Texas congressman Ron Paul, a Republican Party presidential hopeful, appears on ABC News' This Week, February 5

Texas congressman Ron Paul, a long shot candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, told ABC News’ This Week on Sunday that his campaign was changing the political landscape.

Citing high turnout at campaign events, especially from young people, Paul said an “intellectual revolution is going on and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That’s where I’m very optimistic.”

The septuagenarian congressman, who has announced that he will not stand for reelection in Texas, captured more than 20 percent of the vote in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire last month. In both elections, Paul won half the youth vote and in the latter, a third of self declared independents.

Among first time voters, too, Paul’s limited government and antiwar rhetoric resonated although it remains anathema to many social conservatives and defense hawks who reject the Texan’s candidacy as having no bearing on their party’s future.

Paul on Sunday begged to differ. “There’s a lot of people talking about free market economics rather than Keynesian welfarism and interventionism,” he said.

There is an intellectual revolution going on with the young people. There are people who have sat on the sidelines for years.

He observed that many Republican primary voters remain unsatisfied with the current field of presidential hopefuls. “I don’t see a lot of difference among our other candidates or between the two parties,” he said. “It’s all big government spending. Nobody wants to cut anything. Nobody wants to stop the wars.”

Where other candidates have proposed cuts in projected spending increases, Paul would eliminate $1 trillion in spending from the actual budget. Even such a huge reduction in spending wouldn’t balance the budget however. The federal deficit this fiscal year is expected to reach $1.1 trillion which is down from nearly $1.6 trillion last year.

Paul didn’t do as well as expected in Nevada’s caucuses over the weekend but hopes to rebound in Colorado and Maine this week. Republican voters there tend to be more libertarian.

Even if he doesn’t win in any of the states outright, the congressman will pick up delegates that he can take to the nominating convention in August to try to influence the party platform if not the nominee. If neither of his fellow contenders manages to gather a majority of delegates before the convention, Paul’s could cast the deciding vote.

Mitt Romney's campaign bus departs Florida, February 2

The Republican Party’s presidential primary race moves west over the next several days. After cementing his frontrunner status in southeastern Florida on Wednesday, Mitt Romney is expected to do well in Saturday’s caucuses in Nevada but the likely outcome in Colorado and Minnesota is less clear.

Romney, a Mormon, will likely appeal to fellow members of his church in Nevada who make up some 20 percent of the Republican electorate there.

When he last ran for the presidential nomination in 2008, Romney won the state’s caucuses easily. Newt Gingrich, however, polled at 25 percent in late January and both Ron Paul and Rick Santorum hope to do well in the Silver State. They hardly competed in Florida, where it was winner takes all, in order to focus on Nevada where delegates are allocated proportionately.

Twenty-eight delegates are at stake in the state that’s best known for its gambling industry in the cities of Las Vegas and Reno. Barack Obama carried Nevada in 2008 but only won the urban districts. The rest of the state is sparsely populated but very conservative if not libertarian.

Paul, whose campaign is staffed by supporters who are very enthusiastic about their cause, may do surprisingly well in Nevada, especially as the statewide Republican Party was thrown in disarray by a miserable 2010 midterm Senate race when Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle failed to beat the Democratic incumbent despite preelection poll numbers that suggested a Republican win.

The septuagenarian congressman from Texas could also exceed expectations in Colorado on February 7. A swing state like Nevada, Colorado’s rural areas trend Republican. Paul’s message of limited government and a noninterventionist foreign policy should resonate there. The president’s approval rating is just 40 percent across Colorado which is down from 52 percent in 2009, an above average drop in support according to Gallup.

The Nevada and Colorado caucuses are closed to registered Republicans which is a disadvantage to Paul who appeals to dissatisfied independent voters. Minnesota’s caucuses, which will also be on February 7, are open to non-Republicans but according to January polls, Gingrich enjoys an almost 20 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney in the Midwestern state.

