via online.wsj.com
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Santorum bristles as Gingrich suggests he quit
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says Newt Gingrich shouldn't be urging him to drop out of the primaries.
Santorum tells Fox News Channel that one candidate shouldn't tell another "to get out of the race and get out of the way."
via sfgate.com
Oil Heads for Monthly Gain on Europe Optimism, Iran Tension - Businessweek
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Oil headed for the third monthly gain since September after Greece’s Prime Minister said debt- swap talks in have made progress, easing concern that Europe’s sovereign debt turmoil will curb demand.
via businessweek.com
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Associated Press: No letup on Gingrich by Romney before Florida vote
No letup on Gingrich by Romney before Florida voteBy THOMAS BEAUMONT, Associated Press – 8 minutes ago
MIAMI (AP) — Cheered by new polls, Mitt Romney is all but predicting victory in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary. Newt Gingrich is looking past Florida to regroup, vowing he won't stay buried long.
"With a turnout like this, I'm beginning to feel we might win tomorrow," an upbeat Romney told a crowd of several hundred at a stop in Dunedin on Monday as he and Gingrich zipped across the state making their final appeals.
Gingrich, in turn, acknowledged that his momentum had been checked but promised not to back down. He characterized Romney as an imposter, and his team started to plot a strategy for upcoming contests.
"He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money," Gingrich said in a television interview. "In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican."
GOP officials in Florida were anticipating a big turnout, more than 2 million voters, up from 1.9 million in the Republican primary in 2008. Election officials had already received more than 338,000 absentee ballots, 37,000 more than the total early ballots cast in the GOP primary four years ago.
In the span of a volatile week, the tables have turned in this potentially pivotal primary state.
Gingrich rode a triumphant wave into Florida after a South Carolina victory nine days ago. But since then, Romney and his allies have pummeled the former House speaker on TV and on the campaign trail. Romney turned in two strong debate performances, while Gingrich faltered. Now opinion polls show the former Massachusetts governor with a comfortable lead here.
Romney and Gingrich have been the only two candidates to compete in Florida in earnest. Neither former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum nor Texas Rep. Ron. Paul campaigned much in the state, and they were elsewhere on Monday.
Clearly in command, Romney flew to stops in media markets in northern Florida and the populous swing regions of central Florida, determined to keep Gingrich from surging late.
Romney renewed attacks on his rival as an untrustworthy, Washington influence peddler at the outset of two separate appearances Monday. He claimed that Gingrich's ties to federally backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac have hurt the former speaker in a state wracked by the foreclosure crisis.
"He made $1.6 million in his company, the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis here in Florida," Romney said in Dunedin. Gingrich's consulting firm received more than $1.5 million from the federally backed mortgage giant over a period after he left Congress in 1999.
Gingrich plowed ahead, flying to stops in northern Florida starting in Jacksonville — near his home state of Georgia — before touching down in conservative Pensacola and then Tampa.
Along the way, he tried to rally conservatives by casting Romney as an imposter and himself as the true GOP stalwart. His claim to conservative principles wasn't limited to economic issues.
"No politician, no judge, no bureaucrat can come between you and God," Gingrich told an audience in Tampa. "I'm a little bit tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet."
Gingrich, who has sought to wrap himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, campaigned with the late president's son Michael. He was also joined by former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who endorsed him Sunday.
A win by Romney would again reset the 2012 GOP race, seen early this month as his to lose, then thrown into doubt by Gingrich's come-from-behind win in South Carolina.
Romney easily won the New Hampshire primary after nearly winning the in leadoff Iowa. The South Carolina setback behind him, Romney sought to aggressively stop Gingrich, aided by a well-funded political action committee that supports him and is run by former political aides.
Together, Romney's campaign and the supportive group Restore Our Future have combined to spend $6.8 million on television ads in the final week of the Florida campaign, about three times what Gingrich and a group supporting him have spent.
Romney capped his Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina campaigns with upbeat spots. Nothing doing in Florida, where he was running out the clock with ads attacking Gingrich over Freddie Mac and an ethics violation in Congress.
Rick Tyler, a former top Gingrich aide now running a pro-Gingrich political action committee, showed up at Romney's kickoff event in Jacksonville on Monday, stealing a page from Romney's Florida playbook.
"I'm here to get as many cameras and microphones so I can talk about Mitt Romney's incessant failure to tell the truth," Tyler said.
