Poll: Romney has tiny lead over Gingrich in South Carolina (Insider Advantage Newt -2)

ATLANTA -- As the GOP races settles into South Carolina, Mitt Romney isn’t enjoying the double-digit lead he held in New Hampshire, according to a survey conducted Wednesday night.

The former Massachusetts governor’s lead is so small in the Palmetto State that he’s essentially tied with Newt Gingrich, according to a poll for the Savannah Morning News and the Augusta Chronicle conducted by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research.

Romney’s 23 percent and Gingrich’s 21 fall within the 3.6 percent margin of error. Rick Santorum, who came in second in the Iowa caucus is in third place in South Carolina with 14 percent, while Ron Paul, the runner up in New Hampshire, is effectively tied with him at 13.

Jon Huntsman has 7, and Rick Perry has 5 while 17 percent are undecided or favor a candidate not offered as a choice in the survey.

The telephone survey questioned 726 registered voters who said they were likely to vote in the South Carolina GOP primary. Voters don’t have to be Republicans to participate in the Jan. 21 balloting, but independents generally make up a small share of the total, according to pollster Matt Towery, president of InsiderAdvantage.

Romney, Gingrich and Paul all do equally well with the independents in the survey. Paul, though, is getting little traction from long-time Republican voters.

“This is not good news for Mitt Romney,” said Towery, who chaired several of Gingrich’s congressional campaigns before becoming a non-partisan pollster. “There is no other way to put it. This means it is a dead-even race. South Carolinians couldn’t care less about New Hampshire or Iowa.”

Romney, on his second try for the nomination, won the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary this month, the first non-incumbent Republican to do so. However, those back-to-back wins don’t seem to be giving him overwhelming momentum this far South.

Gingrich represented the western part of neighboring Georgia for 20 years in Congress and apparently knows how to appeal to southern voters who tend to be more concerned about social issues than those in New Hampshire.

The Jan. 21 GOP primary in South Carolina is regarded as the first meaningful contest because of what the results will signal for the party's chances of defeating President Obama in November. Of course, it's also stoking anticipation because of the legendary ruthlessness of the state's political operatives.

Republicans in South Carolina like to remind people that their primary picks presidents, or at least presidential nominees. Since 1980, when Ronald Reagan won 55 percent of the vote, no candidate has captured the Republican nomination for president without notching a win in South Carolina's GOP primary. In the 2008 election, eventual-nominee John McCain won the South Carolina primary with more than 30 percent of the vote, trailed by Iowa winner Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson. Romney came in fourth in South Carolina with about 15 percent.

This time, the results will be dramatically different, as the state's active Evangelical voting bloc is expected to set aside prejudice in favor of pragmatism. Support among their ranks may signal that they accept Romney, a Mormon, in part for being the candidate largely believed to offer the toughest challenge to President Obama.

Since Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, where Romney steamrolled his rivals with nearly 40 percent of the vote, the candidates have swarmed the Palmetto State. They are stumping at barbecue joints, pharmacies, universities and local government buildings. On Monday, the candidates are scheduled to participate in a debate in Myrtle Beach, hosted by the SCGOP, Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and Twitter.

Some are seeing the Palmetto State as their last chance to justify their candidacy.

I cannot believe Hannity and Rush do not think that this kind of business buy and dump and make tons of money is not important
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Imo, Limbaugh has always had a blind spot on this issue. We all admire Rush because he lived the Amerian Dream— going from nothing to icon— and none of us envy the money he makes. He earned it. He didn’t buy off DC politicians, or use insiders to destroy competitors- or use undue influence to maintain his preeminence.

But, Rush just doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that the DC crowd, the Estblishment, have lived the Dream- and now are pulling up the draw bridge behindd them. McCain, Bush, Romney, et al- and the GOP elite- they’ve made there fortunes- they have power— and all they want to do is keep it. If the rest of us have to live in socialism— they don’t give a damn.

This time, the results will be dramatically different, as the state's active Evangelical voting bloc is expected to set aside prejudice in favor of pragmatism.

I'm glad to see people setting aside prejudice, but the explanations go deeper than pragmatism.

Newt Gingrich has had three wives and was cheating on his previous wife before marrying each of the second two. He has been a professor, a Congressman, and a lobbyist. We've had three years of a professor in the White House, and that's not working well for us. Congressmen have a horrible approval rating right now, and lobbyists are lower than Congressmen. After months of saying that he wouldn't let the media stir up a feeding frenzy among GOP candidates, he's flip-flopped and gone completely negative. Dr. Gingrich is a smart man with some good ideas, but his only experience is in government. Many people are looking for some other perspective to solve problems this time.

Rick Perry has shown that he's not that conservative after all. His big achievement was to be the trans-Texas corridor in spite of the huge waste of money and the eminent domain problems. His Texas DREAM Act does not play well among Republicans in general and particularly in South Carolina. He still hasn't leveled with the voters about his reasoning on the Gardasil issue, and his lie in that debate looks bad. On the pragmatic side, a guy who only gets 1% in New Hampshire isn't likely to beat Obama in November.

Rick Santorum looks pretty good, but in South Carolina, he's just another Yankee. His big government positions on many issues don't sit well with an electorate that is deeply concerned about spending. His 17 point loss in his last election looks bad. I had been inclined to write off some of that margin to the difficulty of running against someone from the Casey family in Pennsylvania. I've recently heard that Rick Santorum has always been somewhat friendly to the PETA and HSUS people. Considering that both are strongly opposed to hunting, getting chummy with them could have hurt him in pro-hunting Pennsylvania. Being PETA-friendly is not good for anyone in the South although I can't see Obama winning any southern states regardless of the GOP nominee.

Jon Huntsman can try to be more westerner than Yankee, but he's a guy who worked for Obama. He can't spend the huge amount of time in South Carolina that he's already spent in New Hampshire. I've seen him in a long format debate, and he's not as bad there as he is in shorter format debates. Even so, he's not going to get a chance to do well in South Carolina.

Ron Paul thinks Iran should have nuclear weapons. South Carolina won't appreciate that position in a candidate.

If Mark Sanford hadn't become involved in an affair, he'd have had a clear path to the nomination through Iowa and South Carolina. He would have done well enough in New Hampshire and might have even won Florida. Only so many people can prepare to have a legitimate run for president, and he was one of them. By his choices, he disqualified himself (although the same choices don't seem to have disqualified Dr. Gingrich).

If George Allen of Virginia had avoided using an ethnic slur in his 2006 Senate race and had held onto that seat against James Webb, he would have been a strong candidate this year and would have almost certainly would have won South Carolina if Mark Sanford weren't in the race. He doesn't have quite as much private sector experience as most of us would like, but he had good qualifications.

The GOP lost the two candidates who would have been the legitimate front-runners in South Carolina. Given what's left, I'm not surprised that South Carolina evangelicals are putting aside anti-Mormon bias and looking again at Mitt Romney.

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