Between them, Colorado and Minnesota wield seventy-six delegates and they are awarded proportionately. Even if Romney wins, the other three candidates could accumulate delegates for the national convention in Tampa, Florida in August. Gingrich and Paul have both vowed to stay in the race to the very end which raises the prospect of a brokered convention. If none of the presidential hopefuls manages to secure a majority of delegates before the convention, they could be unbound after several unsuccessful ballots and vote for a candidate who didn’t even participate in the primary contests.

There will also be an election in Missouri on February 7 but the outcome is officially meaningless. The state’s fifty-two delegates won’t be selected until March 17 when the state caucuses. Almost half of them will be awarded proportionately.

Mitt Romney is expected to carry most if not all of the states that vote in February. Newt Gingrich should have an opportunity to rebound in early March when, on Super Tuesday, ten states vote at once. Among them, the former House speaker’s home state of Georgia as well as Oklahoma and Tennessee, states in the Upper South that are solidly Republican and home to millions of evangelical Christians who wonder whether Romney really is socially conservative.

Obama is hugely unpopular in Oklahoma and Tennessee. His approval rating hovers around 30 and 37 percent in these states respectively. A majority of voters there will almost certainly support the Republican candidate in November’s election and may be tempted now to nominate the man who presents himself as a true conservative compared to the “Massachusetts moderate” which is how Gingrich likes to characterize his rival.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney campaigns for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in Cape Canaveral, Florida, January 28 (Renate Tonstad Flaten)

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney cruised to victory in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday, beating his foremost rival for the nomination, Newt Gingrich, by an almost 15 percentage point margin according to early election results.

Romney, who is considered the frontunner, needed a win in the Sunshine State to rebound after Gingrich came out the winner in South Carolina’s conservative primary more than a week ago.

The former House speaker was up in preelection polls in Florida last week and still leads in the nationwide surveys but a number of grueling television advertisements run by the Romney campaign after a disappointing performance by their opponent in the last debate before the primary may have doomed his chances of staging another insurgent win the South.

Unlike was the case in the earlier primary contest, all of Florida’s fifty delegates to the nominating convention in August are awarded to the statewide winner. There, they will be bound to the candidate for three rounds of voting.

Gingrich has vowed to stay in the race whatever his performance in the upcoming votes, raising the possibility of a brokered convention in which none of the contenders has amassed a majority of delegates necessary to claim the nomination before August.

There will be caucuses in Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota next week. The Missouri primary is set for February 7 while Arizona and Michigan vote February 28. With the exception of Arizona, these states are all considered less conservative and favorable to Romney.

Gingrich would have a chance to rebound on March 6, Super Tuesday, when ten states vote at once. Among them, Gingrich’s home state of Georgia as well as Oklahoma and Tennessee, states in the Upper South that are solidly Republican and home to millions of evangelical Christians.

Texas congressman Ron Paul hopes to do well in Nevada and Colorado where right wing voters are more libertarian. He, too, could remain competitive in states that award their delegates on a proportional basis although his support rarely exceeds 20 percent.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican Party presidential hopeful, appears on ABC News' This Week, January 29

Appearing on three of the American Sunday morning talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich vehemently criticized his foremost contender for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, accusing his rival of saying things that are “factually false” and tearing down “whoever he’s running against.”

Despite a blistering array of negative television advertisements against him, Gingrich said he was still confident of victory in Florida which votes to elect a candidate on Tuesday.

“I think it’s highly likely that we’re going to win Florida,” he told CBS News’ Face the Nation, “because I think when people understand how many different times [Romney] said things that aren’t true, his credibility is going to just frankly just collapse.”

Polls have been extremely volatile in the Sunshine State over the past couple of weeks. Gingrich enjoyed a solid lead over Romney after his South Carolina win last week but the Romney campaign’s attacks appear to have an effect. Gingrich admitted as much on ABC News’ This Week where he pointed out that it was only in the areas where “Romney carpet bombs with Wall Street money” to run television commercials against him that his popularity eroded.

