Analysis: Mitt Romney must be feeling a bit like Rick Perry. Romney's steady performance in the early debates helped propel him to front-runner status. Now a dual debate triumph in South Carolina helpedNewt Gingrich turn a 10% deficit in the polls to a 14% electoral triumph in the Palmetto State.

Can it be that he who lives by the debate shall die by the debate?

Romney is partially a victim of raised expectations. South Carolina was never his ideal state, but coming after the momentum of the New Hampshire primary, Romney started off with the lead and all of a sudden he was expected to win.

Now that Newt Gingrich has turned the tables in South Carolina, Romney is under severe pressure to win Florida where he is heavily invested. If either Gingrich or Rick Santorum defeats Romney, there may be talk once again of a brokered convention.

The ability of Gingrich to easily wipe out the Romney lead, demonstrates that support for Romney is shallow and lacks emotional commitment. In a sense, Romney is reminiscent of Richard Nixon who was considered competent - but didn't arouse enthusiasm - and to George Herbert Walker Bush, who in 1988 had the advantage of coming after a popular Reagan presidency and faced a weak opponents in Michael Dukakis.

When a candidate without emotional backing faced a strong opponent --Tom Dewey versus Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman, Bush and Dole against Clinton, competence was not enough. Richard Nixon, the prototype of the competence candidate, was lucky to win in 1968 despite the Vietnam War and a fractured Democratic Party. The Democrats then gifted him in 1972 with the ultra-left George McGovern.

On the one hand, the level of dissatisfaction in 2012 resembles that of 1968. On the other hand, Barack Obama has a unified Democratic Party behind him, something that Hubert Humphrey did not have when he faced Richard Nixon.

It is hard to see how Mitt Romney can connect with the voters on the deeper emotional level if he has not managed to do so since 2008.

It definitely did not help him to have the tax return controversy surface during his bad week in South Carolina.