A final frenzy shaking South Carolina
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - The rowdy Republican presidential race, after it seemed the party's disparate factions were about to unite behind Mitt Romney's steady candidacy, was roiled Thursday by developments that detonated like bombs - just as the South Carolina primary headed into its final hours.
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - The rowdy Republican presidential race, after it seemed the party's disparate factions were about to unite behind Mitt Romney's steady candidacy, was roiled Thursday by developments that detonated like bombs - just as the South Carolina primary headed into its final hours.
The talk revolved around an ex-wife's allegations, Cayman Island tax shelters, and missing ballots in Iowa on perhaps the most chaotic and dramatic day of the Republican campaign so far.
Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, gave ABC News an interview in which she described his asking her for an "open marriage" while conducting an affair with the woman who later became his third wife; a certification of the Iowa caucus results found that Rick Santorum actually got more votes than Romney, who had initially been declared the winner; and Rick Perry abruptly quit the race, endorsing Gingrich on his way out.
Romney, facing sharp questions about the wealth he earned as chief executive of Bain Capital, an investment firm that specialized in corporate buyouts, continued Thursday to ignore calls to release his income-tax returns immediately - even from allies such as Gov. Christie.
All that came before the four remaining candidates met for their last debate before Saturday's voting here.
Gingrich responded with barely controlled anger when CNN moderator John King began the debate by asking the former House speaker to respond to his former wife's allegations.
"I think the destructive, distracting, and vicious nature of the news media makes it harder to govern this country," Gingrich responded. "I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate. . . . This story is false."
Airing such a story two days before a primary "is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine," Gingrich said, adding he was "tired of the elite news media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."
The line drew a standing ovation from the crowd inside the North Charleston Convention Center.
Although Gingrich's complicated marital history was not news, GOP strategists said the ABC interview could threaten his standing with the conservative voters who dominate Republican primaries in South Carolina, as well as with women, who polls suggest are cooler to him than men are.
Minutes after the debate began, Gingrich also made public his tax returns, which showed he paid $994,708 in federal taxes in 2010 on more than $3.1 million in income, about a 31.6 percent rate. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said earlier this week that he paid about 15 percent in federal taxes on income that was primarily from investments.
Romney has also declined to explain why some of his millions were invested in the Cayman Islands.
When he said during Thursday's debate that he would not release tax returns until April - by which point the nomination could be decided - the crowd in the hall booed.
Earlier in the day, Romney, who had been the seeming winner of both of the first two nominating contests, lost his right to claim victory in the first one. Iowa Republican officials, after a process of certifying the results of their Jan. 3 caucuses, announced that Santorum had 34 more votes than Romney. The party did not declare the former Pennsylvania senator the official winner, though, because ballots from a number of precincts had been lost.
Iowa Republican officials had initially said Romney edged Santorum by eight votes.
"In two primaries held now, we've won one," Santorum said Thursday in Mount Pleasant, S.C. "What this win will mean is, it says that we can win elections. We can organize, we can put together an effort to pool the resources together to defeat Mitt Romney. Because guess what. We defeated Mitt Romney. . . . Every one of these primaries, we had polls going into it saying we weren't going to win."
Romney, for his part, called the updated Iowa results a "virtual tie."
Santorum, competing with Gingrich for conservative voters, took an aggressive stance during Thursday night's debate, assailing him over issues from health care and immigration to what he called the former speaker's "grandiosity."
Santorum was derisive when asked to react to comments by Gingrich that Santorum should drop out of the race in deference to him, because Santorum had not shown he could put together a national campaign.
"These are not cogent thoughts. . . . Let's just be honest," Santorum said. "I mean, Newt's a friend, I love him, but at times you've just got that, you know, worrisome moment that something's going to pop, and we can't afford that in a nominee."
Gingrich retorted: "I think grandiose thoughts. This is a grandiose country of big people who do big things."
Hanging over the race was the key question of whether conservatives would be able to unite around Gingrich. The inability of social and tea party conservatives to coalesce around either Gingrich, Santorum, or Perry in South Carolina had given Romney a good chance of winning the state.
There have been signs in recent days that Gingrich is surging, suggesting he was emerging as the biggest conservative threat to Romney.
Perry, the Texas governor, said earlier in the day, in throwing his support to Gingrich, "I believe Newt is a conservative visionary who can transform our country." He added that the former speaker would "rally and captivate the conservative movement."
Alluding to Gingrich's marital difficulties, Perry said that, as a Christian, "I believe in the power of redemption."
Just two days after holding a double-digit lead, Romney found himself neck and neck with Gingrich - and trailing in some surveys. Three out of four polls conducted through Wednesday evening and released Thursday showed Gingrich edging ahead of Romney after a commanding performance in a Monday night debate.
An NBC-Marist poll, for example, found Romney leading 37 percent to 22 percent on Monday evening, before the debate in Myrtle Beach. After that debate sank in, Romney led on Tuesday night by just 5 points, 31 percent to 26 percent.
The fourth remaining candidate, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has a strong base among libertarian-minded voters, has not run as strongly in South Carolina as he has elsewhere.
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Inquirer staff writer Matt Katz contributed to this article, which includes information from McClatchy Newspapers.