Gingrich said he was confident he could narrow Romney's margin in public voter surveys, even as he and his campaign began trying to soften the blow a defeat in Florida might bring.
Gingrich aides tried to diminish the state's impact on the quest for the nomination by issuing a memo from his political director, Martin Baker.
It noted that by Wednesday morning, only 5 percent of the 2,288 national convention delegates will have been awarded.
Gingrich, who has promised to campaign through the national convention this summer, was clearly looking to regroup after Florida.
"The campaign is shifting to a new phase where opportunities are not limited to a single state," Baker wrote.
Gingrich had not announced his plans for Wednesday. Romney, who has already begun advertising in next-up Nevada ahead of the state's Feb. 4 caucuses, was traveling there Wednesday, and to Minnesota, which holds its caucuses on Feb. 7.
Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in Dunedin, Shannon McCaffrey in Tampa and Brendan Farrington in Miami contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
via google.com
Polls show Romney surging ahead of Gingrich in Florida - Yahoo! News
HIALEAH, Florida (Reuters) - Republican Newt Gingrich struggled to halt surging rival Mitt Romney's momentum on Sunday, accusing him of launching false attacks as polls showed Romney widening his lead two days before Florida's presidential primary.
Romney, who has battered Gingrich in a flood of television ads and two debates in Florida last week, opened a double-digit lead over the former House of Representatives speaker in four polls released on Sunday.
via news.yahoo.com
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Ahead in Florida, Romney Turns Focus to Obama - WSJ.com
MIAMI—Mitt Romney strode into the final 48 hours of the pivotal Florida Republican primary campaign with the confidence of a resurgent front-runner, predicting he will win in Tuesday's voting while looking ahead to future contests.
His main rival, Newt Gingrich, hustled around the state, trying to rekindle the energy that lifted him to victory in the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21. He acknowledged the possibility he could lose here but vowed to fight Mr. Romney to the party's national convention this summer.
Outspent 3-1 on television advertising in Florida during the campaign's closing week, Mr. Gingrich was working the media by chatting up reporters on Saturday and scheduling appearances on two nationally televised Sunday talk shows.
via online.wsj.com
Governance Matters at Las Vegas Sands in the hands of Sheldon Adelson - Forbes
Yesterday, Las Vegas Sands’ CEO’s wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, gave a further $5 million to Winning Our Future, a so-called “super PAC” set up to support Newt Gingrich’s presidential candidacy, on top of the $5 million already given by the CEO himself, Sheldon Adelson. These actions give us at GMI pause for thought. Such political action committees (PACs) can take in unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals. This much support makes the Adelsons among the largest known individual contributors to the current Republican primaries. But coming from individuals who have a controlling interest in a company – Las Vegas Sands – that is so beset with governance and social issues, the reputation of the super PAC and the campaign it is supporting might be impugned. For example, elections are typically something over which Mr. Adelson exercises considerable control, since his position as controlling shareholder and his membership on the board’s nominating committee means that he can nominate and elect the entire board.
via forbes.com
Poll: Romney holds big lead over Gingrich in Florida - Florida
Newt Gingrich swaggered into Florida as a Republican front-runner, but now he’s close to slipping out as an also-ran against a resurgent Mitt Romney.
Gingrich is badly trailing Romney by 11 percentage points, garnering just 31 percent of likely Republican voters heading into Tuesday’s presidential primary, according to a Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald/Tampa Bay Times poll released late Saturday night.
President Barack Obama should be wary as well. Romney beats Obama by a 48-44 percent spread — a lead inside the error-margin, however — in a theoretical general-election matchup, the poll shows.
In the Republican primary, Romney’s lead looks insurmountable. It cuts across geographic, ethnic and gender lines. And the poll indicates Romney’s attack on Gingrich as a Freddie Mac insider is a hit with GOP voters.
“What does Gingrich need to do? I would say Romney would need to implode,” said Brad Coker, pollster with Mason Dixon Research & Associates, which conducted the survey from Tuesday through Thursday.
“If there’s no 11th hour surprise,” Coker said, “this race is looking right now like it’s over.”
Rick Santorum and Ron Paul — who did not campaign in Florida — are running well behind and have little chance of pulling into serious contention in the nation’s largest swing state, which holds 50 of the 1,144 delegates needed to help secure the GOP’s nomination at this summer’s convention in Tampa.
Late Saturday, former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed Newt Gingrich, but it's unclear how that could help Gingrich make up such a big deficit.