“The conservatives clearly are rejecting Romney,” he said on the same program. The former Massachusetts governor may take all of Florida’s fifty delegates next week but many of the caucuses and primaries that are next in line elect delegates on a proportional basis, raising the possibility of neither candidate securing a majority before the nominating convention in August.

“He’s not going to be anywhere near a majority by April,” Gingrich predicted, by which point thirty-two states will have caucused or voted in a primary. “This is going to go on all the way to the convention.”

Gingrich has characterized Romney as a “timid Massachusetts moderate” and called him a “liberal” this weekend. As a northeastern governor, Romney enacted a health care reform measure that was very similar to the Democrats’ 2010 reform effort. he also changed his views on abortion.

Establishment conservatives have questioned Gingrich’s own conservative credentials however, pointing out that Gingrich, too, supported an individual mandate in health care before conservatives were against it. As recently as last summer, he rejected plans to privatize federal health support for retirees as “right wing social engineering.”

On This Week, Gingrich tried to convince voters that at least he was more conservative than Romney.

My hope is that gradually conservatives will come together and decide that a Newt Gingrich conservatism is dramatically better than Mitt Romney’s liberalism.

On Fox News Sunday, he reached out to likely Rick Santorum voters. “Romney beats me as long as we split the conservative vote,” he said. If the former Pennsylvania senator, who would gather 12 to 15 percent of the vote in Florida, drop outs, Gingrich hopes to stage another victory in the South.

Santorum has shown no intention of leaving the race. Instead, on ABC News last week, he described Gingrich as an “erratic conservative” and a “very high risk candidate” who could dash Republican hopes of winning back the White House.

NBC News’ political director Chuck Todd wondered on Meet the Press whether Gingrich indeed stood to gain from a Santorum exit. “They’ve made Gingrich so unelectable to some conservatives,” he said about the Romney team, “that if you get rid of the Santorum vote and factor in the second choice” in an NBC/Marist poll that was released on Sunday, “Romney’s lead actually grows by a point. So this idea that somehow conservatives are splitting the vote—not anymore.”

Texas congressman Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum debate Latin American policy during a Republican Party presidential debate in Jacksonville, Florida, January 26 (CNN)

Rick Santorum, a Republican Party presidential contender, accused Barack Obama of pursuing “a consistent policy of siding with the leftists, siding with the Marxists” in Latin America.

The former Pennsylvania senator, who appears to have little chance of securing the Republican nomination to challenge the incumbent in November’s election, participated in a televised debate sponsored by CNN in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday night. Conservatives in the southeastern state vote in a primary on Tuesday to elect a presidential candidate.

Santorum referenced Colombia in particular which “is out there on the frontlines working with us against the narco-terrorists, standing up to Chávez in South America and what did we do?” he asked.

For domestic political purposes, the president of the United States sided with organized labor and the environmental groups and held Colombia out to dry for three years.

Colombia successfully crushed the drug and FARC insurgency with military and financial support from the United States.

A free trade agreement between the two countries, which the government in Bogotá ratified in 2007, was held up for nearly three years by the Obama Administration over union concerns about the safety of labor leaders in Latin America—even if the murder rate among union members has steeply declined in recent years. A unionized laborer in Colombia today is one sixth as likely to be a victim of homicide as a fellow citizen who does not belong to a trade union.

Colombia accounts for just 1 percent of America’s trade volume but 40 percent of Colombian exports are to the United States. A third of the products it imports are American.

The country sells mainly coal, coffee, cut flowers and petroleum. As the security situation has stabilized, the Colombian economy is performing strongly. 4.3 percent growth is expected this year.

Despite a long standing economic and military relationship with the United States, Colombia’s second largest trading partner is neighboring Venezuela where the president, Hugo Chávez, works to build an anti-American league in the region.

Bogotá suspects Venezuela of supporting the left wing revolutionaries of the FARC but seeks to normalize relations with the Chávez regime nonetheless. Conservatives in the United States blame President Obama’s three years of inaction on the Colombian free trade agreement for this apparent alienation. “We cannot do that to our friends in South America,” was how Santorum put it Thursday night.

