Striving to regain ground in the final hours before the South Carolina primary, Mitt Romney offered a dim assessment of his chances in the race as he sparred with a surging Newt Gingrich .
Traveling the state in the final full day of campaigning before today’s voting, the former Massachusetts governor sought to downplay expectations, describing the race as a “neck-and- neck” competition.
“I said from the very beginning South Carolina is an uphill battle for a guy from Massachusetts,” he told reporters yesterday in Gilbert, South Carolina. “We’re battling hard.”
Gingrich, seeking to ride what polls show is a late wave of support, planned a full day of campaign stops in a bid to top Mitt Romney .
“The only effective conservative vote to stop a Massachusetts moderate is to vote for me,” Gingrich told an overflow crowd of more than 500 voters yesterday at The Cinema Room in Orangeburg. “If I win tomorrow, I will go on to become the nominee.
Voters, pundits and others offered other theories about his problems dealing the issue of his finances.
Like Gingrich, some questioned whether Romney has something to hide.
Perhaps the most intriguing theory came from Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, co-authors of a new book on Romney called "The Real Romney."
During an interview on CNN, Kranish said a Romney family member told the authors that Romney's cautious manner while campaigning -- which can make him seem distant and stiff -- partly reflects a lesson he learned from his father.
George Romney was a chairman of American Motors and a Michigan governor. As a presidential candidate in 1968, he supported the Vietnam War but became an opponent of it after visiting Vietnam with several congressmen.
George Romney later said during a TV interview that his earlier position was the product of "brainwashing" by generals and others who backed the war.
The comment sunk his bid for the Republican nomination, which was won by Richard Nixon.
"That one sentence pretty much exploded his presidential ambitions," Kranish said. "And Mitt Romney has taken a lesson from that. ... As a result, Mitt is more careful, more scripted in what he says because one sentence could perhaps end (his) campaign as it did his father's."
Kranish added that within his circle of trusted advisers, Romney is "very warm."
With the general public, however, "it could be a hard connection to make, especially given his great wealth ... and trying to make that connection to the average person."
Kranish added that Romney could use more of the "free-flowing nature that his father had."
On the eve of the South Carolina primary, Live 5's Bill Sharpe sat down with Mitt Romney for a one-on-one interview.
Romney said he wouldn`t predict the outcome of Saturday's primary, but did say it would be close.
He also said that he hoped the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade would be overturned allowing states to decide their own individual policies on abortion.
And what if he wins the Republican nomination, beats the president in November and ends up in the White House?
"I've got a whole series of executive orders I`ll put in place on day one," Romney said."I`m going to open up lands for drilling for oil and for gas. I'm going to put a stop on all the Obama regulations. I'll get a corporate tax code competitive with other nations.
One rival for the nomination, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, seized on Mr. Mitt Romney 's offhanded mention of his speaking fees on Wednesday. While disclosing his tax rate, Mr. Romney said he had made "not very much" from the engagements.
"To make a statement that 'I made a couple of extra bucks giving speeches' when that couple of extra bucks was over $300,000—I mean, that to me says a little bit more about Gov. Romney and his connection with the American people than his tax rate," Mr. Santorum said on Fox News.
Democratic strategists say their party faces a tough slog in winning over working-class white voters in November. President Obama's standing among that constituency has slid since 2008. But Obama aides are finding cheer both in Mr. Romney's recent statements about his own wealth and in the GOP discussion of his record as a private-equity investor.
"Mitt Romney has made clear he's quite comfortable playing by a different set of rules than middle-class Americans," said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Many politicians have shown wealth is no hindrance to winning higher office. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has won three elections as New York mayor. The list of rich presidents stretches back to George Washington and includes Democratic presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Mr. Romney's financial disclosures put his own wealth at $190 million to $250 million.
"But you have to be honest and forthright and relaxed about it," said GOP pollster John McLaughlin, who has worked with Mr. Forbes and other wealthy clients.
In one off-note moment, Mr. Romney talked earlier this month at an event in New Hampshire about an affinity for firing people, just as his campaign was facing attacks that Mr. Romney laid off workers while leading investment firm Bain Capital.
"I like being able to fire people that provide services to me," he said. He was referring to health insurers who gave unsatisfactory service, but opponents used the moment to cast Mr. Romney in a negative light.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced he was backing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney Friday, saying his support could help Romney win Saturday's hotly-contested South Carolina primary.
"I'm a Southern governor endorsing Mitt Romney in the first Southern state primary," McDonnell said on CNN's "Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien."
"The governor of South Carolina has endorsed him as well. I think hopefully that will help him some. He's the one that's been consistent. Other candidates have been up and down. He is the consistent, results-oriented conservative who has the best record and the best message on jobs and on cutting spending," McDonnell said.
Romney's campaign said McDonnell would campaign with Romney in South Carolina ahead of Saturday's first-in-the-South primary, including a stop Friday in Charleston.