Romney is running strongest in Southeast Florida, from the Keys to the Treasure Coast. About half of all voters favor him here. Gingrich gets about a quarter of the vote. Similarly, 52 percent of Hispanic voters favor Romney, compared to just 28 percent who support Gingrich.
Hispanic voters, namely Cuban Americans, have played an outsized role in this election. They account for 72 percent of registered Republicans in Miami-Dade, the state’s most-populous county with about 368,000 GOP voters.
“I’m going to vote for Romney because I think he’s a dedicated businessman,” said Juan Perez, a 69-year-old Cuban Republican and former Port of Miami worker. “At least he has made his own money and is a capable businessman. He is also an ethical and moral man.”
Hispanics account for up to 14 percent of the total ballots cast in a GOP primary in Florida. But they can be pivotal, especially in Miami-Dade, home to nearly 60 percent of all Hispanic Republicans. Miami-Dade’s vote accounted for about half of John McCain’s 2008 statewide margin over Romney in 2008, and it gave Mel Martinez about 90,000 more votes than Bill McCollum in the 2004 Republican Senate race.
As a result, the candidates spent an inordinate amount of time in Miami this past week, visiting the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday and then returning Friday to the Hispanic Leadership Network and the Latin Builders Association. Romney could be in Cuban-heavy Hialeah on Sunday.
“The Cuban voters here will probably be more homogenous in how they vote than in other parts of the state,” said Dave Custin, a top-tier Miami-Dade political consultant.
via miamiherald.com
Saturday, January 28, 2012
911 recording reveals frantic efforts by friends to help Demi Moore who was convulsing - The Washington Post
LOS ANGELES — A 911 recording revealed frantic efforts by friends of Demi Moore to get help for the actress who was convulsing as they gathered around her and tried to comfort her.
Moore was “semi-conscious, barely,” according to a female caller on the recording released Friday by Los Angeles fire officials.
Romney surges in Fla., but Gingrich attacking - CBS News
(CBS News)The two leading candidates in Tuesday's crucial Republican presidential primary in Florida, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, were to hit the campaign trail hard in the Sunshine State Saturday.
With polls showing Romney surging, Gingrich was pulling out all the stops, including a new attack ad, to catch up.
But after two strong debates this week, Romney was sounding confident.
via cbsnews.com
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Real Time Weather Warnings At RobWire.Com
The latest real time weather warnings can be found in the Alert box at http://robwire.com
As I.P.O. Looms, Facebook Halts Clearing of Trades
As Facebook readies for an initial public offering, its lawyers are pressing the pause button on the trading process for shares of the social networking giant.
On Wednesday, Facebook’s law firm, Fenwick & West, halted the clearance of trades for Facebook shares on the secondary market, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the transactions were private. While trades may still occur on the secondary markets, the firm will not officially sign off on any transfers until Monday, the people said.
Facebook declined to comment. Fenwick & West did not respond to a request for comment.
The move comes as investors eagerly wait for Facebook’s prospectus, the first public step toward an I.P.O. The Internet company is widely expected to pursue a multibillion-dollar offering in the second quarter, at a valuation near $100 billion, according to people close to the company. The prospectus will provide investors with an in-depth picture of Facebook’s financials and business model, including how the world’s largest social network extracts money from advertisers and third-party developers.
While Wednesday’s move raised talk that a prospectus was imminent, the law firm has previously halted the clearance of Facebook trades, especially during increased activity on the secondary markets, where private shares are bought and sold. The action allows the law firm the opportunity to review recent transactions and update its records. Activity has been robust in recent months, in anticipation of Facebook’s filling, according to several people involved in the buying and selling of the company’s shares.
On Wednesday, Sharespost, a secondary market, announced that it sold a block of 70,000 shares on Jan. 20, at $34 a share. At that price, Facebook is valued north of $80 billion.
After such a sale agreement, Facebook has 30 days to exercise a right of first refusal, when it can step in and replace the buyer. If that period elapses without any action, Fenwick & West can clear the trade and officially transfer the shares to the new buyer.
Bloomberg News earlier reported on the delay.
33% of GOP Voters Say It Would Be Good If New Candidate Entered Presidential Race - Rasmussen Reports™
Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.
We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter, the Rasmussen Report on radio and other media outlets.