He also rejected calls to normalize relations with Cuba which he described as “the heart of the cancer that is in Central and South America.” He alleged that the president intended to reward a behavior of thuggery. “This is the exact wrong message at the exact wrong time.”

Texas congressman Ron Paul, who advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy, challenged Santorum’s call for a more activist American presence across the Western Hemisphere. “You’re talking about force,” he said. “The Cold War is over. They’re not going to invade us.”

I don’t think the nations in South America and Central America necessarily want us to come down there and dictate what government they should have.

Rather he championed freer trade before pointing out that economic sanctions, well intended as he said they may be, “almost inevitably backfire and help the dictators and hurt the people.”

During the Cold War, the United States regularly intervened in the political affairs of Latin American nations to prevent leftist regimes from coming to power there. Santorum said he didn’t necessarily favor military intervention but suggested that an economic union should be erected across the Americas.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House speaker Newt Gingrich participate in a Republican Party presidential debate hosted by NBC News in Tampa, Florida, January 23 (Reuters/Brian Snyder)

The Republican Party’s presidential hopefuls gather in Tampa, Florida tonight for a debate that is broadcast by NBC News. The first of two debates in the southeasternmost of the United States could prove decisive for either Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, the only two of the four candidates who stand a chance of winning there according to preelection polls.

In Florida, coming in first will matter because all of the state’s fifty delegates, who will elect the party’s presidential candidate at the convention in August, are awarded to the statewide winner. In the first three primary states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, delegates were awarded on a proportional basis although in the latter, eleven of the state’s twenty-five delegates were committed to the winner, former House speaker Gingrich, on top of the twelve for each of the districts he won.

Gingrich was expected to do well in South Carolina where voters were especially wary of the more moderate Mitt Romney. His impressive 12 percentage point lead over the presumptive nominee has given him a much needed boost in momentum that he appears to be carrying into Florida where his poll numbers are improving.

Unlike Romney, Gingrich doesn’t have a large campaign apparatus yet nor the financial resources that he needs to compete with his television commercials. In most of Florida, Republicans also tend to be more centrist so the race could be close.

Running to the right of both is former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. He is the most socially conservative candidate in the race so he could do well in the more evangelical northeast of Florida. His appeal to “working class values” and plan to eliminate corporate taxes on manufacturing industries could also endear him to blue collar voters although the priority of the conservative base is denying Romney the nomination. Santorum, who won 17 percent of the vote in South Carolina, may not be considered viable as a national candidate even if Gingrich isn’t popular with independents and conservative Democrats either.

Texas congressman Ron Paul came in fourth in South Carolina but managed to capture more than 20 percent of the vote in both Iowa and Hampshire. He may not do well in the Deep South but could pose a real threat to the other contenders in the Mountain West where conservative voters tend to be more libertarian.

There’s little chance of Paul winning the nomination but his supporters are probably the most activist and enthusiastic among Republican primary voters. They will continue to organize for him, especially in caucus states where they can make their case for smaller government and a noninterventionist foreign policy directly to the voters before they select their favorite.

If neither Gingrich or Romney accumulates enough delegates in the primaries to win a majority at the convention, Paul’s could prove the deciding factor. The former appears to anticipate the scenario when, like Paul, he calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve in recent speeches and “sound money,” that is, a currency backed by gold.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican Party presidential hopeful, appears on NBC's Meet the Press, January 22

Newt Gingrich’s huge win in the Republican primary election in South Carolina on Saturday may have had less to do with the former House speaker’s popularity and everything to do with conservatives’ resentment of their presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

On CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Gingrich suggested that Romney lost votes in South Carolina when “people began to realize that he’d been pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-tax increase” as a governor in the northeastern state of Massachusetts between 2003 and 2007.

Romney has defended his record by pointing out that he had to work with a Democratic legislature in Massachusetts and claimed that he changed his position on abortion when he was confronted with the issue of stem cell research. As a result, he was nevertheless “way to the left of South Carolinians,” as Gingrich put it.