McDonnell, considered a rising Republican star, has served as governor of Virginia since 2010, and also acts as the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. He is seen by many as a potential vice presidential pick for the eventual GOP nominee.
The stakes were high as Republicans sought a challenger to Democratic President Barack Obama. Television advertising by the candidates and their supporters exceeded $10 million here, much of it spent in the past two weeks, and mailboxes were stuffed with campaign flyers.
In a bit of home-state boosterism, DeMint said the primary winner was "likely to be the next president of the United States."
Indeed, the winner of the state's primary has gone on to capture the Republican nomination each year since 1980.
A victory by Romney would place him in a commanding position heading into the Florida primary on Jan. 31. He and an organization supporting him are already airing television ads in that state, which is one of the country's costliest in which to campaign.
If the former Massachusetts governor stumbles in South Carolina - as senior aides conceded he might - it could portend a long, drawn-out battle for the nomination stretching well into spring and further expose rifts inside the party between those who want a candidate who can defeat Obama more than anything else, and those whose strong preference is for a solid conservative.
Romney sounded anything but confident as he told reporters that in South Carolina, "I realize that I had a lot of ground to make up and Speaker Gingrich is from a neighboring state, well known, popular ... and frankly to be in a neck-and-neck race at this last moment is kind of exciting."
Romney conceded Friday that he's in a tight race with Newt Gingrich for today's South Carolina primary in a Republican campaign suddenly turned turbulent.
It's "neck and neck," Mitt Romney declared, while a third presidential contender, former Sen. Rick Santorum, swiped at both men in hopes of springing another campaign surprise as he did in Iowa.
Several days after forecasting a Romney victory in his state, Sen. Jim DeMint said the campaign's first Southern primary was now a two-man race between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has struggled in recent days with questions about his personal wealth and taxes, and Gingrich, the former House speaker who has been surging in polls after a pair of well-received debate performances but criticized over his romantic affairs.
A victory by Romney would place him in a commanding position heading into the Florida primary Jan. 31. If Romney stumbles in South Carolina, it could portend a long, drawn-out battle for the nomination. And that could further expose rifts inside the party between those who want a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama more than anything else and those whose strong preference is for a solid conservative.
Like Gingrich, some questioned whether Romney has something to hide.
Perhaps the most intriguing theory came from Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, co-authors of a new book on Romney called "The Real Romney."
During an interview on CNN, Kranish said a Romney family member told the authors that Romney's cautious manner while campaigning -- which can make him seem distant and stiff -- partly reflects a lesson he learned from his father.
George Romney was a chairman of American Motors and a Michigan governor. As a presidential candidate in 1968, he supported the Vietnam War but became an opponent of it after visiting Vietnam with several congressmen.
George Romney later said during a TV interview that his earlier position was the product of "brainwashing" by generals and others who backed the war.
The comment sunk his bid for the Republican nomination, which was won by Richard Nixon.
"That one sentence pretty much exploded his presidential ambitions," Kranish said. "And Mitt Romney has taken a lesson from that. ... As a result, Mitt is more careful, more scripted in what he says because one sentence could perhaps end (his) campaign as it did his father's."
Kranish added that within his circle of trusted advisers, Romney is "very warm."
With the general public, however, "it could be a hard connection to make, especially given his great wealth ... and trying to make that connection to the average person."
Kranish added that Romney could use more of the "free-flowing nature that his father had."
For months, Mitt Romney 's rivals in the Republican presidential race have hammered him as a closet moderate, especially on third-rail social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
"Mitt Romney: Not conservative," charged one recent and typical television commercial sponsored by supporters of Newt Gingrich .
Is that true? Is Romney really more liberal than he'd have GOP voters believe?
I've been looking back over Romney's history, and for better or worse, the former Massachusetts governor has a more consistently conservative record than he's given credit for. Only in the hothouse atmosphere of a Republican primary campaign could he be considered soft on social issues.
Take gay marriage. Because Massachusetts began allowing same-sex couples to wed while Romney was governor, he has been portrayed by some as soft on the issue.
But the shift came because of a court decision, not legislation, and accounts from the time make it clear that Romney did everything in his power to head off the court's action. Failing in that, he decried the ruling, saying it went against "3,000 years of recorded history." And for the rest of his time in office, he fought the law, at one point ordering county clerks not to perform weddings for gay couples who lived out of state.
In its minute-long radio ad, news of which was first reported by the Miami Herald, Gingrich’s camp opens with a clip of the slogan. A narrator then intones in Spanish:
“Amazingly, this phrase was also used by Mitt Romney.”
The spot goes on to allege that Romney is “the most anti-immigrant candidate” and charges that he is “a liberal” in the same style (and from the same state) as the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).
It also states that Gingrich fought alongside “Ileana and Lincoln” – that’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and former congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) – to pass the Helms-Burton Act, the 1996 measure aimed at strengthening the embargo against Cuba.
Not mentioned in the Gingrich ad? Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart have endorsed Romney in the 2012 race, and they appear in a Spanish-language Romney campaign TV ad currently airing in the Sunshine State.