Some information, including the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll and commentaries are available for free to the general public. Subscriptions are available for $3.95 a month or 34.95 a year that provide subscribers with exclusive access to more than 20 stories per week on Election 2012, consumer confidence, and issues that affect us all. For those who are really into the numbers, Platinum Members can review demographic crosstabs and a full history of our data.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade. To learn more about our methodology, click here.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Romney’s 13.9% Tax Rate Shows Power of Investment Tax Preference - Businessweek
Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 13.9 percent tax rate in 2010 shows how wealthy investors can use the preferential treatment of income classified as capital gains and dividends to minimize payments to the federal government.
via businessweek.com
Filmmaker Oliver Stone would vote for Ron Paul over President Obama - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
Filmmaker Oliver Stone, known for his liberal political views, said he would vote for GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul over President Obama should Paul win the Republican nomination.
In an interview with Rock Cellar magazine, Stone was asked if an economic collapse would lead to the fall of the American “empire.”
via thehill.com
Monday, January 23, 2012
T-Mobile, AT&T seek approval for spectrum transfer - MarketWatch
NEW YORK -(MarketWatch)- T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. /quotes/zigman/398198/quotes/nls/t T -0.16% filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission for approval of the transfer of $1 billion in wireless airwaves AT&T promised as a result of the failure of its $39 billion bid to take over its smaller rival.
AT&T said it would turn over the airwaves, or spectrum, along with $3 billion in cash to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGY, DTE.XE) after pulling out of the deal as opposition mounted from the FCC, Justice Department, state attorneys general and rival carriers.
via marketwatch.com
Macy's sues Martha Stewart Living | Reuters
(Reuters) - Macy's Inc is suing Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc, accusing the company of breach of contract for entering into an agreement to sell certain products to J.C. Penney Company Inc.
Macy's says Martha Stewart Living granted it the exclusive right to make and sell certain products under a 2006 agreement, according to a New York state Supreme Court filing Monday.
Macy's is seeking a preliminary injunction stopping Martha Stewart from violating the contract. It also is seeking an order sealing the lawsuit and motion, saying it is prohibited from disclosing certain information.
via reuters.com
Oil prices rise as Iran renews threats to close strategic waterway after EU sets embargo - The Washington Post
NEW YORK — Oil prices climbed near $100 per barrel as Iran again threatened to block shipments of crude from the Persian Gulf. The latest threat follows a widely expected decision by the European Union to embargo imports of Iranian oil.
Monday also featured a sharp turnaround in natural gas prices. Futures rose more than 7 percent after one of America’s biggest natural gas producers said it would cut production this year.
Giants Beat 49ers in One of Most Improbable Games in Recent History - New York News - Runnin' Scared
In addition to being one of the greatest wins in Giants history, last night's 20-17 overtime win over the San Francisco '49ers was also one of the most improbable games in recent memory. Let's look at some stats:
-- The Giants had no running game at all and were outrushed by San Francisco 150 to 85 yards. That kind of rushing yardage ratio will lose you 3 out of 4 games in the NFL. You can't win if you just run for 85 yards, can you?
-- San Francisco converted just one time in 14 tries. (The Giants didn't do so hot, either, converting just 7 of 21.)
-- Except for 2 brilliantly executed drives, Eli Manning was thoroughly stymied all night by the '49ers defense, which held him to 267 yards on 58 throws, allowing him to be sacked 6 times (the Giants had just 2 on SF QB Alex Smith) and recording 21 "hard hits" on him. How can you win when you can't protect your quarterback better than that?
-- Manning averaged just 4.6 yards per throw, his second worst average ever in the postseason. Smith averaged 6.8 yards a pop when he threw. In the regular season, the tema with 6.8 beats the team with 4.6 nearly 80% of the time.
-- The 49ers made just one completion all night to a wide receiver, to Michael Crabtree, for 3 yards. How do you send a game into overtime when your wideouts have exactly 3 yards receiving in four quarters?
-- Finally, the '49ers, who had by consensus the best special teams in the NFC this season, lost the game on two field goals set up by fumbled punts. They had lost one fumbled punt all season.
How close was this game? You always hear commentators say "It came down to a matter of inches," but in yesterday's NFC championship game, it was more like it came down to an inch -- the tip of the football that brushed against the sock of San Francisco punt returner Kyle Williams, the "fumble" which the Giants recovered at the Niners' 28-yard line, setting up a cheap touchdown. Cheap or not, however, the Giants had to earn it. Eli drilled a clutch 17-yard TD pass to Mario Manningham on a clutch 3rd and 15 play. Anything less than 15 yards on that play and the Giants would have had to settle for a field goal and would have still been trailing 14-13.