It’s not just that Romney is perceived as a moderate; he has failed to enthuse Republican activists for an election that many of them regard as historic. As former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour put it on Face the Nation, “Romney’s strengths are more managerial.” Gingrich, by contrast, is able to rally people with his ability to clearly and concisely articulate conservative beliefs and positions.

Gingrich described himself as a “populist conservative” on NBC’ Meet the Press and said that what “nobody in Washington or New York gets is the level of anger at the national establishment. People who are just sick and tired of being told what they’re allowed to think, what they’re allowed to say.”

This reiterated the argument that Gingrich made in his victory speech in South Carolina on Saturday night where he suggested that “the elites in Washington and New York have no understanding, no care, no concern” for ordinary Americans.

The American people feel that they have elites that been trying for a half century to force us to quit being American.

This sort of rhetoric tends to resonate with right wing voters who resent what they perceive as government overreach and an Obama Administration that Gingrich said last night has been a “disaster.”

It’s why conservative RedState blogger Erick Erickson observed that people were flocking to Gingrich not so much because they liked him but because they were “looking for a vessel to channel their anger with Obama and their complete disappointment with the GOP establishment which is now embodied perfectly by Romney.”

Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC morning show host, insisted that Gingrich wasn’t even a conservative. “He uses this resentment to actually hide a record,” he said on Meet the Press; a record that is far from reactionary and fairly similar to Mitt Romney’s. Both previously supported an individual health insurance mandate and both previously supported emission trade legislation. Neither is particularly popular with the conservative base anymore.

The Republican establishment in Washington gave us $5 trillion of debt during the Bush era. They took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion deficit. They engaged in radical foreign policy, Wilsonian foreign policy. George Bush promising to end tyranny across the globe. The conservative moment is saying “no,” stop.

“Gingrich is not going to be our final choice,” Scarborough predicted. “But we’re not handing this off to Mitt Romney right now.”

Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe, MSNBC, January 20

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s win in the early primary state of South Carolina on Saturday raises the prospect of a protracted primary battle, even a brokered Republican Party convention in August by which time none of the four candidates in the race may have secured enough delegates to win a majority on the first ballot.

Right wing blogger Erick Erickson raised the possibility of a brokered convention at RedState in December of last year, opining that none of the party’s contenders were “proving to be of a caliber of conservative leader we should be putting on the field to take on the socialist in the White House.”

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is widely perceived as the frontrunner and likely nominee. Compared to Newt Gingrich, who is his closest rival for the nomination, Romney, according to recent polls, would stand a better chance of beating Barack Obama in the general election. But there’s a fear, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out in National Review, that a Romney candidacy may not draw out rank and file Republicans in large enough numbers to make the November election a referendum on President Obama.

Every four years, pundits and activists talk about how cool it would be to have a brokered convention. This is the first time I can remember where people say it may be necessary.

Former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC morning show host, agreed on Friday when he said that “Newt is the vessel that people like Sarah Palin and others who want a brokered convention are riding right now. They want to keep this going.”

He predicted that if Gingrich gathered enough momentum to position himself as the presumptive nominee, prominent Republicans, like former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, would throw their support behind another candidate, presumably Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania who is the most socially conservative candidate among the four still running.

Texas congressman Ron Paul is another factor to be reckoned with. He won roughly 20 percent of the vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Although he may not do well in the Deep South, he could pose a real threat to whoever is the frontrunner in the Mountain West where conservative voters tend to be more libertarian.

Paul doesn’t seem to anticipate a third party run but he has a very committed base of supporters who may carry him onto the convention to try to influence the party platform. His delegates could tip the voting balance in favor of either Gingrich, Romney or a candidate who hasn’t participated in the primaries but emerges as a contender at the convention.

A recent change in party rules makes a brokered convention this year likelier than before. Unlike was the case in most previous primary races, delegates are now often elected on proportional bases instead of winner takes all. Florida, which votes January 31 and has fifty delegates up for grabs, is a notable exception but even they will only be bound for three ballots at the convention.