The Gingrich spot is a sign that the former House speaker’s camp is aiming to stay in the race beyond Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, where the candidate has seen a surge of support in recent days. Florida holds its nominating contest on Jan. 31.
But in Florida, Gingrich will likely face the same problem as he has elsewhere when it comes to his effort to unseat Romney as the GOP frontrunner: the former Massachusetts governor has a vast campaign warchest at his disposal.
The South Carolina Republican presidential primary is often a free-for-all, but this year's contest probably sets a new standard for volatility. Not surprisingly, Palmetto State GOP insiders see a close finish in the primary Saturday between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , according to a CNN survey.
Less than 48 hours before voters would go to the polls, they were buffeted by a sudden announcement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry that he was withdrawing from the Republican presidential race and endorsing rival Gingrich. And as Perry was dropping out, the political world was buzzing with reports that Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, said that her then-husband proposed an "open marriage" before they divorced. Then, a fiery Gingrich struck back at the opening of the CNN debate in Charleston, attacking the "liberal media" for bringing up the story in the first place.
Not that Mitt Romney is any better. If there are actually people out there who need to watch this donkey show in order to figure out who to vote for, then Romney's days as the GOP frontrunner have likely come to an end. When John King asks the governor if he will release all of his tax returns like his father George Romney did, Mitt replies with a "maybe," and the audience inside the arena boos. More telling, inside the press room there are gasps. Something unscripted has occurred. Something that was truly unexpected. My fellow journalists are only momentarily fazed. They quickly gather themselves and get back to penning their regularly scheduled reports in which they act as if they are providing a service to democracy by reciting conflicting poll numbers and quote-whoring the night's catchphrases. ¡Ay, caramba! To the Batmobile, Robin. Pow, right in the kisser.
Once the debate is over, the lily-white horde of reporters comes face to face with the lily-white horde of campaign staffers and supporters, guys like our own Jack Hunter and former South Carolina GOP chair Katon Dawson. For some reason, the press corps still treats Dawson with respect despite the fact that he's an asshole who was a member of an all-white country club in Columbia and who was the state campaign chair for Rick Perry, a racist dickhead who owns a house out in the boonies called Niggerhead Ranch.
And that more than anything symbolizes the GOP's problem: they not only still allow bigots among their ranks, but they think one of them is fit to be chairman of the Republican Party or, even worse, the president of the United States.
The CNN host stepped on a land mine named Newt Gingrich when he opened Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate by asking him about his second ex-wife’s allegation that he suggested she accept his the affair as part of their marriage.
Gingrich’s now-famous response practically blew back King’s hair. “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office,” he said to thunderous applause during the forum in Charleston, S.C. “And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”
To even more enthusiastic applause, the former House speaker added, “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”
Gingrich’s shoot-the-messenger answer may be one of the most memorable moments of the campaign and a potential boost for his candidacy against front-runner Mitt Romney.
As of Friday evening, both candidates had scheduled events at Tommy's, a Greenville breakfast restaurant, at the same time on Saturday morning. The event was a late addition to Romney's daily schedule; Gingrich's campaign said they but they booked the establishment first.
"We've had this event on the books. Our schedule went out first," said Gingrich aide Nathan Naidu. "We are confirmed at our event ... We would be more than happy to treat Gov. Romney to ham at our event."
The Romney campaign said the booking is "pure coincidence," and that it was still planning to hold their meet-and-greet with voters at the Ham House.
The news that Mitt Romney earns most of his income in the form of capital gains is really no surprise. That is one of the attractions of being in a business like Bain Capital. If your corporate restructuring works out well, you can earn millions or tens of millions of dollars and pay a flat 15 percent tax rate on it. (You also avoid the 2.9 percent Medicare tax that would apply if the income were treated as regular compensation.) By all accounts, the Bain deals worked out very well indeed, which is why Governor Romney has been able to spend so much time running for office rather than working for a living.
As part of just one Bain transaction in 2008, involving its investment in Burger King Holdings, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that an unnamed Bain partner donated 65,326 shares of Burger King stock to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holdings then worth nearly $1.9 million. And there were numerous others, giving the church a stake in other Bain properties, such as Domino's Pizza, the electronics manufacturer DDi, the phosphates company Innophos Holdings, and Marquee Holdings, the parent to AMC Theaters.
The Republican presidential candidate's campaign staff confirmed that some of the stock transactions were at Romney's direction, but they would not say which ones.
"Mitt Romney has publicly stated that he regularly tithes to his church," said Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, when asked about the Bain contributions. "Some of those church contributions have come through the Tyler Foundation. Others have been donations of stock through Bain. Any shares donated by Mitt Romney are personal shares owned by him."
Saul also noted that not all the shares that appear on Bain securities filings can be attributed to Romney, "as there are other Mormon members of the firm who may also have been making donations to the church of personal shares owned by them."