Watch the "knee fumble" here, and for all you aspiring special teams coaches out there, always remember the way Bear Bryant taught them to play at Alabama: "If you're not gonna catch the punt, get the hell away from it."
Go to Runnin' Scared for all our latest news coverage.
Survivors sought after deadly storms pound South - CBS News
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Searchers in the Birmingham area were going from house-to-house early Monday in an effort to rescue people trapped in their homes after storms moved across the Midwest and South, killing at least two people and prompting tornado warnings in a handful of states.
Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Randy Christian said a 16-year-old boy was killed in Clay and an 82-year-old man died in the community of Oak Grove.
A storm system produced a possible tornado that moved across northern Jefferson County around 3:30 a.m., causing damage in Oak Grove, Graysville, Fultondale, Centerpoint, Clay and Trussville, Christian said. He said several homes were destroyed and numerous injuries were reported.
via cbsnews.com
Sunday, January 22, 2012
AP Reports Joe Paterno Has Died
BREAKING: Family says Joe Paterno, winningest coach in major college football, has died -ldh
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 22, 2012
via twitter.com
Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization's collapse | Reuters
(Reuters) - When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."
Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.
via reuters.com
States Are All Over the Map on Health Overhaul - ABC News
A list of states and their uninsured population, grouped according to the progress they have made in establishing health insurance exchanges, a linchpin for expanding coverage under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law.
via abcnews.go.com
The Associated Press: Florida next stop in now-scrambled Republican race
Florida next stop in now-scrambled Republican raceBy STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press – 55 minutes ago
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A suddenly scrambled Republican presidential contest shifts to Florida after Newt Gingrich stopped Mitt Romney's sprint to the GOP nomination with a convincing victory in South Carolina.
The air of inevitability that surrounded Romney's candidacy is gone, at least for now. His rivals, led by Gingrich, have until Florida's Jan. 31 contest to prove South Carolina was no fluke.
Larger, more diverse and more expensive, Florida brings new challenges to Gingrich, who again must overcome financial and organizational disadvantages as he did in South Carolina, whose primary he won Saturday.
"We don't have the kind of money at least one of the candidates has. But we do have ideas. And we do have people," Gingrich, the former House speaker, told cheering supporters after his victory. "And we proved here in South Carolina that people power with the right ideas beats big money. And with your help, we're going to prove it again in Florida."
Romney struck a defiant tone before his own backers gathered at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds, saying: "I will compete in every single state." He wasted no time jabbing at Gingrich, saying: "Our party can't be led to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never led a state."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, third in South Carolina, pledged to compete in Florida and beyond. His presence in the race ensures at least some division among Florida's tea party activists and evangelicals, a division that could ultimately help Romney help erase any questions about his candidacy.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul likely will not be a factor in Florida. He already had said he was bypassing the state in favor of smaller subsequent contests.
As the first Southern primary, South Carolina has been a proving ground for Republican presidential hopefuls in recent years. Since Ronald Reagan in 1980, every Republican contender who won the primary has gone on to capture the party's nomination.
Returns from 95 percent of the state's precincts showed Gingrich with 41 percent of the vote to 27 percent for Romney. Santorum was winning 17 percent, Paul 13 percent.
But political momentum was the real prize with the race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama still in its early stages.
Already, Romney and a group that supports him were on the air in Florida with a significant television ad campaign, more than $7 million combined to date.
Gingrich readily conceded that he trails in money, and even before appearing for his victory speech he tweeted supporters thanking them and appealing for a flood of donations for the Jan 31 primary. "Help me deliver the knockout punch in Florida. Join our Moneybomb and donate now," said his Internet message.
Aides to Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had once dared hope that Florida would seal his nomination — if South Carolina didn't first. But that strategy appeared to vanish along with the once-formidable lead he held in pre-primary polls.
Romney swept into South Carolina as the favorite after being pronounced the winner of the lead-off Iowa caucuses, then cruising to victory in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary.
But in the sometimes-surreal week that followed, he was stripped of his Iowa triumph — GOP officials there now say Santorum narrowly won — while former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman dropped out and endorsed Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry quit and backed Gingrich.
Romney responded awkwardly to questions about releasing his income tax returns, and about his investments in the Cayman Islands. Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, benefited from two well-received debate performances while grappling with allegations by an ex-wife that he had once asked her for an open marriage so he could keep his mistress.
