Sunday, January 8, 2012

Romney looks to steamroll underfunded GOP foes

TILTON, N.H. - After preparing for a drawn-out nominating battle that would stretch well into the spring, Mitt Romney's campaign is now quietly shifting gears in an effort to steamroll his underfunded opponents and lock up the Republican nomination by the Florida primary at the end of this month.

Buoyed by a narrow win in the Iowa caucuses and his commanding lead in the New Hampshire polls, Romney has turned his attention to South Carolina, where he is dispatching a slew of high-profile surrogates and relocating his staff ahead of the Jan. 21 primary. Looking further ahead, Romney has begun a massive advertising blitz in Florida and launched an aggressive outreach program to early voters in the state.

Romney campaign advisers insist they are taking the race one state at a time and not taking any contest for granted. Yet Republican observers see Romney executing an ambitious strategy that would quickly maximize his momentum and try to quash any further surges by his rivals.

"If Romney wins the first four states, he'll be the de facto nominee of the party," said Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist on Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign who is unaffiliated in the current race. Ed Rogers, another unaffiliated Republican strategist, said the notion that Romney may wrap up the nomination by Jan. 31 is "perfectly plausible."

South Carolina is key

The new Romney push hinges on his performance in South Carolina, a more traditionally conservative state where he finished fourth in 2008 and until recently appeared to face an uphill fight. But South Carolina's conservatives do not yet appear to be uniting around a single alternative, opening a path to victory by plurality. A new poll Friday showed Romney with an 18-point lead over his closest opponent, with 37 percent support. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum drew 19 percent support, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 18 percent.

Romney is airing television advertisements across South Carolina, the most recent highlighting his opposition to the National Labor Relations Board's unsuccessful attempts to prevent Boeing from moving its operations to the state to avoid dealing with unionized workers elsewhere. On Thursday afternoon, Romney swooped into Charleston and Conway for an 18-hour campaign swing with McCain, R-Ariz., who won the South Carolina primary in 2008 on his way to the nomination. McCain has been calling his supporters there urging them to get behind Romney.

"He's gonna win in New Hampshire and it's gonna come down, my friends, as it always does, to South Carolina," McCain said Friday.

Other surrogates, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, N.J., will visit before the Jan. 21 primary. Romney is also reaching out to Tea Party activists, and another endorser, Gov. Nikki Haley, is mobilizing the grass-roots network she assembled for her 2010 race. Haley joined conservative commentator Ann Coulter to cut a radio ad on Romney's behalf.

Source: http://www.startribune.com/politics/136855978.html

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