Questions about Romney's faith have remained largely subdued during the 2012 campaign. Many believe he helped tame the issue during his previous campaign with a December 2007 speech at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, during which he declared that his church would not dictate his actions in the White House, if he was to become President.
"I do not define my candidacy by my religion," Romney said. "A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith."
Romney said that Mormon church authority is limited to the province of church affairs, "and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.
Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.
As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.
"His personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system," said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.
On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney's Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns -- a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.
The father of our country, George Washington, was worth $525 million in today's currency according to research done by Atlantic Magazine. Teddy Roosevelt worth $125 million. The Kennedy family... wait for it... worth about $1 billion. JFK lived entirely off his trust fund. John Kerry worth about $300 million when ran for President in 2004.
The truth is many who go into public service are rich folks. Now you can decide if Mitt Romney is some kind of insensitive greed head. Certainly his opponents are painting him that way but please consider this. The capitalistic system we have in this country is based on freedom. Freedom to earn as much as you can provided you do it honestly.
Do some Americans have unfair advantages? Of course, they do. And some folks don't like that, demanding more income equality from our free enterprise system.
But as President Obama's term in office demonstrates, the more the feds try to create so-called social justice, the more debt piles up leading to inevitable outcries of tax the rich further.
As we pointed out Monday, the top one percent in this country now pay 37 percent of the total income tax yet the President believes that is not their fair share. He and the Democratic Party want even more.
Mitt Romney has been far too passive in the face of personal attacks on his wealth. He should release his tax returns and vigorously defend the system that has enriched him. If he doesn't, he will not become president.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday that Mitt Romney should put out his tax returns “sooner rather than later” but added that the former Massachusetts governor has already started speaking about the tax rate he pays.
“I would say to Governor Romney is that if you have tax returns to put out, you know, you should put them out sooner rather, than later because it’s always better in my view to have complete disclosure, especially when you’re the front-runner,” said Christie on NBC’s “Today Show.”
Christie said he releases his tax returns every year after he files them. But Christie noted that Romney has already started to speak about his tax returns, telling reporters yesterday that he pays close to a 15 percent tax rate.
The issue of Romney’s tax returns has been magnified in recent days, as he campaigns in South Carolina, which holds the country’s next primary on Saturday and which is among the nation’s poorest states. Among his competitors, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he will release his tax returns this week. Texas Governor Rick Perry already released his. A spokesman for former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said he would release his returns, but offered no timeline. The campaign of Texas Representative Ron Paul did not respond to questions yesterday about whether Paul will release his.
Presidential nominees in the past few elections have generally released their returns around April. It has become tradition for presidents to release their tax returns, though there is no law obligating them to do so.
In the same interview, Christie refused to rule out serving as vice president under Romney, though he said he wants to continue being governor of New Jersey. “I think it’s rude and wrong to say you wouldn’t do something you haven’t been asked to do,” Christie said.
Private equity: It's an arcane phrase, for sure. But it's the force behind household names like Dunkin' Donuts, MGM Studios, Burger King and J. Crew.
And now it's at the heart of a political controversy.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has faced repeated questions about his record as former head of private equity firm Bain Capital. Business leaders say the usually reclusive industry has been unfairly villified, not to mention misunderstood.
Here's a primer on the industry . . . and how you encounter it every day.
Private equity refers to wealthy individuals and institutions that invest in private companies or buy out public companies and take them private so their stock is no longer traded on public exchanges.
The investors typically acquire an undervalued or distressed company, usually with borrowed money; reorganize operations; then -- often four to seven years later -- sell at a profit.
Put another way, as one of my associates has said, Romney is unlikely to get off scot free in a campaign where his claim to fame is that he flipped companies and then flip-flopped on the issues moving from a Massachusetts moderate, as Newt Gingrich is goading, with liberal positions on social issues like guns, abortion and health care, to a more traditional Republican, sympathetic to the Tea Party.
In practical political terms, the Romney campaign provides the unique narrative to the Obama campaign, who despite their lack of a record of accomplishment on the economy, now have a narrative. And that narrative is that the economy is now slowly improving, they are standing up for working people versus the rich and powerful, read: the 1%, read: Mitt Romney. And that they have been stymied at every juncture in trying to develop policies for the 99% by an intransigent Republican Congress.
To be sure, that in and of itself is not a winning argument.
With vast majorities of Americans dissatisfied with Obama's economic policies and feeling the country is heading in the wrong direction, there is a very clear sense that America is off on the wrong track.
What the Obama campaign will do is make the argument that Romney is simply not the answer. They will argue that by not having created the 100,000 jobs he said he did, Romney has exaggerated, or even worse, did not tell the truth.
They will argue that his performance at Bain Capital represents not pure free market capitalism, but financial manipulation. And that ultimately, Romney is on the side of the wealthy and the powerful, supporting policies that are inimical to working people.
And what's worse, they will say, you can't trust him to stand for anything. His flip-flops on the issues are so substantial that you really don't know what he stands for, and who he really is.
