John McCain says N.H. in bag for Mitt Romney, S.C. will be key
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – Is the New Hampshire primary already in the bag for Mitt Romney?
Senator John McCain seems to believe it is.
Pointing to Romney’s wide lead in New Hampshire polls, the Arizona senator said today that South Carolina – not the Granite State – could swing the Republican presidential primary in Romney’s favor.
“He’s going to win in New Hampshire,’’ McCain told several hundred voters at a rally with Romney and Governor Nikki Haley in Myrtle Beach. “It’s going to come down, my friends, as it always does, to South Carolina. …If Mitt Romney wins here, he will be the next president of the United States. South Carolina, it’s up to you.’’
The socially conservative state is shaping up to be a major test for Romney because his rivals all believe the state’s Jan. 21 primary could be their best and, perhaps, last chance to stop him from barreling on to the nomination.
The airwaves here are quickly filling with their ads, some of them sharper in tone than the ones that aired in Iowa.
Newt Gingrich, who is looking to rebound in South Carolina after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Iowa, launched a television ad in South Carolina yesterday that touts his “bold’’ jobs plan and blasts Romney’s “timid’’ plan, saying “parts of it are virtually identical to Obama’s failed policy.’’
Restore our Future, a pro-Romney Super PAC, is running a full-page newspaper ad in South Carolina on Monday that attacks Gingrich, saying the former speaker and Obama “have so much in common’’ because, the ad charges, both support “redistributing wealth,’’ and “amnesty for illegal immigrants.’’
Rick Perry, who is hoping to revive his candidacy in South Carolina, today launched a softer TV spot in the state that highlights his service in the Air Force and his humble roots as the son of a tenant farmer.
Romney’s rally at the Peanut Factory, a faded wooden warehouse turned wedding-and-event space, was his second in as many days in South Carolina. Yesterday, he rallied with Haley and McCain in Charleston.
Hoping to woo the state’s conservatives, Romney today stepped up his attacks on the intervention of the National Labor Relations Board in a contract dispute at a Boeing plant in North Charleston.
Bashing the board, as well as the Obama administration’s controversial investments in Solyndra and other green-energy companies, Romney accused the president of engaging in “crony capitalism.’’
Sarah Palin has helped popularize that phrase, giving it currency in the Tea Party movement as a way to describe the close ties between business and government.
Romney used it three times in his rally today.
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