is how badly the candidates will hurt each other before it's all over. South Carolina is going to be real mean. It's where the mormon bashing will probably occur, not in the open, but outside groups making calls with weirdly worded questions that make you think negatively of Mormonism. And Newt, he's not happy about what happened in Iowa and wants to get Romney back and now he has a PAC to do it.
The Tea Party's influence on this process is non-existent, they are dead as a Republican entity, (yes they were, if not at first very shortly after that) and will try to start another party, but it will fail.