What Obama will try to do with all of this is to fight Romney to a draw, with independent swing voters in the middle and in the Midwest and Southwest.
Put another way, Obama's theory is that if they can fight to an effective draw with voters in the center through these kind of attacks, they will be able to mobilize their vote-- whether it be from liberals, young people, blacks or Hispanics-- in a way that gives them a narrow victory.
It is not a great strategy, but at least it is a strategy.
Romney's strategy at this point will be the one he articulated last Tuesday night when he won the New Hampshire primary. That he is for free markets, he is against regulation and that he is for opening up a society that President Obama has mismanaged.
For the third time in three months, Ohio Republicans have a new favorite in the GOP presidential race.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney overtook former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a new Buckeye State poll released tosday morning by Quinnipiac University.
Romney, according to the survey, leads the Republican field with 27 percent -- nine points ahead of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and 10 points ahead of Gingrich.
The general election, where President Barack Obama will meet the winner of the GOP nomination, figures to be a much closer contest. Quinnipiac found an Obama-Romney match to be a statistical tie, putting Obama at 44 percent and Romney at 42 percent.
In the December poll, the Obama-Romney race was at 43-42 percent. Head to head, the incumbent Democrat leads Santorum 48-37, Gingrich 52-38 and Texas Rep. Ron Paul 48-39.
The results show the ever-changing dynamics of a battle in which Romney only recently has cemented his front-runner status by winning the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Before Gingrich topped last month's poll, Ohio Republicans favored businessman Herman Cain, who has since suspended his campaign.
Ginrich polls much more evenly with Romney among those Tea Party voters, with just a point separating the two men - 29 percent favor Romney and 28 percent support Gingrich.
As this and other polls have noted throughout the contest, the lion's share of voters - 74 percent - say they could still change their minds about whom to support - and so the race remains fluid.
This poll was conducted by telephone from January 12-17, 2012 among 1,154 adults nationwide. 1,021 interviews were conducted with registered voters and 340 with voters who said they plan to vote in a Republican primary. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters could be plus or minus three points and five points for the sample of Republican primary voters. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds a 23 percentage point lead over his closest rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a Gallup survey of registered Republican voters nationwide.
The tracking poll, taken between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15, shows Romney with 37 percent support. Tied for a distant second are former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 14 percent each, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 12 percent support.
The survey showed Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 5 percent support and Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race Monday and threw his support to Romney, with just two percent support.
Romney, the winner of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, has seen a steady, double-digit increase in national support since the January 3 caucuses. Gingrich, by contrast, has been in freefall, dropping from 37 percent support in December.
Santorum, who won the backing of a group of prominent social conservatives over the weekend, reached 18 percent support following his near-win in Iowa but has since dropped to 14 percent.
A new CNN/ORC International poll, also released Monday, showed Romney and Paul statistically tied with President Obama in a general election matchup. Mr. Obama was favored over Santorum by six points and over Gingrich by nine points.
Romney has edged up since a Post-ABC poll in mid-December before the campaign’s first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, boosted by a sharp increase in his perceived electability and a steep falloff in national support for Gingrich.
With his rivals closely bunched and well behind him, Romney has obvious advantages, reinforcing an aura of inevitability that surrounds his candidacy. Nearly six in 10 Republicans see him as the party’s best shot at defeating Obama.
Just a month ago, Romney held a 10-point advantage over Gingrich as the most electable candidate in the field. That lead has swelled to a whopping margin of 57 percent to 10 percent. In the intervening weeks, millions of dollars in negative ads hit the former speaker in Iowa as his support plummeted there and nationally. Gingrich, who declared late last year that he was likely to be the nominee, finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Overwhelmingly, Republicans expect Romney to be the party’s nominee. Even about two-thirds of those who do not support him for the nomination see him as the one most likely to be atop the party’s presidential ticket.
Romney also has consolidated support on issue No. 1: the economy. For the first time in the campaign, he has a double-digit lead over his rivals when it comes to dealing with economic issues; he beats everyone on this measure by 2 to 1. And he is up 13 points when it comes to handling the federal budget deficit. Exit polls in New Hampshire and Iowa showed overwhelming percentages of voters focused on these two issues.
Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney appeared rattled after being challenged by his rivals in a televised debate over his failure to disclose tax returns and the millions of dollars spent by his supporters on negative ads.
The debate on Tuesday night, at times raucous, came only days before the potentially decisive South Carolina primary, possibly the last state in which Romney's main opponents can feasibly stop his run for the Republican nomination.
Although Romney enjoys an 8% poll lead over his nearest rival, Newt Gingrich, his uncomfortable performance watched by millions of viewers, many of them from South Carolina, may have cost him votes.
The number of candidates in the debate, the 16th so far, has been reduced to five, following the departure of Jon Huntsman earlier in the day. The main task of Gingrich and Santorum was to rein back Romney and both succeeded, leaving him at times looking hesitant, uncertain, irritated and overly defensive.
