Poll: Romney holds double-digit lead, looks poised for easy SC win (Pre-debate Monmouth U of SC)

The Hill ^ | January 17, 2012 | Justin Sink

[C19fan]

A new Monmouth University poll of South Carolina voters shows Republican front-runner Mitt Romney maintaining a double-digit lead over the remainder of the GOP field, further increasing the likelihood of the Massachusetts governor winning the South Carolina primary and Republican nomination.

Romney earned 33 percent support of likely Republican voters, 11 percent higher than Newt Gingrich, whose 22 percent of support was good enough for second. Rick Santorum, whom Romney was able to narrowly edge in the Iowa caucuses, is earning 14 percent of voters, locking him into a struggle for third place with Ron Paul. The Texas congressman was earning 12 percent of those polled.

[uncbob]

After the last debate I wonder how Romney feels about the upcoming one on CNN

[fortheDeclaration]

It won't matter about the Caucus, the story has already been written.

SC is gone, Romney has it.

Conservatives are going to be left wondering what happened once again.

Clearly the elites learned from losing to Reagan, never let one conservative run, dilute the field among libertarians, social Conservatives and fiscal Conservatives, win two primaries and declare it over.

[Proudcongal]

This was probably Newt’s best debate and we know what happened before when he debated so well, he surged to outerspace, so no reason to think he won’t this time. If Newt can win SC, Florida is definitely going to be in play. It will be war and no doubt Mitt’s PACs will do whatever it takes to win. I thought Romney did just o.k. in the debate last night, but at first he was very pansy-like, flapping his hands, trying to explain away his Bain record and releasing his tax returns. Santorum did well in the beginning when he called Romney out on the prisoner voting rights issue, but he was uninspiring the remainder of the debate.

[Jeff Head]

Problem Santorum had with the Felon vote thing is that the PAC ad was essentially correct. Santorum used the term, “felons voting while in jail.” I have seen the ad, and it does not say that. It is a tag on to the end of an ad that indicates that Santorum voted to raise the debt limit several times (which he did), and at the end it says, “He also was in favor of allowing convicted felons to vote.”

In 2002, Santorum did exactly that, voting in favor of an amendment introduced by Harry Reid that would give felons the right to vote once they served their sentence and any probabtion. He was one of only three republicans to vote for it back then.

Romney indicated that he believed that violent felons should not get the right to vote back, and most agree with that...Santorum used terminonlogy indicating that such convictions hit blacks in particular and he thought they should be able to vote. I did not like Sanotrum’s logic, and I did not like the fact that he said Romney lied when he didn’t...what the ad said was true.

Santorum should not have made an issue of that ad. It was small in relation to things. He should have ignored that and gone after Mitt on other issues, particularly his flip-flopping on the 2nd amendment, abortion, and on his passage of Romney Care in Mass.

Anyhow, that, and his performance thereafter made me feel he did not have a good night at all (Santorum).