Before Super Tuesday in early March, when ten different states vote at once, among them Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, just 15 percent of delegates will have been selected. The Super Tuesday votes combined pick nearly 25 percent of delegates. Large states like Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, New York and California will organize primaries between the end of March and early June. Each have huge numbers of delegates at stake which could prove decisive if Gingrich, Paul, Romney and Santorum all stay in the race beyond Super Tuesday.

If, by the time the party convenes in Tampa, Florida on August 27, there isn’t a candidate yet, there will be as many rounds of voting as is necessary to get a majority and elect a nominee. Depending on the number of ballots for which delegates are bound, a person who didn’t participate in the primaries could be nominated if, for instance, Romney’s delegates won’t vote for Gingrich or vice versa.

Contenders may include Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels, the Republican governors of New Jersey and Indiana, who are both popular with conservative activists and heralded as reform minded chief executives who aren’t afraid to challenge vested interests and cut spending. They ruled out presidential runs last year and Christie recently endorsed Mitt Romney. If, more than six months from now, their party has still failed to find a nominee, could they be persuaded to run after all?

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich campaigns for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in Des Moines, Iowa, December 30, 2011 (Are Tågvold Flaten)

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich staged a political comeback in South Carolina’s presidential primary election on Saturday. In the state that has selected the Republican nominee in every race since 1980, Gingrich appears to have beaten the frontrunner Mitt Romney to victory.

Gingrich surged in South Carolina after Romney won the first primary in New Hampshire two weeks ago with a 40 percent share of the vote. The former Massachusetts governor has largely failed to enthuse right wing voters although he may stand the best chance of beating the incumbent, President Barack Oama, in a general election.

South Carolina is considered more conservative than New Hampshire although voters who are registered as independent were able to participate in both primaries.

Days ahead of the vote, Gingrich won the endorsement of Texas governor Rick Perry who ended his campaign after coming in fifth in Iowa in early January and sixth in New Hampshire. Former ambassador Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race despite finishing third in New Hampshire, endorsed Romney, if reluctantly.

Perry’s departure leaves Rick Santorum the only other rival for the social conservative vote. Despite intense scrutiny of Gingrich’s marital past in recent days, which shouldn’t appeal to evangelical voters, Santorum failed to capitalize on his strong showing in Iowa and barely managed to beat Congressman Ron Paul of Texas for third place.

Paul is unlikely to win the nomination because of his libertarian and noninterventionist policy positions but could stay in the race to gather enough delegates to influence the party platform at the national convention in August when Republicans formally nominate their presidential candidate.

Santorum, who lacks the resources and organization that Romney has as well as the momentum that now befalls Gingrich, could struggle to compete in Florida and Nevada which are the next primary states. Gingrich doesn’t have a significant presence in these states either but he has now positioned himself as the most viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

Impressive debate performances have helped Gingrich surge to the top of the field but his rhetoric is also a weakness. The former House speaker, who led Republicans to their first congressional majority in more than forty years in 1994, has a tendency to inflate his personal role in historical events.

In an interview with Fox News last month, Gingrich said that not only had he helped President Ronald Reagan “develop supply side economics” during the 1980s; “I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress,” he claimed. A dubious assertion for a legislator who had little to do with foreign policy and defense.

Although he has been in politics for decades and made a fortunate as a commentator and lobbyist after he was forced to resign as speaker in 1999, Gingrich told Radio Iowa in December that he was “the most experienced outsider in modern terms” and willing to “challenge the establishment” without regard to “Republican or Democratic political correctness.”

To the extent that he’s challenged Republican policy, it has not been very popular. In May of last year, he denounced his party’s plans to privatize public health care support for seniors as “right wing social engineering” and “radical change”—even as his own Medicare reform plan calls for optional premium support too. Indeed, the only difference between congressional Republicans’ and Gingrich’s plans is that the latter would keep Medicare intact for people who chose to be on it while both aim to enhance competition among private insurers.

Whether Gingrich manages to carry his momentum into Florida remains to be seen. Romney currently enjoys a 20 percentage point lead in the polls there. If Santorum were to drop out though, that could be a boost to Gingrich’s campaign. Florida will award all of its fifty delegates to whoever wins the primary in the Sunshine State.