If Gingrich, the clear winner on the night, was to wound Romney again on Thursday night in Charleston, South Carolina, in the final debate before the primary, the outcome may yet be in the balance.
The debate was conducted against a noisy background, with 3,000 partisan Republicans in the hall, booing and heckling, saving applause for their favourites, mainly Gingrich and former senator Rick Santorum. Romney, viewed as too moderate in right-leaning South Carolina, appeared to have failed to fill the hall with his supporters.
The Bay State governor has come under increasing fire since winning in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he spent the debate defending his stance on gun control, decrying third-party negative ads, and even indicated he’d release his tax returns after Texas Gov. Rick Perry and debate moderators pressed him on the issue.
“I have nothing in them that suggests there’s any problem and I’m happy to do so,” he said.
The issue of Super PAC ads loomed large. Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania grilled Romney over whether prisoners should be allowed to vote after a pro-Romney Super PAC ran ads blasting Santorum on the issue.
“This is actually my time. Answer the question,” Santorum said as the former Bay State governor delayed answering. Romney finally said, “I don’t think people who committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote again.”
Romney said he supports taking down the ads if they’re inaccurate, adding that a recent Gingrich ad is “probably the biggest hoax since bigfoot.”
The high-stakes debate — sponsored by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the South Carolina Republican Party — came hours after Romney’s campaign picked up further momentum as former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman backed out of the presidential race and threw his support to Romney.
Former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich has conceded that Romney will likely win the nomination if he can win in the Palmetto State.
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – Mitt Romney was put on defense out of the box at Monday night's Republican presidential primary debate -- answering questions about his record at private venture firm, Bain Capital; distancing himself from super PAC ads against fellow candidates; defending his record as Massachusetts governor, and dodging demands that he release his tax records.
But Romney fired back against the onslaught, saying he is proud of his record in business and as governor.
"We were fortunate to have an unemployment rate by the time I left office of 4.7 percent. Sounds pretty good today," Romney said. "And I was also proud of the fact that we balanced the budget every year I was in office. We reduced taxes 19 times, put in place a rainy day fund of over $2 billion by the time I left."
We need to satisfy the country that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way," said Gingrich, the former House speaker, defending his questions about Romney's work at a private equity firm that critics say slashed jobs and plundered companies.
"There was a pattern in some companies, a handful of them, of leaving them with enormous debt and then within a year or two or three having them go broke. I think that is something he ought to answer," he said.
Romney's firm, Bain Capital, has become a flashpoint in the campaign in recent weeks, although the candidates have eased off their criticism on the campaign trail at the urging of some Republicans.
Romney defended his record at Bain, saying he invested in more than 100 businesses and had a mixed but overall successful record of job creation.
"If people want to have someone who understands how the economy works, having worked in the real economy, then I'm the guy who can best post up against Barack Obama," Romney said.
Perry, the Texas governor, and Gingrich also have been challenging Romney to release his tax returns. Perry confronted him directly during the debate of 1 hour and 50 minutes.
"I hope you'll put your tax records out there this week so the people of South Carolina can take a look and decide if, you know, we've got a flawed candidate or not," Perry said.
Romney did not firmly commit to releasing his records but said historically candidates have released them around April. "That's probably what I'll do," he said.
The conservative contenders trying to slow Mitt Romney's sprint to the presidential nomination are running out of time, as the same dynamic that kept the right from coalescing in Iowa two weeks ago again plays to the front-runner's advantage.
Saturday's South Carolina primary is the last realistic chance for a social conservative to emerge as a viable alternative to Romney. But a sharp split among the state's concentration of evangelical Christians and tea party supporters has stubbornly persisted as Romney's rivals compete fiercely for them.
Rising anxiety on the right over Romney's momentum was reflected at a prayer breakfast Sunday in Myrtle Beach, attended by candidates Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.
One of the speakers, Eric Metaxas, said he hoped candidates he did not specify "will hear from God and get out of the race.
Who wants to go through this meat grinder?” asked Ken Khachigian, a veteran strategist of Republican presidential campaigns. Mr. Romney’s status as someone who “never smoked, never drank, never did drugs, stayed married to one woman,” he added, short-circuited some of that scrutiny.
A second factor was the economic difficulty that choked off the number and generosity of campaign donors. Mr. Romney had a huge head start with his personal wealth and broad network of donors — including former financial industry colleagues and fellow Mormons — that he has tended since his 2008 campaign.
“The fund-raising environment was enormously difficult,” said Phil Musser, a strategist for the short-lived campaign of former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Mr. Musser said potential donors “just sat on their hands” throughout 2010 as Mr. Pawlenty, initially seen as Mr. Romney’s most formidable rival, struggled to build a financial apparatus to compete.
A third factor has been the lackluster performance of two other candidates who once seemed destined to present major challenges to Mr. Romney.
