Newt Gingrich says he won't back down

Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, could all but quash his rivals' presidential aspirations with a victory in South Carolina on January 21 after winning the first state-by-state nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.


Voters in South Carolina - who have favored Republicans in nine of the last 10 presidential elections - appear to have shrugged off attacks on Romney by rivals who accuse him of killing jobs as a private equity executive for Bain Capital in the 1990s.


The poll showed 37 percent of South Carolina Republican voters back Romney. Congressman Ron Paul and former Senator Rick Santorum tied for second place with 16 percent support.


Newt Gingrich and another Republican presidential hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have been highlighting Bain deals that resulted in job losses in South Carolina, including some at a Georgetown steel plant on the Intracoastal Waterway.


“We’re going to go to Georgetown,” Gingrich said. “Georgetown has a steel mill which was closed. Capital wasn’t put at risk. Capital was drained out of that company. Gov. Romney ran saying he created 100,000 jobs in the private sector.”


Audience members groaned.


“Mr. Speaker,” moderator Mike Huckabee interrupted, “we’ve said we will not allow any comment on the other candidates.”


“I’m just trying to answer his question,” said Gingrich, one of five GOP presidential candidates who made separate appearances at the forum.


To raise questions about a company “is not the same as attacking capitalism,” Gingrich continued. If Republicans avoid challenging the former Massachusetts governor’s record at Bain, he said, President Obama’s reelection team will not be so kind in the fall. “Every single candidate has to be prepared to answer the questions before the nomination so that we know that whoever we nominate is capable of surviving the fall campaign.”


With South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary a week away, Romney’s campaign has pushed back hard at Gingrich and Perry for casting his private equity career in a dark light. Since Friday, Romney has been running a TV ad in South Carolina saying, “We expected the Obama administration to put free markets on trial, but as the Wall Street Journal said, ‘Mr. Romney’s GOP opponents are embarrassing themselves by taking the Obama line.