On the cusp of a widely expected victory in New Hampshire, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney fought to repel attacks on his business record on Monday as rivals in the presidential race tried to weaken him before a tighter vote in South Carolina.
Romney was ahead more than 20 points before Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary, even though polls early Monday showed a slight erosion in his lead over his nearest rivals. Libertarian Ron Paul retained the No 2 spot, while former Utah governor and moderate Jon Huntsman and social conservative Rick Santorum made gains.
But much of the focus in the Republican campaign already is on the January 21 primary in South Carolina, a more conservative state where Romney's rivals are planning a barrage of critical ads to try to derail his march to the party's presidential nomination.
A fundraising group supporting former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has said it will release a 27-minute documentary that portrays Romney as a job cutter when he was a venture capitalist in the 1990s. A three-minute trailer for the video was posted on YouTube as Gingrich stepped up his criticism of Romney. In defence of his record, Romney told business leaders in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Monday that the private sector is "far less forgiving" than working in government.
"What you do is harder," Romney said. "And the reason for that is because if you fail, if you year upon year spend more money than you take in, if you lose key customers, if suppliers won't supply you, if you fail, you go out of business." Romney has sought to cast himself as a job creator, someone who can charge up the US economy at a time when the jobless rate, though improving slightly, sits at 8.5 percent. It's a rate that could put Democratic President Barack Obama on shaky ground in this election year.
In a remarkable turnaround in a party known for being friendly to business, Republicans seeking to slow Romney down are sounding more like populists as they bash Romney's work as a venture capitalist. Gingrich and other Republican rivals have dubbed Romney a corporate raider who killed jobs when he worked for Bain Capital, a firm that bought companies and restructured them. The trailer to the anti-Romney documentary, "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," portrays Romney as being part of a band of ruthless businessmen.
"Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider," says the trailer, which like the film was produced by Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich group.
Texas Governor Rick Perry chimed in from South Carolina, where he hopes to revive a flagging campaign that almost ended after a dismal showing in last week's Iowa caucuses. "There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is the way you do business," said Perry. "It is the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and say he feels your pain."
Romney also has a 12-point lead over closest rival Gingrich in Florida three weeks before that state's Republican primary but more than half of likely voters still might change their minds, according to a poll released on Monday. While many analysts suggest that Romney is on the verge of nailing down his nomination, an onslaught of money and attack ads could slow down the former Massachusetts governor, who has failed to capture conservatives in a fractured party.
Even before New Hampshire residents cast a vote, South Carolina is shaping up as the main battleground. In the latest example of how so-called Super PACs, political action committees with no donation limits, are shaping the campaign, Winning Our Future plans to spend $3.4 million on ads in South Carolina, a source familiar with the PAC plans told Reuters on condition of anonymity. After a similar attack on Gingrich by a pro-Romney group helped drive down Gingrich's support before the Iowa caucuses, it's certain that Romney will be the main target of Winning Our Future's ads.
Romney weathered well a bruising debate on Sunday in which his opponents criticized his ability to defeat Obama in November and represent Republicans' conservative core. In two New Hampshire debates over the weekend, Gingrich hit Romney with allegations that Bain destroyed companies and fired workers, erroneously crediting a story in The New York Times. The story, "Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet," actually was published by Reuters. While a major fight awaits in South Carolina, New Hampshire's primary has long played an outsized role in the presidential nominating process.