Republicans point toward 1st of 2 SC debates

Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Newt Gin­grich, lis­tens to speak­ers at the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. cel­e­bra­tion break­fast Mon­day, Jan. 16, at the Canal Street Recre­ation Cen­ter in Myr­tle Beach. (AP Photo/The Sun News, Steve Jessmore)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) — The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­tenders on Mon­day cam­paigned their way into the first of two debates before a piv­otal week­end pri­mary in South Car­olina, with Mitt Rom­ney savor­ing an endorse­ment from the lat­est cam­paign dropout and his pur­suers strug­gling to emerge as the race’s prin­ci­pal conservative.

Hours before the debate, for­mer Utah Gov. Jon Hunts­man with­drew from the race and announced his sup­port for Rom­ney despite their dif­fer­ences. He appealed to all remain­ing con­tenders to stop attack­ing one another.

There appeared lit­tle like­li­hood of that hap­pen­ing, either in the TV com­mer­cials, mail and other adver­tis­ing blan­ket­ing the state ahead of Saturday’s vote or, pos­si­bly, on the debate stage itself.

Rom­ney wasn’t present for Huntsman’s endorse­ment, and Newt Gin­grich, Rick San­to­rum, Rick Perry and Ron Paul all but ignored it as they sought to slow the front-runner’s momen­tum in the race to pick a Repub­li­can rival to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama this fall.

Rom­ney has vic­to­ries in the only two con­tests of the cam­paign thus far, the Iowa cau­cuses and New Hamp­shire pri­mary ear­lier this month. Gin­grich has con­ceded that the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor will likely be the party’s nom­i­nee if he is sim­i­larly vic­to­ri­ous in South Car­olina, an asser­tion that none of the oth­ers in the race has so far contested.

That raised the sig­nif­i­cance of the night’s debate, as well as another one sched­uled for Thurs­day in Charleston.

Rom­ney is the leader in the pub­lic opin­ion polls in South Car­olina, although his rivals hope the state’s high, 9.9 per­cent unem­ploy­ment rate and the pres­ence of large num­bers of socially con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers will allow one of them to slip by him.

Hunts­man was the sec­ond cam­paign dropout to endorse Rom­ney, after for­mer Min­nesota Gov. Tom Paw­lenty. Min­nesota Rep. Michele Bach­mann, who quit after a last-place fin­ish in Iowa, has not yet said which of the remain­ing con­tenders she sup­ports. Her­man Cain, who left the race in Decem­ber after fac­ing alle­ga­tions of sex­ual impro­pri­ety, has promised an endorse­ment soon.

Huntsman’s part­ing announce­ment included a ref­er­ence to the dif­fer­ences he and Rom­ney had. But he left the podium with­out respond­ing to ques­tions about his remark last week, in the run-up to the New Hamp­shire pri­mary, that Rom­ney was une­lec­table and out of touch.

It was unclear why Rom­ney did not attend the announce­ment. He was in town for a later cam­paign appear­ance and then the debate.

Gin­grich and Perry both began their day at a Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day obser­vance, where they praised the legacy of the slain civil right legacy.

At about the same time, San­to­rum was com­plain­ing that attacks launched against him by a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee sup­port­ing Rom­ney was spread­ing lies. He called on Rom­ney to ask the group to edit or remove its ads from the air.

The attack on San­to­rum is pat­terned after one that helped send Gin­grich into a nose­dive in the polls in the final weeks of the Iowa cau­cus campaign.

Gin­grich made sim­i­lar demands on Rom­ney to rein in his sup­port­ers, but was ignored.

Paul, who gen­er­ally keeps a light cam­paign sched­ule, addressed the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion forum in the after­noon. The Texas con­gress­man cast his lib­er­tar­ian mes­sage in reli­gious terms, not­ing the Bible speaks up for pri­vate prop­erty own­er­ship and sound currency.

Posted by AP News on Jan 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.