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Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are sharpening their attacks against one another ahead of Florida’s January 31st primary. Gingrich won South Carolina with 40.4% of the vote, trailed by Romney who captured just 27.8%. Based on exit polls the Washington Post found that Gingrich’s surge was credited to voters who chose their candidate in the final days, and maybe hours of campaigning. He was also favored by 45% of the state’s voters who call themselves conservative and a majority of self-identified evangelical or born-again Christian voters. However the race is far from over as Florida represents a different demographic of voters. It is the first primary state with a large population of Latino voters, many of them Cuban, and the candidates face a more diverse electorate overall in the Sunshine state than the three previous primary states. The candidates are hammering each other on their past employment. Romney, one of the richest men to ever run for President, has conceded to make his tax returns public and will release them tomorrow, the same day as President Barack Obama gives the State of the Union address. Romney turned the spotlight on Gingrich this weekend and is demanding Gingrich release records on his time as a consultant and, specifically on how the former Speaker of the House helped mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Talking to a group of Florida voters last night Romney asked, “[w]hat’s Newt] been doing for 15 years? … He was working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington.” It is a sharp turn from the more pious, religiously coded campaigning the two engaged in for two weeks in South Carolina, and that may have handed Gingrich a win over this Mormon rival.

GUEST: Sarah Posner, senior editor for Religion Dispatches, investigative journalist and expert on conservative evangelicals. She writes for the American Prospect website about news of the religious right, and she is author of “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters

Read Sarah’s work at www.religiondispatches.org