By primary eve, Romney was speculating openly about a lengthy battle for the nomination rather than the quick knockout that had seemed within his grasp only days earlier.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
via google.com
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Upset: Gingrich Win In S.C. Upends GOP Race : NPR
The race for the Republican nomination has taken another surprising turn.
NPR is projecting that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary.
That means each of the three nominating contests held so far has had a different winner. But it's clear that Gingrich has emerged as the most serious threat to the hopes of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.
"Quite honestly, at the beginning of the process, I wouldn't have given Gingrich a chance," says Scott Huffmon, a pollster associated with Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.
"What I underestimated was the anger of the electorate," Huffmon says. "He tapped into that near-perfectly in the last two debates."
Gingrich's Resurrection
The results in South Carolina Saturday represent an amazing comeback for Gingrich. His campaign appeared moribund last June, when the bulk of his campaign staff quit en masse.
He leapt to the top of the polls in November, only to have his support seriously eroded by a volley of attack ads launched by a superPAC supporting Romney.
Gingrich finished a distant fourth in both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. But his pugnacious performances in the two South Carolina debates this week served to energize many South Carolina conservatives.
"We had poll data every night and Romney was ahead every night until Tuesday," says David Woodard of Clemson University, referring to Clemson's Palmetto Poll. "That clearly had to be the debate (Monday)."
Indeed, the AP reports that about half of South Carolina voters surveyed in exit polls on Saturday said the debates played a "major role" in their decision-making.
The standing ovation Gingrich won at the debate on Monday was unprecedented in the memory of most longtime political observers. But he repeated the trick on Thursday, winning over the crowd with his attack on debate moderator John King of CNN for asking him about complaints lodged by one of his ex-wives that he had asked for an open marriage.
Gingrich received another gift on Thursday, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
Anti-Romney Forces
Just a few days ago, it looked as if Romney would easily prevail in South Carolina, raising hopes that he could seal the nomination early.
That didn't happen. It appears that the anti-Romney vote — which has bounced in past months from candidate to candidate or been divided into several small pieces — has coalesced behind Gingrich, the former House speaker.
"One of the things the South Carolina contest has done is produce some unification of the anti-Romney conservatives," says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.
Romney had been able to slough off complaints from Gingrich that, as chief of Bain Capital, he had been responsible for thousands of people losing their jobs.
But Romney's personal finances proved to be a more salient issue. His refusal to release his income tax returns and revelations that millions of his own dollars have been invested offshore have been troubling to some voters, Guth says.
"They raised some doubts and gave a lot of marginal Romney people reason for thinking about some of the other candidates," Guth says. "One way or the other, those things haven't helped."
The Road Ahead
Romney has enjoyed a sizable lead in polls in Florida, which will be the next state to vote on Jan. 31. But that lead — like his advantage in South Carolina — could evaporate quickly. The race has remained remarkably fluid.
Many observers believe that Romney has the organization – and the money – to prevail over the course of what may be a long nomination fight that will quickly spread to many more states.
Romney also plans to push back hard against Gingrich, calling on him to explain his consulting work for mortgage giant Freddie Mac. On Saturday, Romney's campaign sent a cake to Gingrich's South Carolina headquarters to mark the 15th anniversary of the House vote reprimanding Gingrich for ethical violations.
But Gingrich's surge has dashed Romney's hopes for a quick and easy ride to the nomination.
"The main thing South Carolina means is that Romney can't win a base red Republican state," says Woodard, the Clemson political scientist. "If he goes on to win the nomination, you've got to say that South Carolina was just a blip. But the question remains, how well is Romney going to do with the base?"
Those Also Running
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum received some good news late Friday, when the Iowa Republican Party declared him the official winner of GOP caucuses there on Jan. 3. Initial results had shown Romney the leader with an 8-vote margin.
But Santorum hasn't been able to capitalize on the fact that he was able to come from the back of the pack to tie Romney in the year's first contest. He finished fifth in New Hampshire and, despite having won the support of a group of prominent evangelical leaders last weekend.
"Endorsements just don't matter unless they can be backed up with some money," says Woodard, who is a GOP consultant but not working for any of the presidential hopefuls.
There is already speculation that Santorum may drop out of the race if he finishes poorly in South Carolina. But he has vowed to press on.
The fourth remaining candidate, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, showed in both Iowa and New Hampshire that he has attracted a committed core of supporters that is much larger than during his previous run in 2008.
But most Republican observers believe that the same issues that have won Paul many fans — including an almost isolationist approach to foreign policy — put a ceiling on the amount of support he can attract.
via npr.org
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