Opinion: The GOP Goes MAD368 comments

Whose idea was it to get in the way of the Republican Party's presidential smackdown with a State of the Union speech? Bring back the Grand Old Party Brawlers. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are locked in a death struggle. They'll survive, but will their party?

For nearly three decades, the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals cohabitated uneasily inside a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction without blowing each other up. MAD was insane, but the players were not. Campaigning politicians operate under no such rational constraint. We are hours away from the second Florida primary debate in which Newt Gingrich will give Mitt Romney a lesson in massive retaliation for the governor's Gatling-gun attack on the speaker last Monday night.

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Close Martin Kozlowski

Traditionalists will dismiss the idea that the GOP is in the process of blowing itself up. Campaign politics has always been about the rough and tumble, old boy. It was ever thus.

Thus is over. With every turn of the election cycle, it seems the new, ever-expanding universe of modern media takes politics into unchartered hyperspace.

In 2008, it was Barack Obama's discovery that small Internet contributions could grow into a mighty war chest. In 2010, conventional wisdom laughed off the tea party movement until its members, pumped up by social media, powered Republicans at all levels of government to a deep, historic victory.

This year it's the debates. The early "debates" were a clown-car stunt, with pressure to add more clowns. The formats restricted the candidates to 30- or 60-second soundbites. Other than "oops," we learned next to nothing. But the debates drew viewers for the same, weird reasons people feel compelled to watch Tom DeLay on "Dancing With the Stars." But when the field trimmed to four candidates, with more time to talk, the televised debates became the central arena in which campaigns would rise and fall—and rise.

From Jan. 14 to Jan. 18, Mitt Romney's poll numbers rose in South Carolina, reaching an eight-point lead over Mr. Gingrich by the 18th. On Jan. 19, the candidates debated in Charleston. The Romney lead evaporated overnight. He lost the primary two days later by 12 points. A 20-point swing in three days.