Which brings us back to the crowd roar in South Carolina. In Myrtle Beach and Charleston combined, there were probably 3-4 thousand folks total in attendance. Now while that is not significant in and of itself — consider that every day we look at polls with far fewer folks and consider them gospel truth on everything from elections to mouthwash. In other words, my assumption was that those few thousand folks are indeed a darned good cross section of Republican voters across South Carolina and in fact the country. It wasn’t the few thousand who rose to give Newt his standing ovations per se, it’s that there were probably hundreds of thousands cheering at their television sets across the nation as well. That something like 60% of all likely voters in South Carolina did watch those debates was merely confirmation of just how important the crowd reaction should be assumed.

Yet the elites ignored the roar. After all, the roar came from the unwashed. It came from the fans of cockfights. It came from tea party folks and other such rabble. Inside the sterile cable studios and on their laptops, the pundits scored their debate and their election prospects without the roar. They have their little formulas about who has to raise doubts here and who has to score points there.

What they don’t understand is what the roar means.

The roar is passion. The roar is intensity. The roar is pent up frustration.