to my recollections) as a member of the GOP caucus before becoming Speaker of the House. Gingrich did not dignify Santorum's ridiculous boasts of post-traumatic clairvoyance with a reply.

That Rick Santorum's political ascension in the House was owed to Gingrich's professorial support of the young freshman from Pennsylvania seems, like Marianne's happier years married to Newt, all but forgotten in the heat of last night's passion play.  Santorum as much as admitted his own astonishment at being able to stand among the final four candidates, his most truthful statement of the night.  Mrs. Gingrich, in the full interview on ABC, likewise revealed she and her husband were quite happy together before he became powerful.

The only thing that could make the GOP primary take the turn it risks taking, into a Shakespearean tragedy, would be for Santorum to begin believing in his own outwardly unfounded ambitions and in so doing destroy the last remaining chance the GOP has to stop Mr. Romney or vanquish Mr. Paul.  Voters appear to accept, even to prefer, their candidates with personal flaws.  If Gingrich wins the South Carolina primary on Saturday, we'll know that much for sure.  And though I do admire Santorum's gumption, youth, and his positioning himself as the Jack Kemp of his generation as the "blue collar" Republican by eliminating taxes on manufacturing companies, his impetuousness otherwise is striking.

Alas, poor Yorick, we are only upon the end of the First Act.  If in the Second Act, the "junior partner," (as Gingrich called Santorum once, doubtlessly angering the young turk), continues to bloody his mentor's chances, the spectacle of a Romney nomination will grow more and more ominous.  A bloody battle between Santorum and Gingrich will kill them both by the end of the Second Act. And without denominating right here all of why that would be fatal to the GOP in November, the "inevitable Romney" presence will cast such a pall over the conservative landscape, it sets the stage for an unthinkable Third Act ironic twist: Ron Paul will magically rise from obscurity and senselessness to become the only viable alternative.

So if last night's debate was the stuff of vengeful avarice, full of intrigues and unsaid scores waiting to be settled, brimming with barely-controlled greed and bomb-making petulance-- know this: it's not a comedy any more.