During the CNN debate in South Carolina tonight, Mitt Romney struggled to draw a clear distinction between himself and his chief challenger Newt Gingrich. Chiding Gingrich for spending decades in Washington as a political “insider,” Romney insisted that he’s the “perfect example of why we need to send to Washington someone who has not lived in Washington, but someone who has lived in the real streets of America.” Watch it:

It’s unclear whether those “real streets” are the ones by Romney’s beach house in California, his mansion in New Hampshire, or his multi-million dollar “colonial” in Massachusetts. Of course, Romney has attempted to paint himself as an everyday, middle-class guy before. But as a Wall Street millionaire who keeps money in offshore accounts and is comfortable making $10,000 bets, it seems like most streets Romney spends time on are the ones paved in gold.

During tonight’s GOP debate in South Carolina, Republican front-runner Mitt Rommey said he will “probably” release his tax returns for multiple years, but received boos from the audience when he refused to commit to releasing as many years of returns as his father did when he ran for president.

Romney has been cagey on his tax returns, at first refusing to commit to releasing them before finally agreeing this week to release his returns from 2011 in April. But tonight, he said for the first time that he would release returns “probably for other years” as well. When moderator John King asked Romney if he would follow his father’s lead and release 12 years of returns, Romney replied “maybe,” and earned audible condemnation from the crowd. Watch it:

Romney explained that he wouldn’t release his tax returns before he won the nomination “because I want to beat Obama” and he expects Democrats to use his tax returns against him. Newt Gingrich replied by noting that Democrats would likely do that no matter when he released his returns.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin defended Newt Gingrich ahead of the airing of a shocking interview tonight with his ex-wife, whom Gingrich cheated on, saying the news will only help the former Speaker’s chances of winning the South Carolina GOP primary Saturday. Palin and her husband have endorsed Gingrich.

Speaking on Sean Hannity’s radio show this afternoon, Palin played her typical game of conflating the “dumbarses” in the “lamestream media” and the political left, assuming that ABC News is airing the embarrassing interview in an attempt to derail Gingrich’s campaign. This will backfire, she argued, because voters don’t care about the fact that fact that Gingrich carried on an affair for six years while married, or that he asked his wife for an open marriage so he could continue the affair, or that he subsequently left his wife after she was diagnosed with a terminal disease:

PALIN: I call them dumbarses. They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview that’s old news — and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign — all it does, Sean, is incentive conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it’s played so selectively by media, that their target, in this case Newt, he’s now going to soar even more. Because we know the game now, and we just won’t put up with it.

So, good call media! Way to go to covertly hype this, even Gingrich opponents, for being so brilliant they sure are dumb.

Listen here:

In fact, the interview is not “old” but Marianne Gingrich’s first TV interview since her divorce from the former Speaker in 1999, and it does make news about how Gingrich — who often defends “traditional” marriage on the campaign trail — treated his wife of 18 years.

But Palin, who calls herself a feminist, completely ignores the substance of Gingrich’s actions to portray him as a victim of just another tawdry lamestream media smear. “I have a degree” in journalism, she reminded Hannity.