Mr. Huntsman, who served as ambassador to China in the Obama administration, had trouble convincing his party that he was a true conservative, and sometimes seemed to be challenging its message. Mr. Perry briefly stood atop the polls and challenged Mr. Romney’s fund-raising dominance before his “oops” brain freeze in a debate in November undercut his credibility.
“The one guy with excellent potential turned out to be a gaffe monster,” said Daron Shaw, a political scientist at the University of Texas who was a campaign adviser to the younger Mr. Bush.
A final obstacle has been the unruly nature of Tea Party-era Republicans. Just as Speaker John A. Boehner has struggled to control the House Republican caucus, would-be White House contenders face the daunting challenge of winning over the most fervent advocates of budget-cutting and immigration crackdowns without compromising their appeal to mainstream voters in a general election.
It is little wonder then that the Republican campaign at different points has elevated candidates, like Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and the business executive Herman Cain, who could speak to conservative activists but could not overcome the challenge of building an electoral majority.
The heavy schedule of televised debates, which replaced much of the on-the-ground campaigning of earlier races, sometimes made it difficult to tell if Mr. Cain, for example, was actually seeking the White House or instead raising his profile and selling books.
“It’s the rise of the blogosphere, the rise of reality TV, the self-publishing, self-broadcasting world,” said Kim Alfano, a media consultant to Mr. Daniels and other Republicans. “Everyone has a voice.”
Ms. Alfano said the cacophony of voices, extreme positions and unorthodox campaigns that emerged after the 2010 Tea Party movement could hobble Mr. Romney’s ability to compete with Mr. Obama if he prevails for the nomination.
Republican Party is poised to destroy the cookie cutting mold in several categories should Mitt Romney continue his momentum and acquire the Republican nomination for president. Every Republican nominee in modern times has been a Protestant Christian Anglo-Saxon.
Romney will not only be the first non-Protestant nominated and the first Mormon, but he will also be the first Hispanic nominated president, something few people are taking note of.
After the hoopla over President Barack Obama being the first Afro-American to earn the Democratic nomination, the fact that Romney is half Hispanic has been kept under the radar by the media as a campaign issue.
The Obama campaign has wasted no time in trying to portray Romney as the most extreme candidate on the issue of immigration. In the days since Romney’s DREAM Act statement, a slew of Latino Democrats has fanned out to rip Romney. After all, there’s a lot at stake here: Latinos are the nation’s fastest-growing voting bloc, with an estimated 12.2 million set to vote in this year’s general election, according to a projection by the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials (NALEO).
“It really demonstrates how far he is from understanding the issue,” said Rep. Charlie Gonzalez of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, on a conference call with reporters last week. “I understand that in that particular field one will try to out-pander another, but you still have to be responsible.”
“How do you paint yourself into such a corner on immigration where you can’t walk back from that statement?” he asked.
On primary night in New Hampshire I sat down with Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., who emphasized that Democrats are going to remind Latino voters time and time again about Romney’s immigration stance.
“It appears that the Republicans are so committed to moving to the far right to win the tea party vote that they have forgotten about the rest of American voters – the independents, the Latinos,” Becerra told me in Manchester. “It appears that they have said that at this moment what matters to them is the tea party because they want to be the nominee. And because of that we are hearing people like Mitt Romney who says whatever he needs to to win. But unfortunately for him there is a record, there are facts – and the facts are the things that are going to be used to judge who is the real Mitt Romney.”
“He’s already said to our immigrant children who perform military service or who go to college – go away. The DREAM Act, that bill to give those students an opportunity to move forward here? No. To immigrant families? Split them up,” Becerra added.
Now that he appears well on his way to winning the GOP primary, Romney has tried to court Latino voters. In New Hampshire last Sunday, Romney mentioned that his father, George, was born in Mexico and came to the United States at age five. On Wednesday he took to the airwaves in Florida with a new Spanish-language ad entitled “Nosotros,” meaning “us.” The Republican National Committee got in on the act, too, announcing a beefed-up outreach effort to Hispanic voters.
But it may be too little, too late. Even before his DREAM Act comments, Romney faced an uphill battle with Latinos. A poll conducted by Latino Decisions for Univision in November found that among registered Hispanic voters in the 21 most Hispanic-heavy states, Obama held a whopping 67 percent to 24 percent lead over Romney.
While Romney could make up some ground among Latinos by selecting someone like Cuban-American Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as his eventual running mate, the GOP may have missed a golden opportunity to swing the 2012 election by earning the backing of Latino voters.
In my stops along the campaign trail in recent months, I have encountered numerous Latinos disillusioned with President Obama’s inaction on comprehensive immigration reform measures. In Las Vegas last November, I talked to a single mother of two named Ana who said she voted for Obama in 2008, but won’t do so again in 2012, no matter who the GOP nominates.
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.
SUMTER, S.C. – Presidential candidates hear tales of woe all the time on the campaign trail. But rarely does one respond by pulling cash out of his back pocket to help a struggling voter pay her bills.
