South Carolinians wary of Mitt Romney's corporate side

An administrative assistant from Taylors, South Carolina, Walmer is backing Rick Santorum in the Republican presidential race.
As she tells it, Romney "doesn't have a backbone."
But like other conservative Republicans here, she is bracing for the prospect of a Romney victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.
"It's not that people here are in favor of Mitt Romney," Walmer said. "It's just that so many people are splintering the votes in so many directions that by default he could very easily win. But if he wins, I wouldn't take it to mean that we are all gung ho for him. It just means that he eked it out and he's really lucky."
A similar fear is gripping conservative voters across South Carolina's Upstate, a picturesque territory fanning out from the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains and anchored by the cities of Greenville and Spartanburg.
With less than a week until the primary, the anybody-but-Romney wing of the Republican party here finds itself increasingly divided between Santorum and Newt Gingrich, with Rick Perry still alive but fading into the background, and Ron Paul holding onto his reliable base of libertarian support.
"Romney is so boring I can never remember what he says," explained Loretta Gilchrist of Spartanburg, who said that a recent Romney television appearance was "so boring" it sent her to the DVR in search of a movie to watch instead.
"I wasn't going to vote for him anyhow unless he is the last man standing," Gilchrist said. "But he might be."

Largely white, part urban and part rural, the South Carolina Upstate is a hotbed of evangelicalism and Christian conservative political activity.
Romney's economy-themed pitch certainly has resonance here. Small towns across the region have been hit by manufacturing job losses in recent decades. Meanwhile, the Greenville-Spartanburg metro area is host to several international companies like BMW and Michelin.


And while Paul has avoided such attacks, a "super PAC" that backs the libertarian congressman has been running a TV ad in South Carolina that sends essentially the same message about Romney.


The ad, focused on the 2008 bank bailouts, shows Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Romney and a cigar-smoking banker with $100 bills bursting out of his shirt pocket. "They took your money and gave it to their Wall Street friends," an announcer says. Paul is shown wagging his finger at Romney as the narrator calls the congressman "fearless in the face of corruption."


Romney, whose Bain career has been fodder for opponents since he tried unsuccessfully to unseat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1994, faced another variation of the attack in the 2008 presidential race: Republican rival Mike Huckabee compared him to "the guy who laid you off."


Among many Republicans, the attacks carry no weight. Jonathan Speers, for one, is leaning toward Romney, based largely on his business record. "He seems like he's got a level head on his shoulders," said Speers, 27, the manager of Frank's Car Wash in Lexington.


"Romney was just doing business," said Walter Early, 56, a Lexington insurance broker who backs Rick Santorum but sees Romney as "a very decent guy."


"That's the way business is done in this country. It's pure capitalism," he said.

Many of those who are rejecting Romney in the primary still strongly prefer him over Obama — among them, Mike Boozer, 67, a Paul supporter who looks askance at Romney's business record.


"He talks about creating all those jobs, but he fired as many as he hired, it looks like," said Boozer, a retired truck driver running an errand at Home Depot in Lexington.