S.C. a repeat of conservatives' fight

FLORENCE, S.C. -- For conservatives, the tactical dilemma that has governed the Republican presidential race for months is repeating itself in South Carolina with increasing urgency as the opportunities to alter it trickle away.

Will conservatives concentrate their influence or will the splits among social-issue and Tea Party-style fiscal conservatives continue to play into the hands of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney?

From their different perspectives, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have raised those two questions again and again this week, in a chronic distraction from their assaults on President Obama and their own party's front-runner.

After a town hall meeting in a rustic art gallery Tuesday, Mr. Gingrich warned that unless he becomes the magnet for conservative support, the nomination will go to Mr. Romney, a development that he said would lead the GOP to a likely defeat in November.

"If we win Saturday, I think I'll be the nominee," Mr. Gingrich said, while arguing that a vote for either Mr. Santorum or Mr. Perry would be, in effect, a vote to make Mr. Romney the nominee.

Asked to compare his electoral chances with Mr. Santorum's, Mr. Gingrich dismissed his onetime congressional ally. He mentioned, as he does frequently, that Mr. Santorum lost his Senate seat "by the largest margin in Pennsylvania history."

That's not accurate. Mr. Santorum did lose to Sen. Bob Casey in a landslide in 2006, but at least three other Senate candidates in the state have lost by even bigger margins in recent decades. And comparing their experience, Mr. Gingrich also found his rival wanting.

"There is no evidence that he can put together a national majority," the former speaker said, pointing to his own record of presiding over the Republican takeover of the House in 1994.

"If I don't win the primary Saturday, we will probably nominate a moderate, who will probably lose to [Mr.] Obama," Mr. Gingrich told a business group later. "You watched 15 debates. I'll let you decide who is the only Republican you'd like to bet on to beat [Mr.] Obama."

That oft-repeated analysis had drawn an incredulous response late Monday from Mr. Santorum, smiling among reporters in the spin room after a debate in Myrtle Beach.

"Here's a guy who finished behind me in two elections and all of a sudden, a vote for me is a vote for Mitt Romney," Mr. Santorum said in reference to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary earlier this month. "The idea that I'm hurting him … yeah, I'm hurting him. I'm beating him. That's the difference."

After Mr. Gingrich's low showing in Iowa, where Mr. Santorum barely lost to Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum finished just a few votes ahead of the former speaker in New Hampshire. Mr. Santorum sought to diminish his rival's showing there as well, saying that Mr. Gingrich had spent far more money in the Granite State while being aided by a key endorsement from the state's conservative pulpit, the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Mr. Santorum said that "Congressman Gingrich" -- he tends to avoid the grander honorific of "Speaker" in referring to the old colleague -- had done well in the paper's circulation area, but "we kicked his butt everywhere else."

"Yes, I'm hurting him," Mr. Santorum added, "because I'm running a better campaign."

Mr. Perry, the onetime front-runner whose campaign barely registered a pulse in the first two contests, continues to battle in South Carolina. Polls suggest he has little chance of being a threat, but his continued presence adds to the dilution of the more conservative pool of voters.

While he spent part of a brief interview with reporters pressing Mr. Romney to release his income tax records, Mr. Perry also repeated his criticisms of Mr. Santorum's spending votes and defense of earmarks, and -- perhaps innocently, perhaps with calculation -- twice referred to him as "a good Catholic," in a state in which many more voters have a Southern Baptist allegiance.

Polls argue that unless someone or something breaks this conservative impasse, Mr. Romney will win, and easily, in a state that many analysts had viewed, as recently as a few weeks ago, as a conservative bulwark against his march to the nomination.

An average of recent polling compiled by realClearPolitics.com shows him with a double-digit lead over Mr. Gingrich, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Mr. Santorum trailing farther back in a near tie. A Rasmussen survey released Tuesday, the only poll taken since former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's withdrawal, showed Mr. Romney with an even bigger advantage. He had the support of 35 percent of likely Republican voters, far ahead of Mr. Gingrich's 21 percent. Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum were tied at 16 percent in that survey, while Mr. Perry had but 5 percent.

In discussing their primary choices, GOP voters frequently bring up Mr. Gingrich's debating prowess, which sustained and revived a campaign left for dead last summer, as an argument for his electability.

But as Mr. Santorum points out, he is the one who has prevailed so far in the real world of Republican voting. That was reportedly a chief factor over the weekend when a group of influential social conservatives, at a meeting convened in Texas by Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, produced a two-thirds vote in favor of Mr. Santorum.

An analysis of all political ad spending in the state's television markets showed Mr. Gingrich remained a bigger ad target than the front-runner. Kantor Media's analysis found that from Jan. 10 to Jan. 16, ads critical of Mr. Gingrich comprised about 1 in 5 of all commercials aired; about 13 percent of the total targeted Mr. Romney. Another 10 percent were critical of Mr. Santorum, while Mr. Paul and Mr. Perry had been virtually ignored by their rivals.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. James O'Toole is politics editor at the Post-Gazette.

Contact James O'Toole at: jotoole@post-gazette.com, or 412-263-1562.