Mitt Romney did just that here Saturday night, according to ABC News. When a 55-year-old woman, Ruth Williams, who said she lost her job last October, approached the Republican presidential front-runner on the rope line following a campaign rally in Sumter, he gave her what an aide later said was about $50 or $60.
It did not appear that the exchange was caught on camera, but ABC’s off-air reporter, Emily Friedman, witnessed it and interviewed Williams afterward. Williams told Friedman that she has been volunteering at Romney’s Columbia, S.C., campaign offices and has been following his campaign since first spotting his campaign bus on Wednesday.
“I was on the highway praying and said, ‘God, tell me how to get [my] lights on,’” Williams, apparently referring to her electricity bill, told Friedman. “I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there. And then God said, ‘Follow the bus,’ and I followed the bus.
I was on the highway praying and said, ‘God just show me how to get [my] lights on,’ and I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there,” said Williams, who has been unemployed since last October. “And then God said, ‘Follow the bus,’ and I followed the bus to the airport.”
According to Williams, she followed the campaign bus to the Columbia airport on Wednesday, the same day Romney was arriving from New Hampshire. When Romney wasn’t on the bus, aides told her to go to the rally scheduled in Columbia later that day. When she showed up, Romney found her to say hello and pulled over South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to say “hello” too.
“He was kind to me and he made Gov. Haley come see about me,” Williams said. “He stopped doing everything.”
Williams, who would not specify how much money Romney gave her, said also that South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis paid her light bill on Thursday. A spokesman for Loftis, one of Romney’s major endorses in the state, confirmed to ABC News that he paid Williams’ bill. While Loftis didn’t know the amount of the bill, he confirmed that he gave her $150.
“God didn’t tell me to go to nobody else, he told me to pray for Romney,” said Williams, when asked why she has decided to support Romney. “I listened to the Lord.”
Williams said she has been volunteering at Romney’s Columbia headquarters since meeting his bus last week.
SUMTER, S.C. -- Mitt Romney reached into his pocket Saturday after a rally here and gave a handful of bills to an unemployed woman who started volunteering in his campaign offices this week.
Ruth Williams, 55, of Colombia, said she was at a stop sign along I-26 on Wednesday when she saw the Romney campaign bus pull through town in the Columbia area. "I was on the highway praying and said God tell me how to get [my house] lights on, and I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there," she said.
Williams said she followed the bus to the airport "because the Lord told me. It sounds strange but he really did. I mean God really talked to me about this."
The bus was picking up Romney after his New Hampshire primary win. Williams did not get to meet him upon his arrival, but aides told her to head to a rally in Columbia that evening, which she did.
Romney, briefed by his staff about her story, came over to talk to Williams after that rally. She spoke to him tearfully and asked him about his economic policies. "He was kind to me," she said. "He stopped doing everything." She told Romney she had a sick son and was looking for a job. "I told them about my problems and that I just want to work. I just want to work," she said.
Williams said she had been cleaning houses for home builders, but with the downturn in the housing market, had been unable to find work since October.
Also easing Romney's way in Florida is Restore Our Future, a "super PAC" led by former advisors. It has reported spending more than $2.6 million on TV ads attacking Gingrich. The former House speaker has lacked the wherewithal to respond in kind, and a super PAC that backs him has stayed focused, so far, on South Carolina.
Gingrich has started establishing a presence in Florida more recently. He campaigned Friday in Orlando and Miami's Little Havana. Gingrich has recruited a former House colleague, Bill McCollum, as co-chairman of his Florida campaign.
Perry, whose campaign was flush with cash in the fall, assigned staff to Florida months ago. In automatic robocalls to absentee voters, the Texas governor has talked up his conservative credentials on abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control. But dismal poll ratings suggest Perry could have trouble surviving without a strong showing in South Carolina.
Paul, who won just 3% of the Florida vote in 2008, plans to spend little money there this time. That could prove a wise move, given Florida's winner-takes-all system for awarding delegates and his single-digit poll ratings.
But the Texas congressman has opened offices in a dozen other states, among them Missouri, Nevada and Minnesota, Paul spokesman Gary Howard said. "We're in it for the long haul," he said.
For Santorum, Florida is a steep climb. His state chairman recently fretted in an email, published in a Miami Herald blog, that Santorum's 110-plus volunteers were "grouped together in the more populated areas and most of them aren't interested in leading."
But national evangelical leaders on Saturday endorsed Santorum, and if the endorsement comes with substantial cooperation, the former Pennsylvania senator could transform their volunteer networks into a "campaign juggernaut," at least short-term, said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina GOP strategist who is nonaligned in the race.
"That would give him time to build what he needs to build," Felkel said. "The problem is, sooner or later, the gas runs out of this thing."
For any possible insurgent, the scope of work that lies beyond South Carolina is "massive," said Fred Davis, who made campaign ads for McCain and now works for an independent group airing TV spots for Huntsman. The later a campaign sprouts into a serious national operation, he said, the more it will cost.