Twenty-five delegates are at stake in South Carolina where it will take 1,144 votes to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida in August.

Eleven of South Carolina’s delegates are awarded to the statewide winner. Each of the state’s seven congressional districts has two delegates to allocate proportionately. Romney and Gingrich could split those remaining fourteen votes. Exact results are pending.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney participates in a Republican Party presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, June 13, 2011 (Reuters)

Republican Party presidential contenders Mitt Romney and New Gingrich sharply criticized President Barack Obama on Thursday for what they believe has been a failed economic policy. During a CNN debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Romney, who is considered the frontrunner for the nomination, said, “This president is the biggest impediment to job growth in this country.”

The televised debate came a day after Texas governor Rick Perry ended his presidential campaign and endorsed former House speaker New Gingrich for the nomination. Gingrich, he said, is a “conservative visionary” who could beat Barack Obama in the general election.

To the right of Romney, Gingrich’s remaining opponent, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, polls between 10 and 15 percent in the early primary state of South Carolina whereas the former speaker has overtaken Romney in the most recent polls for a win.

Romney did emerge the victor from New Hampshire two weeks ago and rivaled Santorum for a first place finish in Iowa in early January. He has largely refrained from attacking his opponents in the nomination contest and reserved his strongest criticism for the incumbent president whom he accused of engaging in “crony capitalism” Thursday night. The former governor of Massachusetts champions lower taxes and less regulation instead of an activist industrial policy where the government picks winners and losers. “We have to open up markets,” he added. “And we have to crack down on China when they cheat.”

Despite his sensible, supply side economic program, Romney has struck a populist chord with his rhetoric on China. During a previous debate, he said, “They simply cannot continue stealing our jobs” and vowed to raise tariffs on Chinese imports unless the country reversed its monetary policy which aims to keep the value of the renminbi low and Chinese products cheap.

Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas who advocates smaller government and a noninterventionist foreign policy, was the only candidate on stage to point out that outsourcing manufacturing to China profits Americans in the form of cheaper products. “So we shouldn’t be frightened about trade or sending money on,” he suggested.

Gingrich and Romney cited another potential for job growth—domestic oil and gas production. According to Gingrich, “there’s $29 billion plus of natural gas offshore” in South Carolinian waters alone. Romney criticized the president’s decision not to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline which would carry oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada to the Gulf coast port of Houston.

Labor unions and Republicans both support the pipeline because it would provide temporary employment to thousands of American construction workers. The president says he hasn’t had ample time to study the environmental impact of building the pipeline although a permit for construction was filed as early as September 2008.

“While the price of gasoline has doubled, he said ‘no’ to the Keystone pipeline,” lamented Romney. “That’s the problem in America. Not the attacks they make on people who’ve been successful.”

Romney, a millionaire many times over, has seen his career as a businessman scrutinized by both Democrats and his Republican challengers. Gingrich in particular has questioned his record as a jobs creator and alleged that the investment company that Romney chaired between 1984 and 1998 in fact destroyed jobs when it acquired ailing companies only to strip them of their healthy assets and turn a quick profit.

Although Romney insisted that his company had helped create more than a hundred thousand jobs, he didn’t attack Gingrich rather the president whom, he claimed, is “making us an entitlement society where people think they’re entitled to what other people have; where government takes from some and gives to others. That has never been the source of American greatness,” he said.

If he is the nominee, Democrats will probably try to portray Romney as a member of an elusive “1 percent” which, according to left wing activist, owns the bulks of wealth in America to prevent the underprivileged “99 percent” from improving their lot.

Republicans and independents can participate in South Carolina’s primary election on Saturday. The next vote in Florida on January 31 will be closed to registered Republicans. All of that state’s fifty delegates will be bound for three votes at the national convention in Tampa in August to the candidate who wins a plurality of the votes there. South Carolina’s delegates, by contrast, are allotted proportionately among the candidates based on their share of the vote.